Just to let you know that work is still happening on the new version of ClayWorks albiet slowly due to my day job (website stuff in Japan). This new screenshot shows the package at a 20% complete stage; it shows a marked improvment over the old version in both the user interface and the rendering engine. A windows version will be available but it certainly won't look like your average boring windows apps; I have created a skin system that will allow users to choose from a number of interface styles and even create their own, similar to the package WinAmp but more flexible; frivilous perhaps, but it looks nice.

As for the important features, I am working on some interesting and intuative modelling tools with the emphasis on precise control and low poly counts. Support for many file formats, including RenderWarep Script (RWX), VRML (WRL), Lightwave (LWO) and 3D Studio (3DS) will be included. Also, a new ClayWorks website will be appearing as soon as I've purchased a suitable .com domain name.

If anybody is interested in this project or has any suggestions on features they would like to see please email me.

The old version is now free for download here.

2/10/98

I've been getting quite a lot of emails regarding Clayworks recently. Things had died down a bit but it is very flattering to know that there is still interest in the product out there. For the benefit of everybody who's interested in using future versions of Clayworks to create visuals in the rwx format, here is a summary and timescale of what I am currently working on:

1. Clayworks works was written in Borland Pascal and assembler, I am converting and rewritting the whole package in 32bit C/C++/assembler. This includes the windowing system and all the lowlevel graphics drivers (this takes time...).

2. I am working on a new 3d engine, the initial framerate and quality is very promising, this engine will be encorperated into all of my future 3d programs and will support hardware acceleration via low level libraries where available.

3. Once the 3d/2d graphics and windowing system are stable then I will start to rewrite Clayworks in C/C++; Most of the work lies in getting the ground work right and I hope to write the actual application quite swiftly.

4. Most of the DOS code will be directly interchangable with the windows95 code, porting the whole package to Uncle Bill's Bloated Baby should not be a large task.

Clayworks version 3.0 will have texture mapping, true colour with ambient, diffuse, emmisive and specular terms, transparency, zbuffering and many more real-time rendering features and an interface as easy to use as the original Clayworks (and hopefully less buggy).

This is not vapourware, much of the work is already done but this is not my full time job, I am currently contracting as a website designer and this is something I do in my spare time. I have 1 1/2 months before my next wage contract starts in Japan and I hope to have done most of the work on this by then.

Please excuse the bulk email but you all seem to be members of the Worlds Inc. system. I was a member of AlphaWorld but I've not been able to get this running under AOL. I am very interested in interactive 3D applications on the web, I have been planning to set up such a system with some programmer friends of mine for about a month now.

I sincerley hope that I can get a more upto date version of Clayworks up and running but time is quite limited; I doubt I will have much time for this when I am working in Japan. For now, there is an older version of Clay available from here.

It is not very stable, I have been making minor changes all year but I haven't really sat down and tidied it up. It's the old Pascal version and I'm not really going to revise it that much, just totally rewrite it in C++ as I stated above.

I highly recommend having a look at Themekit Mindformer, I worked there last year and helped write their modelling software and it's what I use at home now. It does not support RWX directly (although I did want to put that feature in) but it does have many excellent features and it doesn't cost very much!

I could write a convertion program for mindrender files to the RWX format but I'd have to consult the manager of Themekit before I put that on general release.

I hope that helps,

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    - __o     Tim Lewis, freelance programmer and graphics artist.
 -  _`\<,_    WWW page:    http://members.aol.com/luther2000
_  (_) /(_)   Email:       luther2000@aol.com
              Snail mail:  Moving about to much for that...
        ---*** Author of ClayWorks, cool 3d editor for DOS ***---
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