Long-awaited update

It’s been a while since I have posted the last message. A lot of thing have changed and a lot of has been redone. It’s a pity that it is now 4th rework on the simple node tree flow, but because I find it essential to the whole project, I think it’s best to find the right solution first, and then continue to make other things.

I have now switched back to Java Monkey Engine due to simplicity of coding from all my platforms that I work on every day. The experience with Ogre3d engine in that area wasn’t very good from the perspective of switching the development platform each day due to the fact that in my work time, I like to put the work away and return to the project, if I have some ideas I want to try. And in that time I work under windows. And at home I have my beautiful iMac with MacOS X in it, of course. Switching back to jME took away the problem of reconfiguring the project settings for each platform each time I put the code written form windows to mac, and vice versa. I know that it’s solvable and my lack of knowledge in that area gives me pain, but for now, it’s better for me to stay with jME to avoid them. Anyway, if you understand the problem completely (and for now, understanding the routines to handle trees for planet surface rendering is the problem), it isn’t very hard to switch to another engine in future.

At the moment I have completely decided what scheme is better for my needs of creating and handling the planet surface, and it’s ROAM. I do not remember whether I posted the link to the ROAM PDF paper or not, but I will do it now anyway. So, here’s the link.

Why ROAM is good? Well, the best way to see it is to define how I want the planet surface to be born and handled. I have found the following scheme the best:

1. Using complex procedural algorithms generate a planetary map (the vision of what the planet will look like with all the coasts, mountains, valleys, etc.) that later can be modified to add crates, rivers, cliffs, and many more.
2. Using the same algorithm make a height map.
3. Make a spherical planet body and apply map to it.
4. Using altitude as the parameter, adjust the height of the planet mesh, and add extra geometry when we approach closer to surface. This means that form space you will see a bump mapped sphere, and as you get closer to surface, the surface will slowly and smoothly change to reveal all the “heights”.

For that scheme I find ROAM is a perfect choice. Later on I will post some updates on the node and tree routines.