nGENE Tech

nGENE Tech for C#

2010-06-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

I'm really excited to announce that thanks to Amer Koleci nGENE Tech is now available for the SlimDX and C#. I hope that in future it will be possible to use it with XNA and thus make games for XBox and Windows Phone 7.

You can download it from here, here (RARed version) or get current version from SVN (SVN version misses media files). It comes with a simple demo. Hope you like it!

For using it you will also need SlimDX runtime.

Also be sure to check new nGENE Tech 0.1.7.0 from the repository.

nGENE Tech 0.1.6.4

2010-04-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

Since RC1 release a few weeks back I fixed a lot of stuff (special thanks to David, Jose and Zoran here for pointing this bugs out) and added a few smaller things including eg.:

[FIX] Soft particles are now a bit softer
[FIX] Fixes in HDR (regarding luminance computing)
[FIX] MeshLoadPolicyCollada is now working for static collada meshes
[FIX] Fixed bugs in picking
[ADD] Collision notifications for character controller/scene and character controller/character controller collisions
[ADD] Particle deflectors (planes deflecting particles). Call ParticleEmitter::addDeflector(const PARTICLE_DEFLECTOR& _deflector) to add new deflector to the emitter
[ADD] Framework::drawAxisRods() method drawing object's coordinate system axes
[ADD] PrefabCylinder - cylinder
[ADD] PrefabPyramid - pyramid
[ADD] PrefabArrow - arrow
[ADD] PrefabAxisRods - 3 orthogonal axes pointing representing coordinate space
[ADD] Torus prefab - PrefabTorus class
[ADD] Framework::pick(float _x, float _y, bool _perTriangle) - takes additional optional (false by default) _perTriangle argument. Setting it to true will make picking triangle accurate
[ADD] All prefabs parameters can be now changed on run-time - not only on creation

BTW always up to date release notes are available here.

nGENE Tech SDK 0.1.6

2010-03-22T02:45:00.000-07:00

After quite a long time there is another SDK distribution of nGENE - this time coming with all (I hope) required redistributables so there shouldn't be as many crashes as previously :) . It contains binaries, samples, tutorials, class reference and full source code.

Although it is still RC1 version, the code will be subject to only small changes. The most of the bugs I predict could be related to missing dlls or media files, not working shortcuts creation in the installer and stuff like that.

There's no point in listing changes since version 0.1 as this list would be just too long - almost everything have changed since then.

The download is available here.

I also hope to post some nice news about nGENE soon.

nGENE update... at last

2010-03-03T03:14:00.001-08:00

Ok, I've just committed to the SVN repository. Current version is 0.1.5 and you can download it from trunk or from this address:

http://svn2.assembla.com/svn/ngene/tags/version-0.1.5

The list of changes is pretty long... a lot of fixes and improvements. The biggest addition is definitely animation system with skeletal animation and animation blending. It is still buggy and code is still ugly (cleaning it takes much more time than anticipated) but I will work hard on it starting from next week. From next week I will also start to work on more advanced animation techniques like ragdoll and inverse kinematics.

Also SDK (with installer, exes and ready to use dlls) will be made available in two weeks time (I hope to release it next weekend but who knows what will happen during the week...).

WARNING: if you use Visual Studio 2008 or newer you have to open project for VS 2005. This is because at my current computer I have no VS 2008/2010 installed... I will fix it soon.

Lightnings and render techniques

2009-10-04T01:27:00.000-07:00

Yet another update:

* Introduction of material techniques
* Lightning bolt effect
* Surfaces can now custom shadow material instead of default. Just add technique with the name "shadow" to the base surface material (see palm_bark or palm_leaf in default.lib for example)

* [fix] Vegetation shadows
* [fix] Fixed bug with display modes
* [fix] Bounding boxes of some objects were invalid

* [example] Lightning bolt

The most important thing is the first point i.e. material techniques. Now material doesn't directly contain RenderPass objects but instead RenderTechnique's (similar to DX FXs or OGRE for instance). For now technique is just a simple object but I plan to use it for some materials LOD later on and yet it helped me to solve some problem with shadows casted by objects animated using vertex shaders (see palm_bark material for the example of custom shadowing routine).

By default the first technique is set as active (i.e. one used in rendering) but you can change it using Material::setActiveRenderTechnqiue(RenderTechnique* _technique) or providing index.

There are besides some fixes of course and addition of new example (lightning bolts) and new effect lightnings. You can see it in action below:

and below:

There are still some tweaks to do but in general it is working ok. You can read about the algorithm on my blog. I also recently provided detailed description of Virtual File System there.

A lot of changes

2009-09-24T07:01:00.001-07:00

- very basic sound support (using FMOD but it is sufficient to provide simple wrapper to use something else)
- it is now possible to listen to collision events
- night vision effect
- improved bump mapping effects
- added some mixing comments

- [fix] it is no longer possible to add two child nodes with same name
- [fix] factories are no longer registered in enumerators in constructors... that was just foolish!
- [fix] engine is started after displaying config window... not before
- [fix] static shadows fix
- [fix] fixed bug in thermal vision effect
- [fix] many minor bug fixes

- [example] user can now control SSAO effect in SSAO sample (for me radius ~0.2 and range ~50.0 looks best)
- [example] sound example presenting use of much more than 3D sounds... check it for some interesting nGENE features :)

Virtual File System support

2009-09-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

From now on nGENE Tech has Virtual File System built-in. To ease building resource files there is provided a command line tool named ArchiveBuilder.exe (you will find it in the nGENE/bin/release folder) which typical usage is as follows:

Usage: archivebuilder [directory] [target file] [-c OPTIONAL compression]

You can also build archives from within code (see the VFS example for details on how to do that).

VFS supports compression (using Burrows-Wheeler Transform + Move-To-Front + Run-Length Encoding + Huffman Coding algorithms) and is pretty transparent for the programmer. See this post on nGENE forums or the VFS example for more details and example of usage.

Besides to make debugging a bit easier I changed configuration of nGENE demos.

Another change is that you can now follow nGENE improvements on Twitter (see widget on this page).

New demo and tutorial

2009-09-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

New demo (presenting god rays in nGENE) and new tutorial (about joints) are available. There is a movie from the first one:

I hope you like it.

Small fixes and improvements

2009-09-10T12:32:00.000-07:00

This time, screenshots only. Still far away from ok but believe me the changes and fixes are numerous :)

Bug fixes and tech demo update

2009-09-09T11:06:00.000-07:00

Last two weeks I spent mainly on improving existing features and fixing various bugs. Here is how updated nGENE Tech Demo looks now. Probably I'll use it once again in the future to make another trailer but it is still not the time to do this.

As you can see grass rendering has been slightly improved. It is also much more efficient now as I wrote on my devlog. To makie it look this way I suggest turning SSAO on (F7 by default).

Besides I improved several things regarding shadows and finished working on God rays (they contained a nasty artifact).

A lot of changes and bug fixes

2009-08-28T04:27:00.000-07:00

I promised to commit to SVN repository more frequently now and it seems I manage to do it. In the last few days quite a lot of changes (more than 10 commits!!!) have been made:

many bug fixes related to shadows rendering (there were some issues with both directional and point lights) and some general improvements regarding them (e.g. you can change shadow density and shadow resolution on a per light basis),
light-shafts (God rays) are working almost properly,
added all missing files,
I'm busy working on GUI,
and much more...

Below you can see light-shafts in action:

How they are actually done you can read on my personal devlog.

There is also Google Group dedicated to making nGENE Tech a better engine. The idea, originally by Biovf from the forums, is to separate talks about contributing from talks about using nGENE. Here is the link.

nGENE Tech update

2009-08-22T01:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finally made commit to the SVN repository. As I reconfigured my working environment to make it easier to work, from now on they will be much more frequent (soon also branches will be added in the repo). Even on a daily basis.

Update includes many general improvements (even tech demo has been slightly improved), bug fixes and some new features too of course.

nGENE Tech Toolset download

2009-06-13T10:29:00.001-07:00

I finally managed to finish some simple version of the nGENE Tech Toolset. See it in action below:

You can download it here.

Article about nGENE water on Gamedev.net

2009-06-05T00:15:00.000-07:00

My article about water rendering in screen-space is finally available on Gamedev.net! I hope you like it and wait for your comments on the matter. I tried to describe everything as I did it in nGENE Tech. The lecture which I had on the IGK'2009 (Polish Game Developers Conference) was chosen the best presentation of the conference edition. You can also view presentation from IGK (in English - I translated it) here.

As for the nGENE Toolset and other updates - sorry for one more delay in releasing it... I'm pretty busy with the exams on the university... hope you understand that. I'll release it ASAP.

nGENE Tech class reference

2009-05-14T11:47:00.001-07:00

As many people claimed I just submitted nGENE Tech - class reference, i.e. some form of documentation. You can dowload it here. It is created using doxygen and contains following elements:

list and descriptions of all of the nGENE classes and the graphs presenting relations between different classes (inheritance, collaboration and so on)
list and descriptions of the methods, functions, etc.
extracts from source code when necessary

I know that it's not the best documentation possible but together with samples and tutorials you should be able to get some understanding of nGENE Tech.

// EDIT: I'll try soon to commit a patch by "Enzi" significantly improving performance of Preetham haze (both pixel shader and CPU part).

My personal blog started

2009-05-12T06:12:00.000-07:00

Some of you might be interested in that I have personal blog which I started recently:

http://wtomandev.blogspot.com/

There I write more about algorithms, techniques and methods I use in daily nGENE Tech development and about various other projects and programming related things (agile development for instance, my thoughts about gaming and games).

Small update

2009-05-05T04:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I commited to the production repository. This time changes involve mainly small fixes and additions somewhat related to the toolset. Next time there should finally be animation.

nGENE Tech Toolset

2009-04-24T05:23:00.001-07:00

At first I planned to release nGENE Tech world editor (i.e. nGENE Tech Toolset) by the end of March, later by the end of April. Unfortunately it seems editor will be available no sooner than in May. Hower, I hope that waiting will be really worth it.

Underneath is a movie from youtube presenting current internal release:

nGENE Tech Demo and presentation about water - download

2009-04-01T08:37:00.000-07:00

As promised a while back I submitted today nGENE Tech Tropical Island demo. You can download it here. I'm aware that it is a bit buggy and performance is pretty low but you can finally see it in action. Also soon updated executable will be available and it'll speed up things a bit (up to 3x times) as I'm heavily profiling and optimizing right now.

Note: PhysX system software is required!

Note 2: It takes some time to load level. Be patient.

Also as I recently had lecture about my highly praised water technique during IGK'2009 conference (Polish Game Developers Conference) I decided to translate presentation to English and it can be downloaded here.

Tropical Island - tech demo trailer

2009-03-18T08:37:00.001-07:00

Just short update this time. Trailer from nGENE Tech engine tech demo is available:

Demo itself will be available for download on 1st April 2009.

Update

2009-03-09T09:59:00.001-07:00

Even though I claimed no update will be available before 20th March, I was asked to fix a few bugs and so here is new version in the repository. Here is list of changes:

Added serialization (work in progress)
Improved shadows from directional lights
Oct-tree partitioner
Performance fixes
Many bug fixes
Improved grass, water, sky and clouds
Added force field
Added crash dump files
Some GUI bugs were fixed
Matrix3x3 addition
Working on DirectX 10.1 renderer
HDR!!!
New samples: Tornado, NPR, SSAO and SwayingPalm

Long time no info

2009-03-02T01:57:00.000-08:00

I know that there is no info recently. It doesn't mean that I'm not working hard on nGENE Tech though.

Next update will be no sooner than on 20th March. It's due to a few reasons:

actual working copy contains some bugs I want to eliminate before commiting code to the production repository
I'm busy working on tech demo I'll use as a proof-of-concept on Polish Game Developers Conference.

But here are some screenshots to keep you waiting and interested in the project:

It should be clear that the improvement is pretty huge. Hardly any file has remain unchanged since last SVN commit. As there is great interest in a way I achieved such a realistic water, paper on the subject will be available on it in English in about two weeks or so.

Next update will also feature few new demos and samples:

Tornado - presenting how to make use of force fields
NPR - presenting 2D rendering and NPR
Volcanic Island - pretty complex tech demo featuring many advanced techniques of nGENE

Water, bug fixes and plans for 0.1.1 release

2009-01-20T05:14:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of this month I published a screenshot of water at very early development stage. Recently I published updated screenshots on many gamedev portals and thus nGENE Tech got more attention. Without further ado some pictures:

Sorry for the trees, the scene was created in a few minutes only. But I think you get the general idea. Apart from being realisting (all this extinctions, reflections, refractions, foam, specular) the water effect is very flexible, you can even create muddy Missipi river or something like that (I made it but didn't take screenshot - I will post it as soon as possible).

A list of changes is a lot longer though:

Finished water and reflection stage
Added console window (not very pretty as GUI still is not finished)
Sorted some small problems with headers inclusion
Many bug fixes
Many new constants and functions (for colours, matrices, maths and so on)
Removed NodeObject class - it was not really used so you shouldn't miss it
Fixed serious bug with disappearing particle emitters - particles were disappearing, I hope it's resolved for ever
Added defines for shaders
Removed some todos from code (by sorting them out, not removing comments)
Added support for Euler angles rotation
Fixed post-process materials sorting (sometimes material could be accidentaly applied in a wrong way)
Added pixelize effect
Binaries are now included in SVN repository (apart from too large lib files)
2 new tutorials (terrain and scripting)

Also in the next few months (or maybe weeks, it depends on a few factors) version 0.1.1 will be released. It will feature:

HDR
Basic animation (skeletal and morphing)
Saving and loading of the scene, both in .xml and in binary format
Virtual File System to create archives
Optimized sky and grass rendering
Basic world editor
GUI

You can think of it as of first serious version to be used for games. By the time I will also publish a larger demo I'm currently designing.

First update this year

2009-01-02T04:03:00.000-08:00

Last two months I was rather short of time and therefore no updates for nGENE Tech were available. However, I'm not abandoning this project and so in last few days I coded/fixed few things and I am making them available to you. The list of changes include:

Some graphical bug fixes
Started work on vehicles physics
More exports for lua
Added TPP Camera (not very sophisticated but it works for me)
Added Fur effect (creating using regular fins and shells technique)
Working on water and reflections (using some cool technique for displacing water)
Added samples folder (containing Fur sample) to SVN
Added media folder (containing material libraries, shaders, meshes and textures) to SVN
Removed shaders folder (media used instead) from SVN
Created solutions and projects for Visual Studio 2008 - I'd like to thank J. Hughes for helping me with this (I had to deal with some kind of strange behaviour while trying to compile nGENE against VC++ 2008 compiler)

Also underneath are 2 screenshots from current nGENE release:

Update: Lua and render stages

2008-10-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

I wasn't writing for a quite long period of time. Even though I have not much free time recently as I am looking for a job in the industry (these interviews and test tasks take time you know) I made quite a few improvements in the nGENE. These include:

Render stages used extensively - render stages are stages of rendering like eg. alpha rendering, post-processing and so on. Each render stage processes and renders geometry in a different manner and so they are separate. This concept fits nicely into nGENE deferred renderer and makes it even more flexible.
3D Picking - the great miss of 0.1 version was lack of support for object picking. Now it works.
Shader semantics as scripts - shader semantics had to be hardcoded in the engine. Now you can use scripting capabilities to make them external to engine code. However in sake of efficiency default ones are still hardcoded.
Spot light - lack of spot lights was another problem. Now nGENE supports them as well.
Lua scripting - you can now add Lua scripts to your demos.
Capsule-shaped rigid bodies
Working on GUI - a lot of code written. Still a lot to do.
Working on HDR

To get these additions download current release from http://svn2.assembla.com/svn/ngene.

Next time I hope to have GUI and HDR finished and start working on animations, serializations and better multi-threading support.

2 new tutorials

2008-09-15T05:47:00.000-07:00

Last week 2 new tutorials were published on http://ngene.wikidot.com/. They are about:

adding response to user input
basics of physics in nGENE.

However, if you want to follow them be sure to checkout svn repository as otherwise not everything might work in the same way. Be sure to check that site soon for next parts of the tutorial.

Also now I'm focusing mainly on GUI which will be fully functional in a few weeks I think.

nGENE Tech blog started

2008-09-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

After recent release of nGENE Tech 0.1 SDK I received quite a lot of feedback: both positive comments and suggestions what should be improved. However, before I'm really moving to work on 0.2 version which will feature this improvements and much much more, I'm starting this devlog.

This blog will contain information about new things appearing in the SDK:

major API changes,
new effects,
new tutorials/samples,
improvements of the documentation.

I also hope to post here information about projects using nGENE Tech.

For those of you who didn't heard about nGENE (what is quite possible) visit its official site or view official techdemo movie.

Underneath I also post a few images for the newcomers.