May 21, 2007

What's new for this week:

• Built-in XML parser in UnigineScript.
• Improvements of UnigineScript's base classes: Dir, File, Image, RegExp and Xml can transparently interact with external functions, which use the same classes from the framework.
• Now nv30 works with omni lights having hardware shadow maps enabled on OpenGL.
• Correct work with fullscreen dualview mode on Linux.
• Elimination of DirectInput usage.
• Correct detection of videocard name via WMI under win32.
• New renderImage() function in the render for image grabbing.
• Small bugfix of video_restart on Direct3D9.
• Elimination of LightWorld's singularity with parrallel to (0,0,1) view.
• New billboard_impostor_base material for distant objects or LODs.
• 3D spatial modulation of leafs' color by a texture.
• Renaming parameters of vegetation materials ("amplitide" to "amplitude_scale" and "animation" to "animation_offset").
• Reset of camera pivot point by 'g' button in UnigineEditor.
• fabs() is now abs() in UnigineScript.
• MeshMorph and MeshSkinned can save themself and be created from outside importers.
• Morph target animation in MeshMorph, blending of up to 4 animations with arbitrary weights.
• Skinned mesh import from Doom 3 format.
• Morph mesh import from Quake 2 format.
• Image class can compress/decompress 3D textures and create mipmaps for them now.
• Independent angular and linear speed limits for each RigidBody.
• A bunch of physics examples (we have finally replaced boring grey default textures by funny ones!).
• Stable multithreaded physics by default.

If Unigine detects more than one CPU, it automatically use multiple threads (2 for now: render and physics). It gives drastically performance boost on multicore machines and even on systems with HyperThreading support. Now this scheme works perfectly and is enabled by default.

Stacking of objects:

Joints-based cloth:

Accurate and fast joints:

Joints-based soft body:

Joints destruction:

Walking machine:

We have more physics examples now, all of them are available within evaluation kit.

PS: We were also busy with polishing our Unigine-based demo, "Sanctuary" (gothic-style one), which will be available tonight on our site, so stay tuned.

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