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D3D9 Enhancements
[3.6]

RenderWare Graphics 3.6 now supports the latest version of Microsoft's API. Here are some examples of the latest benefits:

Shader Hardware Optimizations

Optimizations for hardware, supporting vertex and pixel shaders, are now available in RenderWare 3.6.

Hardware Skinning

Skinning is now done in hardware, when available. The skin plugin also uses vertex shaders version 1.1 and 2.0 when possible.

New Plugin Effects

We have developed new normal mapping plugins that allow you to create effects such as metal and plastic. They come with special support for pixel shaders version 1.4, to improve environment map calculations per pixel.

The NormMap plugin now has a new function to modulate the envmap by the base texture before using it, in order to better emulate metallic materials.

Hardware Mip Generation

Platform-independent texture dictionaries now provide support for hardware mip generation, such as on D3D9 on supporting video cards. Upon reading a PITD, any textures containing a single image (the top level mip) and a mipmapped texture filter have the rwRASTERFORMATAUTOMIPMAP flag set when generating their RwRasters. Note that this will mean mip-level generation in software on platforms that do not support it in hardware.

New Documentation

Optimizations for hardware supporting vertex and pixel shaders are now available in RenderWare 3.6.

• D3D9 and RenderWare white paper
• D3D9 API Reference
• Normal map included in DX9 docs

Automatic CVF's

RenderWare Graphics 3.6 now uses compressed vertex formats automatically if the video card supports them.

Additional Support

We've added support for Z-buffer textures and for new pixel formats when reading DDS files.

Toon Plugin

The toon plugin uses pixel shaders 2.0 to normalize the normal per pixel.

Team Plugin

The team plugin uses vertex shaders version 2.0 when possible.

Next...

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