Oblivion is evil. It's an adventure game that is absolutely enormous, and eats up your time like you wouldn't believe. I started playing it a week or so ago, and finally realized I'll have to limit myself to two hours a week - lest I become a daedra. :p

I've been making some very key updates to the Room Builder application, as well as its underlying code. These updates will allow for proper support of lightmaps; not only for the Room Builder, but for future applications as well. Expect version 0.0.22a of the Mesh Reconstruction utilities to be out over the next week or so.

I have also made progress learning about a procedure called Texture Blending in DirectX. Texture blending involves taking a collection of textures, and overlaying them in some specific order, one on top of another. It's how The Movies resolves the final appearance of an actor's costume. The Movies takes a base skin tone texture, then piles on layers of clothing: pants, then shoes, then a belt, then a shirt, then the shirt's logo, then a jacket. For many months now, whenever I needed an animated actor prop, I would use Photoshop to manually combine all these layers of clothing. My gathering knowledge is putting me closer to developing an application that will:

• Take a costume mesh, a Starmaker head, a hair mesh, and a list of accessory meshes, and automatically stitch them together. This part is already done.
• Take the Starmaker, hair, and costume information, and automatically create the customized textures for the actor.

I will go the complete mile on this application. It will include all the fine details, including eye colour, hair colour, facial hair, and make-up. Best of all, it will be my first Windows GUI application; and will visually show you the actor prop as you customize it. It will work a little bit like the Makeover Department screen, but without character animation. There is no release date on this yet, but it'll get done eventually. ;)