Hi all!,
At first, thanks to everybody for opinions, and specially thanks to
DanielSefton, details like this give me the energy to continue developing Ogre3D materials
About SkyX, this is the Roadmap:
Code: Select all
Version 0.1: (First public version, only for testing)
- New volumetric cloud geometry approach
- Add more options to layered clouds
Version 0.2:
- Storm lighting support(see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzA8W2MCnm4 !)
- Soft edges for volumetric clouds(Like soft particles rendering method)
- Correct sun/moon position depending of the given date and location
- Full hydrax integration support(plug and play!)
About dates, when the roadmap tasks will be finished!
Just for curious people, I'll explain a little the volumetric cloud rendering approach:
At first, each some seconds a new volumetric data update is performed in the CPU and uploaded to two 3D textures, one contains the current volumetric data and the other one the next vol data. After that, we do a time lineal interpolation between these two textures in the GPU to obtain a smooth transition without CPU charge.
But.. the interest resides in the geometry approach:
At the moment, a I've implemented a very poor geometry system, based on concentrical semispheres, which needs a high batch count(25 in above screenshots), a big number of vertices and.. visual quality results aren't goods.
But.. don't worry, I better solution is in development(Or.. it'll be after my last exam
).
The new approach divides the geometry in "blocks", in order to decrease the batch count and vertices number, each bock contains 3 sub-blocks, the minimun geometry unit.
Using these blocks, it's very easy to move clouds depending of wind direction with smooth and pretty results, a noise texture is projected from the camera, simulating that the texture is in a plane under the geometry to obtain pretty cloud edges.
This is the basic schema:
Xavi
And, as always, sorry for my English!
P.D.: @compvis yes, the sun moves
Where is Xavyiy's expert user badge? This is an outrage! 
