23-09-2004

Wow. So much stuff has been happening to TGL lately. The SceneGraphManager is finally gone. It has been replaced with a GLRenderAction class that like actions in OpenInventor are applied to a scenenode. The new interface not only gets rid of a dangerous global, it also makes the rendering code very flexible.
We can now make new traversal methods by just inheriting from GLRenderAction. The default render action renders the scene graph in prefix order. This also means OpenInventor rendering and OpenGL Performer rendering can be implemented without having to change a single line of code in the scene object classes. Good Huh!

Now what remains before going to a new release is defining a good extensible state class that all sceneobjects interface with to set/get render state.

This next release is going to be all about minimalism. TGL used to suffer from bloat, it did too much at once by itself. Now that all the math has been exported to the MathGL++ project and OpenGL state is being moved to the StateGL++ project the build is much smaller and faster. There will be a plugin architecture for sceneobjects and image formats and hopefully for scenefile formats as well. It will probably be out by the end of the week. Keep your eyes peeled for the next release.

posted by Jacques.

13-09-2004

The camera class is almost complete. Everything compiles and I have committed the changes.
Actions are coming up ... Firstly though, the state management is going out of the GLSceneGraphManager class, It was absolute folly to have a singleton for that.

I am working on a design document for TGL. That should help bring some clarity and focus to the project. The emphasis so far is towards a minimal core with easy extendability through plugins. To reduce possibilities of bugs I think it is best if the core is kept small. Plugins can then be graded in terms of stability instead of the project being considered buggy. I am being so drastic as to move all the shapes out of the core and into plugins. If you don't like the way it is heading just drop a line in the forum

posted by Jacques.

08-09-2004

The camera class has been modified. The API makes a lot more sense now. As soon as everything compiles I'll commit the changes.
Next up is Actions. This will reduce the importance of the SceneGraphManager as well as allowing actions to be modified by inheritance.

posted by Jacques.

07-09-2004

Hi all, just a quick post. Work has started on the API. Cameras are going more towards the OpenInventor style. The state also has to be redesigned to be more useful. The SceneGraphManager has to be reduced in importance. It is almost as if we are using a global... which is bad!

posted by Jacques.

06-09-2004

It was really time to update this site :-). I have fixed lots of broken links and actually spent some time on the website. This is how one day sick with the flu can be used.
It seems TGL usage has gone up a bit. Download statistics are up and I think it is very nice of everyone to at least give TGL a try. It is still in alpha and the API is still not 100% stable. So, Thank you for using TGL.
I am working on providing factory method bindings for all SceneObject derivatives so that we can extend TGL easily, and also optionally include shapes we need. Pre and post rendering is in. As well as correct traversal of the tree.
Have fun with TGL and remember to post a report on Sourceforge if you find a problem. "There are no stupid questions... only stupid answers". :-)

posted by Jacques.

13-07-2004

It has been a long time... Finally I have emerged from the dungeon of books also called the study. If I had known "File structures & Database systems" was such an intensive subject this website probably would have had a "temporarily out of order" sign up. You know the kind they have on TV, with the cute puppy that has just pulled the power cord. Needles to say, I am very sorry for anyone who came to the site every day, hanging out for changes and updates. All I can say in my defense is "I promise I'll update more often from now on".

TGL is evolving very nicely at the moment, after a momentary hiatus. Since I am in my last semester of uni before going into postgrad, I can assure everyone I will continue working on TGL for at least another 5 years. So dig in and help youselves to some free scene graphing. Enjoy... :-).

PS. If you don't enjoy TGL please let me know or post on the SF.net forum. DS.

posted by Jacques.

04-02-2004

The latest and possibly most interesting news regarding TGL of late is that it's now live-woo! (celebrations will be kicking on further and further into the evening).

In other news, in addition to the newly posted screen shots, the team has decided to add in a 550 frame (25sec) animated demonstration of TGL in action, using the new 3D modeler, Palmtree. Note that the low frame rate on the avi is due to the application dumping the screen frames in realtime(!!). Hopefully we can add more of these in the future as they're more capable of demonstrating the applications capabilities and (let's face it) they're more interesting.

So now it's just up to you to check it out for yourself.

posted by Jacques.