I’ve been pushing quite hard to get this done before I head off to Qt DevDays next week, and luckily it all came together in the last few days:
Some of the notable back-of-the-box (if there was a box) items:
- Upgrade to SpeedTree v5 - supporting all the great new features. See the SpeedTree site for more details on this release.
- More lighting options - Ambient Occlusion, Ambient Contrast, Specular Lighting, Transmission Lighting, Global Light Scalar, HDR.
- Improved LOD fading - LOD transitions are now implemented via less perceptible techniques thanks to SpeedTree v5.
- Dynamic soft self-shadowing via depth shadowmaps - (was also demonstrated on SpeedTree 4.2 in OgreSpeedTree 1.1.0)
- Improved alpha to coverage support - alpha to coverage rendering has been significantly improved and is now enabled by default (you must render with at least 2xMSAA to see the effect), resulting in significantly smoother foliage edges and smoother fade transitions.
I’m just really, really glad to have got this done. SpeedTree v5 was quite a big change to handle, but hugely worthwhile, the guys at IDV have done a great job. I made the choice from v1 to do a ‘deep’ integration (ie all objects are first-party Ogre objects, everything uses Materials and RenderQueues properly, etc), which made the transition considerably more time consuming than using the higher level pass-through interfaces, so this took some effort. I like it this way though, it means it’s a ‘real’ integration as far as I’m concerned, not just a simplistic bolt-on.
There’s still more to do, not least of which a demo that’s more interesting than just a technical performance test 😀But at least I can tick off one of the major things on my TODO now. I’d been putting in quite a few extra hours to try to handle this, and my Qt presentation preparation, and Ogre, and consultancy, and it has taken its toll a bit - I’ve been spending more time at the desk and think that was a contributing factor to me straining my back at the gym last weekend. Hopefully that’s just temporary, I’ve been a lot better these last few months.
Hope you like the shots anyway. I know, I’m pimping them all over the place in my Twitter, here and on the Ogre site, but a guys gotta make a living, right? 😉