Horde3D

Hey all.

I was thinking about something just now and could use some feedback. My world contains a number of characters that are in large part made up of boxes. I want users to be able to create alternative texture sets for the characters as easily as possible. My original characters had a hand-made UV layout, but frankly, its a bit of a pain. Of course users could just paste their textures over a template. But it would be easier if they could just use a cube map I think.

Do cube maps allow different texture sizes per face? I guess they dont (wouldnt make much sense to really).

Hmm, thinking about it, how would you setup the shader pipeline for using cubemaps on each mesh. Its a bit like an environment map, only one thats oriented with the mesh rather than the world I guess.

I'm still not entirely clear how the shader pipeline stuff is setup with H3D. Contexts, materials, shaders and flags are still a bit confusing. Maybe at some point I'll experiment.

Cube maps are not meant as a replacement for conventional texture mapping and I don't think that using them makes it any easier for your users. Especially since there are very few tools that can actually create and save cube maps.

Regarding the shader system: did you already read the documentation? It should give a good overview. If that is not enough, it probably needs to be extended or made clearer. So feedback is welcome!