First of all,we have released a new demo , it took a month to create it by our small content department. "Tropics" demo has funny crabs and gulls inside, check it out!

We have updated "Sanctuary" demo also (improved shadows quality, increased textures resolution, added more stereo 3D modes and "candle weapon" camera mode). Screenshots gallery is updated as well.

What's new in the engine and tools:

Recent changes:

• Projected, orthographic and omni decals.
• Masks and offsets for decals.
• Added decal samples.
• Isolation mode in UnigineEditor.
• New "back shadow" flag for all light sources.
• New default names for 32/64 bit libraries.
• Spatial settings for sky material.
• Fixed water shaders.
• Impostors speedup.
• MenuBox supports another MenuBoxes as children.
• New WidgetSpinBox.
• Fixed calling of script functions through the C++ API with external classes passed into them.
• SDK launcher for Windows with HTML-based interface.

Our art department is reworkingan old draft of tropical demo, it should be ready in September:

Ocean waves look completely real in dynamics, unfortunately a static image can't show it:

What's new:

• Smart dynamic impostors.
• Capability of rendering of a single object in WidgetSpriteObject.
• Fixed 3dsMax plugins (wrong alignments for skinned mesh).
• setCastShadow/setReceiveShadow methods for surfaces, which allow fine tuning.
• Support of password-protected built-in data packs.
• Fixed selection of NodeRef by double-click.
• New render_show_textures console variable for visualization of dynamical textures.
• *.pak files are treated as *.zip ones by filesystem.
• Increased precision of ObjectWater and ObjectSky on far distances.
• Filesystem loads files in alphabetical order now.
• A file, which is referenced by NodeRef, can be replaced by another one via UnigineEditor now.
• An object is belong to a sector according to its bounding box.
• Materials and properties can be set for all nodes of a multiple selection.
• Updated Unigine_Externs pack.
• Updated docs, added "Content Creation / Materials Overview / Optimization Tips" and "Content Creation / Level Design" articles.

Impostor is a fake 2D sprite object, which replaces a real 3D object at far distances. The engine render impostors automatically, the only thing you should do is to enable 'Impostor' flag in the node properties. There is also an 'Impostor distance' setting in UnigineEditor (see rendering settings window). It's recommended to set that parameter equal to shadow off distance or even greater to avoid artifacts. Approximate estimations of memory consumption by impostors can be found in "Content Creation / Level Design" article.

What's new:

• Hierarchy of node properties (read more below).
• Underlaying material for reflections.
• Console commands now can be created by means of UnigineScript.
• Variables content can be accessed via [] operator, there are new __set__ and __get__ class memebers to be overloaded for [] access.
• Adjustable precision of mesh data for 3dsMax export plugin (snap to grid).
• Friction and restitution parameters are moved into base properties library.
• Filesystem speedup.
• A file inside 'data' directory can be access very fast now, if its name doesn't contain 'data/' prefix.
• Fixed LWO format loader.
• New format of world files: material name should be in 'material' attribute of 'surface' tag (old format will be supported for some time still; re-save world to update its format).
• Removed 'deprecate.mat' material library, there is no more mesh_detail_base (use mesh_base instead of it).
• Great speedup of scripts compling (it is almost 4 times faster now).
• Fixed reflection masks.
• Cube filtering of ambient maps.
• Stereo launchers dynamically load DirectX libraries now.
• Removed FreeBSD building rules due to very low demand on FreeBSD support.
• Automatic generation of focus cycling order for UI.
• reflection_adjust parameter for cube reflection for fine tuning.
• Almost all memory leaks are eliminated, there are only 3 unfreed pointers left.
• Added time.h (for correct sun position according to a given time) to the core scripts set.
• Added sun movement into 'water' demo.
• WorldTrigger can work with predefined set of nodes (if the list is empty, all nodes are taken into account).
• Correct work of tabbing in WidgetEditText.
• Simple syntax highlight in built-in text editor.
• New ALIGN_BACKGROUND flag for separating widgets by rendering order (work only for WidgetVBox).
• WidgetManipulator takes care about step of snap.
• New icons in UnigineEditor.
• Fixed annoying 'invalid operation' error in OpenGL.
• Snap to grid for moving and rotating objects (set grid step in 'Tools' window).

Node properties is a general purpose mechanism for adding some custom properties to objects (like game-specific parameters and so on), they can be set per-surface. Properties set can be flexibly adjusted for a project, see data/core/properties/unigine.prop as an example, the system is very similar to our visual materials. Use 'o' hotkey to access properties window in UnigineEditor.

Fixed bugs:

• More accurate parallax mapping on 'high' profile.
• Fixed ObjectWater polygons doubling after cloning.
• Fixed match() for patterns with '*'.
• Fixed call of user class methods with arguments in UnigineScript.
• Correct work of garbage collector with inherited classes in UnigineScript.
• Correct work of 'hidden' flag for all types of GUI containers.
• No more artifacts of ObjectWater in underwater mode.
• Fixed handling of '(' ')' '{' '}' symbols in UnigineScript.
• Fixed node cloning dialog in UnigineEditor.

New features: