Tessellation

What's new:

• Full transformations of point forces in particle systems, added 'rotator' and 'attractor' features.
• Unicode names of joysticks.
• Dedicated tree for objects with collision detection enabled.
• All fonts and textures can be shared between GUIs.
• Performance optimization for multiple ObjectGUIs.
• Added Qt-based integration sample with multiple windows.
• Deffered buffer is decreased in size for low shader profile.
• Transfer of user-specified classes between C++ API and UnigineScript.
• Billboards speedup.
• More compact variables in UnigineScript.
• Added new Expression class in UnigineScript, that can compile and execute arbitrary code in runtime.
• Minor performance improvement of clouds.
• Plugins for 3dsMax 12 (2010).
• Correct replication of NodeReferences during assignment of properties and materials.
• Added support of Cage mesh in NormalMapper, that allows to select a desired high-poly object.
• Height textures are renamed into parallax ones, use '_h' postfix instead of '_p'.
• Improved documentation on UnigineEditor and ResourceEditor.
• Support of AMD hardware tessellator in ResourceEditor via AMD_vertex_shader_tessellator.

Hardware tessellation is a very attractive technology, artists can waste hours looking at real-time change of low-poly models tessellation. Unfortunatelly now it is available in OpenGL with AMD cards only. However, later this year Windows 7 is to be released, that introduces DirectX 11 with support of hardware tessellation.

PS: We also work very closely with AMD video driver team now, these guys provide really useful help with fast driver bugfixes for both Windows and Linux versions.

PPS: Our CEO (Denis Shergin) and CTO (Alexander Zaprjagaev) will attend GDC Europe, which will take place in Cologne, Germany this August. Please contact us via info@unigine.com to make an appointment if you would like to meet.