Sprite texturizers and other happenings

[Casey Duncan]

It's been pretty quiet around here lately, but rest assured Lepton is
still steadily moving forward. Yesterday I put the finishing touches
on some greatly improved texture support. I wrote a blog post about
the general idea a little while ago:

http://eatthedots.blogspot.com/2009/03/better-texture-support-in-lepton.html

Finished and checked in right now is the SpriteTexturizer, which is
now used by most of the example scripts. Both the PointRenderer and
BillboardRenderer now support texturizers. In the next few days I'd
like to get an animated texturizer going which will allow for some
really interesting effects. I'm also excited about a texture
generation function that is included for generating various circular
point textures programatically. I reworked the fire and smoke examples
to use this function, greatly enhancing both imo. What's really nice
about it is that you can tweak the look and blending of the points
directly in the program, no guesswork in a separate image editor.
Functions for generating other textures, using noise or otherwise are
a strong consideration, suggestions welcome.

There is also a new Drag controller checked in for simulating drag
forces in viscous fluids. A new vortex example shows off how to use
this to create a tornado-like effect by combining moving fluid (i.e.,
wind) with a magnet and cone.

My plan is to get a new release out before pyweek this month. I'm
pretty confident about that, as I could actually just do a new release
now if need be. I'd really like to get some texture animation support
in though, and possibly a "weathervane" controller for automatically
setting particle rotation based on velocity. Docs for the new
texturizers would be a good thing too 8^)

Enjoy.

-Casey

[Andrew Charles]

All sounds very cool. If I get some time I'll have a play with the new
features and see what I can break.