Development Journal of a Raytracer

Attaching objects to bones now also works. I haven't done many tests, so it is still possible that there is something wrong with one of the transformations, but I hope it is correct. So now the skeleton should be finished. But before I scratch that point off the list I first have to see, if now really everything works as expected.

So before I start with the next thing (the UV-mapping editor to move individual vertices) I will have to work a bit with the skeleton. Then I expect I will soon see, if it works this time or if there are still things missing.

The hull was colored orange, the deck green, the rest is still my standard gray to tell the parts apart.

With the diagnostics I found a bug in the planarization code and could also fix it. But that wasn't the problem I originally noticed in the renderings. So there is another one I can't see in the editor. In the rendering you can see dark areas. I think they are not complete faces, it seems rather strange. There is one thing I could imagine, it could be a case, where the backsides of faces are sticking through. As the faces were extruded the front and back are a bit different after bending them into the form. The code which planarizes the faces could have the effect that by partitioning the vertices in different sequences the backside is sticking through the front side.

If that is the case, then the problem will solve itself once I painted planks in an made the hull thicker. Currently it is only 5mm, later it will be considerably more.

I am finished with the implementation of the diagnostics for now. In addition to the internal numbers I also show the normal calculated for the element. To implement it I had to add a new UI-element as I never needed one to only show data and not make it available for editing.

I also have a first idea what to check for the strange effects on the ships hull which were responsible to start with the addition of the diagnostics. The faces which are wrong are the faces with five vertices and there the face normal is zero. That seems to result in a zero normal for the edges and that means the renderer will create a crease there. I will see what I can find out, but it seems the simple form already pointed me into a direction of what to check. It isn't guaranteed that it is the right direction, but it at least is something I wouldn't have checked without.