Announcing Cartoon Renderer

[James W. W. <ja...@fr...>]

I have just finished committing a cartoon-style renderer.  The 
programming was started by a Siberian programmer going by the name 
Lloyd Bridges, under contract to ScriptPerfection Enterprises, and 
finished by me.  I do not claim that the code is pretty or 
bulletproof, but it is enough for my purposes.  This renderer is 
implemented as part of Quesa, rather than as a plug-in, because it 
calls a couple of internal functions of the Interactive Renderer.

The main idea of cartoon-style rendering is to use relatively few 
distinct colors, giving a look that is somewhat "flat" but not as 
flat as using the NULL illumination shader or using nothing but 
ambient light.  We also wish to emphasize the outlines.

Usage:  One way to get the Cartoon renderer is to enumerate 
subclasses of the renderer class, as the Geom Test sample does. 
Another way would be to use code like this:

	TQ3ObjectType	cartoonType;
	Q3ObjectHierarchy_GetTypeFromString( "Quesa Cartoon", &cartoonType );
	TQ3RendererObject	theRenderer = Q3Renderer_NewFromType( 
cartoonType );

A TriMesh can be forced to be rendered by the standard interactive 
renderer by attaching an object property of type 'NCar'.  The data in 
the property does not matter.  Transparent trimeshes will always be 
rendered by the interactive renderer.
-- 
   James W. Walker, ScriptPerfection Enterprises, Inc.
   <http://www.write-brain.com/>