New Plugins
[3.3]

Lightmaps Plugin (RpLtMap)

Lightmaps are a well-established and efficient technique enabling developers to increase the graphical richness of game environments. The RenderWare Graphics Lightmaps is a plugin that enables developers to rapidly introduce high performance and high quality lightmaps into their game.

We have provided the lightmaps plugin not just so that developers don't have to re-invent the wheel, but also so that they can fully leverage the strengths of each platform to get the best results from this technique.

We've focused on providing a high performance solution - using tri-strips (rather than tri-lists) with optimized platform specific implementations. On Xbox, Nintendo GameCube and PC we are using multi-texturing and typically rendering the material and lightmap in a single pass. On PlayStation 2, using third generation pipes we are rendering the lightmap in 2 passes! And we've given attention to high quality results - you can create full color lightmaps from point or areas sources.

The Lightmaps plugin includes RenderWare Graphics exporter support, a toolkit for generating the lightmaps and runtime components for PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube and PC.

The RenderWare Graphics Lightmaps Plugin features:

• 2 pass rendering on PlayStation 2
• High performance, multi-texture rendering on Xbox, Nintendo GameCube and PC
• Support for full color lightmaps
• Support for compressed textures
• Area light sources, tagged on a per-material basis in the modeler
• Point light sources can be tagged in the modeler on a per sector, per material or per atomic basis
• Support for standard RenderWare Graphics lights (RpLight)
• A toolkit (RtLtMap) for generating the lightmap from the tagged export data
• Vertex lighting for highly detailed objects if required (where lightmaps would be inefficient)

New Particle System Plugin (RpPTank)

The new plugin (RpPTank ) provides two APIs - a low level API for the rendering and a high level API for the animation and physics. Any element of the animation, physics and/or rendering can be customized to achieve the effects that you desire.

The New Particle System (which supercedes RpPrtSys) features:

• Animation and fast path rendering
• Support for particle size, color (RGBA), global or per vertex
• Support for particle texture (including UV)
• 2d center rotation and orientation
• Physics features - one external force (e.g. gravity, wind, friction)
• Particles are independent of the emitter
• Platform optimized (VU code on PlayStation 2, point sprites as appropriate on Xbox and PC and a hardware specific implementation for Nintendo GameCube)

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