Support for textures on 3D models took quite a while to add. There were many sub-systems to put into place so that I could make a texture system easily upgradable to support multi-textures, normal maps, reflection maps, etc. These changes spread across the graphics library and model library, and included foundation groundwork related to the L. Spiro Shader Language system used by models.
Because a proper texture transparency system is a bit more tedious to implement (simply using the alpha on the diffuse texture is not the way to go; there is a separate channel for alpha which may or may not include a texture. If it does, alpha from that texture should be used (and since that texture may be the same texture as the diffuse texture, another sub-system must ensure that the same texture is not loaded twice)) I am saving that for the next step. But before that, I decided to give a small showing of the current progress of the engine.
The next step is to implement the alpha channel on textures and then I will probably add support for normal maps, which will improve the quality of these images substantially.
L. Spiro
