view3dscene 3.6.0 release: Many shadow maps improvements

New view3dscene 3.6.0 release focuses on the improvements to our Shadow Maps extensions:

• X3DLightNode.shadows field, to easily activate shadows on everything.
• Appearance.receiveShadows field, to easily activate shadows on specific shadow receivers.
• Light sources' projectionNear, projectionFar and such are automatically calculated now to suitable values, as long as you use high-level X3DLightNode.shadows or Appearance.receiveShadows fields.
• Incompatible changes: DirectionalLight.projectionRectangle order changed, to match standard OrthoViewpoint.fieldOfView order. Also, projection* parameters are zero by default (which indicates that they should be automatically calculated).
• Easy menu items to control shadow maps, see the new View -> Shadow Maps -> ... submenu.
• New ProjectedTextureCoordinate node for projective texturing. Can project a texture also from a viewpoint now.
• Extensions to control head-bobbing in VRML/X3D worlds.
• Picking and ray-tracing with orthogonal projection fixed. (See also new rayhunter (version 1.3.2) with --ortho option).
• See also previous news item for some more details about new stuff implemented.

Also, the slides from my Web3D 2010 talk about Shadow Maps (and the paper) are available now.

In other news: Victor Amat just send me a very nice demo that uses our RenderedTexture to implement beautiful mirrors on a flat surface. See the models inside x3d/rendered_texture in Kambi VRML test suite (new version 2.8.0).

All the shadow maps improvements are actually implemented inside our engine (new version 2.1.0).