| 
 
  |  |  Submitted by , posted on 08 March 2002
 |  |  
   
 
 
| Image Description, by 
  
 I graduated in computer graphics, by building an editor, on top of my 
improved 3D engine, that enables us to create screensavers by a click of the 
mouse.
Our first screensaver created with this new program is the Universe 
Screensaver you can find at www.gizmozone.com.
 
 Some engine specifications:
 
Textures (with alpha layers) loaded from JPEG. Mipmapping, wrapping and 
all usual settings are supported.
Materials define colours, texture ptr, rendering layer, fog, blending, 
depth functions etc...
Mesh models imported from 3D Studio Max. Possible LoD settings.
Objects in tree make up the world
With camera objects and paths (animated by B-splines, 
Catmull-rom-splines), scenes and a timeline control we can virtually create 
movies.
Sphere-frustum culling and Level of Detail at the core of the engine, 
speeds up rendering of all the objects.
Some other objects: geosphere, quad, cylinder, quadtree, particle sphere 
(stars), particle cylinder (smoke), flame (shuttle exhaust), font, light, 
viewport...
With the solid OO structure it's easy to add new objects (like the landscape 
for our next saver). These new objects already take advantage of the basic 
object properties (frustum culling, material use, matrix orientation, ...). 
It speaks for itself that in the next project we can concentrate on these 
new objects, and already have the existing objects at our disposal. 
Lensflares, paths and camera animations are a few that are always useful! 
 The result can be viewed and edited in real-time in the editor by using the 
mouse. Now it's fast and easy for the graphic designer and managers to tweak 
the world for the desired result. A world can be saved and loaded via the 
engine. Because the saver is also based on the same engine, I can save a 3D 
world to file, and load that same world in the screensaver.
There's too much to name in this small description, so feel free to ask any 
questions.
 
 You can find and download the Universe Screensaver at www.gizmozone.com.
Please try it and let us hear what you think if it,
 
 - Bas.
 
 
 |  
 
 
 |