Impostors

What's new:

• Smart dynamic impostors.
• Capability of rendering of a single object in WidgetSpriteObject.
• Fixed 3dsMax plugins (wrong alignments for skinned mesh).
• setCastShadow/setReceiveShadow methods for surfaces, which allow fine tuning.
• Support of password-protected built-in data packs.
• Fixed selection of NodeRef by double-click.
• New render_show_textures console variable for visualization of dynamical textures.
• *.pak files are treated as *.zip ones by filesystem.
• Increased precision of ObjectWater and ObjectSky on far distances.
• Filesystem loads files in alphabetical order now.
• A file, which is referenced by NodeRef, can be replaced by another one via UnigineEditor now.
• An object is belong to a sector according to its bounding box.
• Materials and properties can be set for all nodes of a multiple selection.
• Updated Unigine_Externs pack.
• Updated docs, added "Content Creation / Materials Overview / Optimization Tips" and "Content Creation / Level Design" articles.

Impostor is a fake 2D sprite object, which replaces a real 3D object at far distances. The engine render impostors automatically, the only thing you should do is to enable 'Impostor' flag in the node properties. There is also an 'Impostor distance' setting in UnigineEditor (see rendering settings window). It's recommended to set that parameter equal to shadow off distance or even greater to avoid artifacts. Approximate estimations of memory consumption by impostors can be found in "Content Creation / Level Design" article.

9 000 000+ polygons, 613 DIPs, 16 FPS (on 8800GT):

2 000 000+ polygons, 235 DIPs, 31 FPS (the same hardware):

FPS is doubled, resulting image is the same - this is a power of impostors!

Dynamic decals are on the way.