You can use the new TCastleRenderUnlitMesh utility class to render unlit 3D objects easily. It has a nice API when you want to render a set of vertexes and then forget about them — sometimes this is easier than setting up the shapes in TCastleScene. It may be especially useful for rendering debug 3D geometry, in fact view3dscene is already using it for this purpose.

An example usage is in test_rendering_opengl_capabilities example, in unit gamemymesh.pas.

Moreover, thanks to this class (and some other improvements I’ll describe in subsequent posts) we have upgraded our shadow volumes code, making it simpler and working with mobile OpenGL ES, without losing any performance. You can test shadow volumes on OpenGLES e.g. using examples/viewport_and_scenes/shadows or by creating a new project from “3D FPS Game” template.

And while we’re at it, our shadow maps code was also fixed. It now works on OpenGLES in much the same way it does on desktop OpenGL.

Note: This is not the end of shadow maps upgrades. They are still not as straightforward to activate as they should be, and they don’t cast shadows on multiple scenes. More work on shadow maps is coming 🙂