Update! Yaaaaay!
Ok..so heres whats going on:
I am no longer a 1 man team on this thing. I got together with an old teacher of mine who is probobly the most experienced scripter I have ever met...and he glady jumped on the project with me. So I sent him the code I have so far, and 2 days later he sends me it back...only its twice the size and has like 90 new things on it.
He fixed the interface issues I was having (where i would add track peices and the more i would add..the longer it would take)
He finalized the integration of my physics engine...working quite nicely I might add...
A ton of other "small" features here and there...
and the BEST thing...which will probobly make no sense to anyone who isnt in computer animation....he added a fake HDRI/GI engine! So...you are wondering.."What the **** is HDRI/GI"...let me explain...or at least try to.
First...GI..or "Global Illumination" is a feature that calculates how light bounces from one object to another based on its luminosity, specularity, color, diffuse...etc etc. What that does for animation is...when enabled...it renders out accuratly how things would look if they were in real life. Now...this takes a LONG time to calculate..normally. As any Maya user can tell you...sadly...Maya has no GI engine. So what HE did was found a way to fake it...pretty quickly too. So now when we make a coaster..it has "real life" lighting...pretty neat...so what is HDRI??
HDRI is a bit more complicated...imagine it as being able to light an entire CG scene without using any lights. Instead, the lighting information comes from an image thats wrapped on the inside of a 3d "dome"...this also takes a LONG time to calculate..and again...Maya doesnt have this feature. I dont ask HOW he did it, but he integrated a HDRI engine into Maya...that runs damn fast.
...ok..confused? maybe visuals will help
![Wink ;) ;)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Below is a test image we rendered out today using his fake GI/HDRI engine. We didnt raytrace (thus why there are no reflections from the other objects), and excuse the jagged edges..we didnt turn up the anti-aliasing to save time. This scene has 0 lights and was done in the standard Maya render engine using his attachments::