Jwir3's Weblog

I apologize for my lack of updates over the last week or two. Having completely finished geometry conversion, I decided to continue the project with COLLADA effects (FX). However, the problem was that the FX section of COLLADA is specifically designed to utilize a shader model, which is still in heavy development in Crystal Space. As such, I have decided (with the advice of res2k and thebolt) that the initial COLLADA conversion system will convert the <library_materials> section, and only convert <effect> elements which utilize <blinn> or <phong> elements - which will be converted to normal surface colorings. Shaders and other effects will be saved for a subsequent release of the COLLADA conversion system. Up to this point, textures are intended to be included in this first release.

Additionally, I have taken another look at the Triangulate3D class. After speaking with Martin Held (author of the FIST algorithm), I was informed that triangulation of polyhedral surfaces is, in some cases, an NP-complete problem. This I didn't realize. However, all is not lost, as he instructed me in ways to utilize heuristics to project 3D polygons onto planar surfaces, thereby converting a 3D polygon triangulation problem into a set of 2D triangulation problems, each of which can be solved in at worst, O(n^2) time, using an ear-clipping approach. I intend to implement this in the coming few days.

Finally, I suspect there are a few minor bugs in the geometry conversion, which I will address as soon as I have time. It is possible, however, that I may not get to them until after the scene conversion is finished. I am, as of yet, still unable to see the exported cs library files using viewmesh. I will post an example cs file output from the collada conversion system in the next day or so, so that others can have a look at it, and perhaps tell me what I am doing wrong that it doesn't appear in viewmesh. The syntax and whatnot appear correct, but perhaps something is just messed up. The viewmesh program doesn't spit out an error - it does seem to load the mesh, it just doesn't appear in the scene.

That's all for today. I'll keep you all posted on further progress as I make it.