Recast Version 1.0
Recast is state of the art navigation mesh construction toolset for games.
* It is automatic, which means that you can throw any level geometry
at it and you will get robust mesh out
* It is fast which means swift turnaround times for level designers
* It is open source so it comes with full source and you can
customize it to your hearts content.
The Recast process starts with constructing a voxel mold from a level geometry
and then casting a navigation mesh over it. The process consists of three steps,
building the voxel mold, partitioning the mold into simple regions, peeling off
the regions as simple polygons.
1. The voxel mold is build from the input triangle mesh by rasterizing
the triangles into a multi-layer heightfield. Some simple filters are
then applied to the mold to prune out locations where the character
would not be able to move.
2. The walkable areas described by the mold are divided into simple
overlayed 2D regions. The resulting regions have only one non-overlapping
contour, which simplifies the final step of the process tremendously.
3. The navigation polygons are peeled off from the regions by first tracing
the boundaries and then simplifying them. The resulting polygons are
finally converted to convex polygons which makes them perfect for
pathfinding and spatial reasoning about the level.
The project files with this distribution can be compiled with Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 (you can download it for free) and XCode 3.1.
You can find examples how to use the library on the Examples directory.
Mikko Mononen
memon@inside.org
