Finally, the materials have been integrated into the engine - and I like it!!! Its one of those ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a long time and I finally had a chance to put it into the engine. I don't know about the rest of the lone developers out there, but building an engine can be an up and down process - with very high highs and very low lows. Sometimes when you add a new design or feature it just doesn't work and it wastes a bunch of time. But sometimes it works so well that it just makes you smile while you are testing it out because you know it was a huge improvement over what you had before. This is one of those times (and yes, I am smiling as I type this [grin])!!!
Next up is to create a small specification for an XML file that will define the properties of a material. Currently, I allow the material to contain up to 8 textures (which can be generated by render views or read from file), 8 four component constants, and up to 8 4x4 matrices. This should be easy enough to define an XML DTD for, and then mash up the material creation system to make the whole thing all data driven. The next few days are going to be pretty fun - I'll be sure to post a few more details and maybe some examples once I get it wrapped up.
