Colour blend v.s. Normal Mapping

Progress this week includes optimizations to the output of rendered textures and comparisons between using colour blending v.s. a normal mapped texture combination.

By storing rendered textures and delaying writing to disk until a key is pressed, the demo now continues to animate at 30 fps.  This also allows better control over animation and produces more natural looking animated textures.

Currently, using colour blended with the rendered texture rather than using multiple textures (the rendered texture and a normal map) seems to achieve a better result visually.  Also, rendering a proper normal map as animation occurs proves to be quite difficult.  I encountered texture flickering issues which I'll continue to work out, but for now it appears the best method to continue with Fire and Smoke simulation will be to use blended colours with the rendered texture.

Normal mapped texture combination - appears dark, but additional detail is visible.  I'm not convinced this is working properly yet.

Blended colours - still currently gives the best visual result