Scene creator will generate a heightmap terrain, lighting and shading that dynamically moves with the flow of time to give a daytime and nighttime effect. Scenes include a skydome which is also influenced by day/nighttime effects and moves to give the illusion of cloud animation. Billboard vegetation which moves with wind defined in the scene. Fog adds to the effect of distance.

User can customize the light colors, length of a day, fog density and color, wind intensity. Sky, terrain, and vegetation textures are all fully customizable, as well as heightmap texture and size.

Large scenes are now supported through the use of a quad-tree. Quad-tree sections can be re-defined so that a scene can be fine tuned. Further terrain optimizations may be required. I would like to have 60fps anytime more than half of a 1024x1024's quad-trees are in view.

You can place models (currently just a placeholder model) onto any section of terrain, and rotate, scale, and transform the model to your liking. Please read the readme.txt file included with the download for a list of controls.

Features new to version 0.32:
- Specular lighting added to terrain shader.
- GUI has been started, some basic icons now appear for loading models and deleting them.
- Started save/load feature, not yet funtional.
- Changed debug controls to use F1-F6, refer to readme file for details.
- Other minor optimizations.

Features new to version 0.31:
- Terrain triangles can now be selected.
- 3D models can now be placed into a scene.
- 3D models can be scaled, rotated, and transformed.
- Bug when using CTRL + W, A, S, D for altering of 3D models. Causes rotation and transformation both. This will be fixed in the next version.
- Triangle picking for models is not in yet, which can make it awkward when re-selecting models, this will hopefully be in the next version.

Want and older versions:
Version 0.27 ( 08-19-07 )

Credit to Riemer for assistance with heightmap, terrain effects, and sky, and to XNA team for billboard effects file.

Features planned (hopefully) for upcoming versions:
- Allow multiple types of billboards/vegetation.
- Allow for more than 3 terrain textures per scene.
- Allow for saving of a scene so that it could be loaded into a game.
- A scene manager which will allow transistion to a new scene ( good for games with multiple levels/worlds)
- More comments and summaries in the code...

Features considered for later versions: (Things I would like to have, but cannot guarantee)
- A gui world editor (currently all scene creation is done in the code) that would allow for click and drag placement of 3D objects and adding/removal of vegetation. Possibly even editing of the heightmap.
- If scene saving/loading is successful I make create a basic game template that will work off of the scenes.

Please email me if you have any questions about the sample.
You may use this sample, including the code, as long as proper credit is given. Thank you.

Screenshots.....click to see full images