Chris's Development Blog

Blade3D Beta2 is here!

chris@digini.com — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 04:31:00 GMT

Hi Everyone,

We're very excited to annouce the first release of Blade3D Beta 2.

This build includes over 15 major new features and more than 50 improvements and bug fixes. These include single click deployment to Xbox 360 and Windows (for XNA Creators Club members), Sott Shadow support, drag and drop Material Palette, character controller and greatly improved performance. Please check the release notes to see all the awesome changes.

Enjoy!

Blade3D Team

New Features

New Xbox 360 compatible runtime
Direct deployment to Windows/Xbox 360 targets
New Shadow system with PCF/VSSM
New Drag/Drop material palette
New character controller with support for walk, jump, etc
New Fresnel reflective shader
New gesture recognition operator
New two tone metallic flake Car Paint shader
New pulse train generator operator
New "raise event" macro
New .XSI model importer
Ability to set RenderStates per material
Ability to toggle wireframe on entire viewport
Automatically set skybox cube maps on materials with : Environment semantic.
New Blade3D.Windows.Forms compatible scene control and sample application
New textures

Improvements

LensShaders have a control texture for effect intensity
All organic shaders now are fully unified with lighting
Improved simple terrain performance
Improved Phong Specular shader
Assets can now have nested folders
Allow multiple water instances per scene
Allow axis aligned bbox precision on trigger volumes instead of just sphere
Allow macros to be grouped in sub-categories
Improved lighting defaults
Improved perf for water
Light priority is now configurable
Switch to abstract file system that can run from .Zip files etc
Remove hard coded directional light - now regular scene item
Update shaders to be compatible with buggy Xbox 360 HLSL
Automatically swizzle textures for big-endian targets
Automatic startup screen generation for deployed projects
Macros can now be drag/dropped
Atmosphere integrated as unified light
Can now specify a material per texture for BSP maps
Added ability to disable Axis arrows in scene
Major improvements in material system performance
Added property help to all shader parameters
Fix broken properties on some shaders
Add texture alpha support to all shaders
Improved HitTest performance
Added semantics to allow slider control for shader properties
Scrub editors now accelerate proportionally with mouse distance
Allow >65k vertices during model import
Improved FBX import
Skybox now drawn as single mesh to reduce seams
Can now change renderstates on materials
Support for double sided materials (reqiored for FBX import)
LensShaders can now have alpha mask textures similar to Photoshop
Fix many bugs in model import for all model types
Lens Shaders no long affect selection boxes.
Big improvments to the gaussian blur shader

Bug Fixes

Fixed stretchrect to stop erasing the alpha channel
Fix for scripts getting run too often
Fix for missing textures during Quake 3 map import
Fix issue with angle editor on toolbar
Fix crash when empty string entered in some editors
Fix bug preventing some modules being exported
Fix broken enum support in graph runtime
Fix animation queueing
Handle colors with 0 alpha in color picker
Clamp GUI control zoom so it does not wrap
Fix model materials not being set
Remove some obsolete properties from certain objects
Fix crash when water depth material was unbound
Fix bug in radial blur shader
Rename EventMacro to PropertyChangeMacro
Fix so shader does not compile when using find/replace dialog
Fix many viewport issues
Prevent selection on Atmosphere

Known Issues

Projected Texture Lights not working on Xbox 360 (Shader Compatibility Issue)
Projected Cubemap Lights not working on Xbox 360 (Shader Compatibility Issue)
Reflective/Refractive Water issues on Xbox 360 (Cause TBD)
Script not working on Xbox 360 (Not yet implemented)
Sound not working on Xbox 360 (Not yet implemented)
Bounding box issue in model import for static models
Selection problem due to new model space hit testing
Connectors on GraphView show as black due to a bug with the material system
When deploying Font textures are not detected as dependencies and have to be manually added

Blade3D Beta2 ETA

chris@digini.com — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:02:00 GMT

Hello,

I just want to give you a heads up that we are just building the final build of Blade3D Beta 2 and expect it to be released sometime in the next couple of hours.

Yes, you heard it right Beta 2 - which means it has Xbox 360 deployment!

Also in this build is a very easy to Windows Forms compatibility layer that lets you embed Blade3D scenes into any .Net application.

-chris

Gamefest Report

chris@digini.com — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:35:00 GMT

Hi everyone,

First I'd like to apologize on behalf of the whole team for not being active on the forums for the last few weeks. As you probably gathered we had a stand at Gamefest this year and were very busy getting things organized for the show.

Gamefest was a wonderful success for us and everyone we talked to loved what we are doing.

Our booth was in an excellent location right next to the main Microsoft stand. We showed Blade3D to attendees including the press and many major game studios. Everyone who we showed the product to was very impressed and excited at how much Blade3D has to offer.

Thanks to all of you who dropped by our booth to say hello and check out Blade3D.

More good news...

Since our last public drop there has been an amazing amount of new functionality added.

1. Xbox 360 Support

The Blade3D runtime is now fully compatible with the Xbox 360. We are very pleased with the performance even though we have not yet begun any perf tuning specific to this platform.

2. Improvements

New animated character controller, soft shadow support with full gallery support, support for assets loading from compressed zip files, support for models with greater than 65K vertices, support for .XSI model format, support for big-endian platforms, terrain performance, support for nested asset folders, multiple water instances per scene, copy/Paste material and material swatches, improved speed of graph runtime.

3. Deployment

Blade3D now supports single-click deployment to both Windows and the Xbox 360 (for XNA Creators Club members). All you need to do is to select the platform from a drop down and click Run! Your project is packaged, sent to the chosen device and executed. A screenshot is also automatically generated for your game if you don't supply your own splash screen, and is displayed while it is being loaded.

We're going to release the new build for you as soon as we can. There is a bit of work to do to make it "drop ready" but we're hoping to release it by the end of next week.

Thank you again for your patience and support while we were preparing for this critical show. The next year is going to be an amazing one for Blade3D and the community!

Blade3D Team

Blade3D Build 2212 is now available

chris@digini.com — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 06:08:00 GMT

Hello Everyone,

The Blade3D team is very happy to announce build 2212.
Here is the list of additions, improvements and bug fixes that you will find in this build.
The most important thing to note is that apart from a few minor work items still to be done, this build contains the necessary changes to allow us to deploy the Blade3D runtime on the Xbox 360. We will be finalizing the deployment features in upcoming builds.

Enjoy!

Team Blade3D

New Texture System
===============
Blade3D now uses the VTF (Valve Texture Format) as its native texture file format
Blade3D can import the following texture types using the new “Import Texture” feature
Plain 2D Textures, Animated Textures
Cube Maps, Cube Map from Individual Faces
3D Volume Textures, Volume Textures from Individual Slices
Texture import supports the following source texture formats
PNG, TGA, JPG, BMP, DDS and PSD
Import Options provide the ability to
Automatically generate Normal Maps
Automatically generate Mip Maps
Resize the source texture
Convert to many different texture formats including luminance and floating point formats
High performance texture compression via custom GPU based DXT compressor

Visual Programming System
====================
Connections between operators now automatically convert between interchangeable types
(This eliminates the need to add type conversion operators in most cases)
Added labels to operator inputs to show the input type

Model Import System
================
Added preliminary support for FBX model format
All importers have been updated with the latest bug fixes

Environmental Effects
================
New “Atmosphere” scene item
Moving Sun simulation using a sky dome
Simulates Rayleigh and Mie atmostpheric scattering effects
Automatic calculation of Sun position and atmospheric color based on time of day
Provides ability to define length of Game Day
Sky box now renders directly from cube map

Development Environment
===================
New World Axis indicator arrows to the bottom-left of the screen
New “Errors” window to improve viewing and navigation of Script and HLSL errors
Added automatic project backup (every 10 minutes)
You can now add custom folders in the Effects and Textures nodes of the Object Browser
When posting a snapshot you may specify a custom Watermark image to overlay on the snapshot
All organic shader effects now work with animated models
Individual Material Techniques can now be set from the Property Grid
You can now define “InitProperty” specifiers on user defined types
Provided the ability to add “Constructors” and “Destructors” to user defined types
Improved performance and layout of toolbar galleries (materials/textures etc)
Create material menu is now categorized
Updated the “BringToCamera” and “FocusOnObject” tools to improve usability

Bug Fixes
=======
Fix exception when moving the mouse over the Script or HLSL editors
Fix exception in curve editor
Handle exceptions when loading plugins/Operators and update exclusion list
Fix for mouse and keyboards events not firing on some objects
Fix for macros not working
Fix Vector3MultiplyFloat input name.
Fix for Vector4 slider editors
Fix for object instances not being deleted
Fixed problems caused when renaming HLSL effects
Fixed document dirty flag not being set in HLSL/Script editors after Undo/Redo
Fix Gaussian Blur Lens Shader
Fixed camera bug offsetting floor grid (reset world matrix).
Graph should have Delete action
Make many materials work as lens shaders
Delete orphaned material definitions when deleting an HLSL effect

Build 2086 is now available!

chris@digini.com — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 16:08:00 GMT

Hi Everyone,

We're happy to announce the "Father's Day" release of Blade3D. This build includes a brand new lighting system, some nice additions to the IDE and major performance tuning for BSP maps and the material system.

The new lighting system now supports 5 light types. Point light for light in all directions, directional light for light In a particular direction, and spot lights for light in a specific direction with a cone. The final two lights types are projected texture lights. Projected texture light projects a texture onto the scene in a specific direction, while projected cube texture light projects a texture in all directions, using a cube map.

To use the new lights all you have to do is add them to your scene, if a scene item is within range (each light has a range property), it will be lit by the light, when using a Lighting material.

Blade3D has no upper limit for the number of lights in the scene. With shader model 3.0, each object can be lit by 4 lights of each type, with up to 20 per object. With shader model 2.0, each object can be lit by 2 lights of each type, with up to 10 per object.

Enjoy!
Blade3D Team

Light manager for dynamic lighting, with:

Point Lights
Directional Lights
Spot Lights
Projected Texture Lights
Projected CubeTexture Lights

for

VertexLit
PixelLit
Blinn
Phong
LightMappedBlinn

Fix for tangents in Blinn and Pong effects.
Allow particle rotation.
Fixed material property override problem with loading models.
Fix for the force controllers not being shown for Active Rigid Body.
Merged skinning and non skinning effects into one.
New widgets for light objects
Effects now compiled in one place (edtor).
Effect defines for shader model.
Compiling effects in highest available profile.
New Extensibility support.
Added a TimedLerp which takes a property id as parameter.
Tab and TabBack for editors.
New release notes and error message dialogs.
Fix for color picker.

Additions to the Toolbars allow quick editing of the more commonly accessed properties. These include:
New toolbar controls such as sliders, scrub editors and textboxes
New Lighting panel.
Transform panel now contains controls to modify object transform .
Added global scene options on the Scene panel.
Insert Camera from toolbar.
Improved toolbar color pickers to reflect the selected color.

Support for binary HLSL files which are compiled in the IDE.
Effects are now structured into categories such as Image Processing, Environmental, Organics and more.
Added new Kaleidoscope, ElectroStatic Particle and Organic effects .
Effects now use multiple lighting passes.
Added support for multiple techniques in effects.
Performance improvements for material system.
Performance improvements for BSP maps.
Fix for BSP Curve rendering.
Add BSP to scene on import.
Fixed spatial LookAt.
Added LookAtSpeed property to control how reactive the LookAt constraint is.
Improved scene grid.
Added TimedLerp() for scripting.
Preserve line numbers in script and hlsl for easier code navigation.
Fix package importer to work with new schema layout for effects.
Fix some selection issues.
Fix bug in static mesh drawing code causing model positions to not be updated.
Added SculptedPrim.
Fixed selection material when selecting model mesh parts or materials.

Changes to Transform properties of spatial items, now split into two parts,
LocalTransform and WorldTransform with sub properties.
Added Blade3DLogo sample texture (default for projective texture lights).
Now save effect in the HLSLEditor with F12 (like script( instead of on a timer.
Splash screen progress bar.
Fix for normal maps getting overridden to a default texture.
Fix for Camera's overwriting each others frustum planes.

Problems Running Blade3D

chris@digini.com — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 01:16:00 GMT

It has come to our attention that some people are having problems running Blade3D. If you are having these problems please could you try instaling the DirectX End User Runtime here.

Do not be fooled into thinking you already have DX9.0c since Microsoft frequently updates the DirectX runtime making your installed version obsolete. Also please make sure you install from the link I have provided since there is also another DirectX runtime setup that is floating around on the Microsoft site that does not work correctly on Windows Vista.

We are investigating how best to deal with the problem since adding this 48MB setup to our own setup is somewhat overkill. I should also point out that other people who are interested in redistributing the XNA framework are having similar issues and a bug has been filed with Microsoft relating to this. Hopefully at some point Microsoft can provide a single merge module that we can integrate into our setup that contains the XNA framework and any DirectX dependencies that they require. You can see more on the topic here, here and here.

In the next build Blade3D will try and identify these other missing dependencies on startup and at least display a message as to where you should go to get the runtime.

Blade3D Build 1955 Released

chris@digini.com — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 23:07:00 GMT

Good Afternoon,

We have made some fixes in response to problems we found while working on the Wiki content and community feedback. Most of the changes are fairly minor and are not be breaking changes.

Enjoy!
Blade3D Team

Changelist

Allow duplicating macros
GUI Controls are not locked by default
Drop primitives on terrain during creating
Transform model on insert
Transform model on setting the reference to a model instance
If there are no Sprite Areas don't bother building it
Fix for node position not being correct on Drop or on Create from the context menu
Prevent viewport selection when graph is active
Fixed TextureView not setting CullMode back
Fixed bloom shader so it does not offset over iterations.
Added texel offset to align to pixels (optional, i.e not on stretchrect).
Fixed bloom not using material properties in the MaterialInfo tab properly.
Add Dizzy effect and default lens shader
Fix selection problems when there are nulls in the selection
Bounding boxes track animated models
Fix problems with material shadow properties during model import
Fix crash if effect is null
Fix material system so that empty shaders still create MaterialDefinitions
(Fixes import of Organics shader pack and more)

Blade3D Build 1.0.01946 Released

chris@digini.com — Mon, 28 May 2007 11:21:00 GMT

Hello,

Based on your very helpful feedback and bug reports we have fixed a number of lingering issues. We hope that this build will provide a solid basis for the tutorials and how-to's that we will be adding to the Wiki over the next week.

If you are in the US - Have a great Memorial Day!
Blade3D Team

Changelist

Reworked Blinn and Phong effects (fixed a lot of lighting issues).
Removed duplicate skinned phong effect.
Reorientated scene Z arrows to forward.
Output debug string to the output window for HLSL errors .
Don't pop up the Add Animation Graph is there are no animations .
Removed duplicate Delete menu item.
Removed some menu items that were inappropriate on certain items.
The spatial shortcut keys are now not active when using the script/hlsl editors.
Changed "Primitives" to Geometric Primitives in the toolbar.
Double clicking package files now imports the package.
Bug report dialog does not accept if you press enter.
Fixed all texture generators (Normal Map, Invert etc).
Generated textures are now created in MyModule/Textures.
HLSL Editor now compiles with optimizations first, so default materials should always compile.
Effects now using retail compile by default.
Materials now always use the correct defaults.
Fixed SkinnedSelection for when model parts/materials are selected.
Model parts/materials now use the correct texture when flashing red.
Default GUI Progress bar is now a more convenient shape.
Changed default collide penalty.
Hide texture generator material properties where applicable.
Blinn now the default material for models on shader model 3.0 cards.
Correctly update world transform properties when object SRT changes.
Changed update balloon message.

Build 1919 Released!

chris@digini.com — Sat, 26 May 2007 07:30:00 GMT

Hi Everyone,

We're very happy to announce the new build of Blade3D. This build includes many new features, useability and performance improvements as well as bug fixes.

Enjoy!
Blade3D Team

Here is the change list for build 1919:

Added new Macro feature that makes adding game logic such as playing a random animation or sound very simple.

These new macros include:
Random Macro
Compound Macro
Set Value Macro
PlaySound Macro
PlayAnimation Macro

Additionally we provide a new way to trigger macros from any property change using the "Macro Event Trigger"

Added various Trigger Volumes to trigger actions and events when objects are within a specified range.

These include:
Macro Trigger Volume
Sound Trigger Volume
Graph Trigger Volume
Animation Trigger Volume

New sound effect system with the following standard effects:
Chorus
Compressor
Distortion
Echo
Reverb
Wave Reverb
Gargle
Flanger
Parametric Equalizer

New scene manipulation tools for rapid scene building:
Focus on object
Bring to camera
Drop on terrain
Drop to ground
Make upright
Duplicate Around
Duplicate Grid
Duplicate SRT

Allow moving scene items without having to enter translation mode
Added Uniform Scaling of scene items using the mouse wheel
Added per-triangle hit testing for models and animated models

Added the concept of Constraints (implemented via logic diagrams).
These provide a way to run code if the scale, rotation or translation of a scene item changes.
We provide a standard "ConstrainToTerrain" operator (with option to orient objects to the terrain normals).
Additionally, a Constraint Graph is automatically created when adding terrain to the scene.

Huge performance improvements in Material System, Animation and Scene Graph

New Blinn and Blinn Skinning Effects
Standard HLSL effect annotations "UIHidden" and "ResourceName" now supported
New EffectMaskTextureSemantic
All lens shaders now have effect mask texture property
Shaders have been modified to use the texture intensity to control their effect

Added References Panel to show all objects which refer to the selected object
Show object size on status bar
Show Availability of new builds on the status bar
Added indicator (orange box) for properties with non-default values
Added support for Proxy Authentication during login process

Moved to XNA Framework Version 1.1
XNA Framework installation during first run

Fixed Phong normal mapping
Fix for some mouse events not firing for GUI elements
Fixed macros and scripts not having a unique name when created
Fixed model bounding box bugs
Fixed crash when loading old modules

Chris's Development Blog

Blade3D Beta2 is here!

Blade3D Beta2 ETA

Gamefest Report

Blade3D Build 2212 is now available

Build 2086 is now available!

Problems Running Blade3D

Blade3D Build 1955 Released

More Wiki Content Added

Blade3D Build 1.0.01946 Released

Build 1919 Released!