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What's New
[3.2]

Curved surfaces

For RenderWare Graphics 3.2 we have added a complete art to hardware path for rendering Bézier patches on all platforms. Bézier patches can be modeled in 3ds max or Maya and exported as a patch mesh to be represented in RenderWare Graphics. This allows the artist to model using smoothed surfaces and get good visible results in game.

Although the implementation exists across all platforms, please refer to the platform specific section of what's new for more information on the platform that you are using.

Delta Morphing (DMorph) Plugin (RpDMorph)

This enables the user to store a series of delta morph targets with geometry data, each representing localized distortions of the base geometry. These may be applied dynamically in a combination via exported DMorph animations or procedurally. The primary envisaged use for these is during cut-scenes or plot driven character close ups.

DMorph is fully supported by the exporters - and as a generic CPU side implementation should be compatible with non-procedurally generated geometry, and also skinned objects.

Skinning / Animation changes

There have been a number of animation systems in RenderWare Graphics. This has given us some legacy code that we have taken this opportunity to remove in combination with improvements and platforms coming online.

The hierarchical animation (RpHAnim) plugin is the preferred method of doing animation within RenderWare Graphics, its files have the extension .anm. This was released in version 3.1. We have been supporting .ska files which come from a legacy implementation of animation which was contained within the RpSkin plugin.

In this release we have implemented a successor to RpSkin. The new RpSkin is a slightly modified skinning plugin, with some slight improvements in API but also has enabled us to roll out faster versions of skinning customized for all platforms. The most significant change is that the new RpSkin does not support the .ska format as the RpSkin internal animation and skeleton system has been remove in favor of HAnim. This obviously has benefits, not only in terms of the improved implementation, but also in code size and API size.

We are retaining in the old version of RpSkin as an archive plugin which still contains the .ska animation system for this release. We are also providing compatible exporters in the exporter archive directory.

There is a tool which converts the old RpSkin .ska file animations to the new RpHAnim .anm animations. Refer to the documentation for more information.

Changes to arena size allocation

It is now necessary to explicitly set the arena size in RwEngineInit. Previous users will have to make this change and set the arena size as necessary. The size of the Arena is very application specific, but these general rules apply.

• Initially set the arena size high, this will give you maximum performance.
• If you are experiencing reduced performance using RenderWare Graphics, it is likely that you are 'thrashing' the resource Arena. Try setting a larger size.
• If you find that you are running low on system memory, but your performance is okay, try reducing the size of the resource arena in this call.

However, if you are taking advantage of the Pre-instanced Geometry, it is perfectly reasonable that you will not require the resource arena, and hence it can be set very low. See platform specific section for more information.

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