• Added access to collision contacts of Players.
• Fixed minor bug in UnigineScript with namespaces and user-defined classes.
• Refactored Actor system.
• LightSpot performance optimization.
• User classes in UnigineScript can be stored as keys in maps.
• Character class divided into Character, CharacterParticipant, and CharacterNpc.
• Fixed missing Windows SDK issue in install.py script.
• Updated reference manual (Console, UnigineScript library).

Current Unigine codebase statistics:

engine            6611 Kb  672 files  237312 lines
shaders           1148 Kb  288 files   41467 lines
scripts            162 Kb   15 files    5862 lines
editor            1221 Kb   96 files   42125 lines
tools              765 Kb   61 files   27704 lines
app main            62 Kb   28 files    2238 lines
app samples        238 Kb   62 files    9871 lines
build system        39 Kb   29 files    1770 lines
build scripts       59 Kb   91 files    1736 lines
docs scripts        30 Kb    7 files     963 lines
total            10339 Kb 1349 files  371048 lines

Happy New Year!

• Dedicated shaders for non-shadowed surfaces, huge speedup on high quality shader profile.
• Severe renaming of shader constants due to refactoring.
• Added set of functions for access to packed files (engine.filesystem.getNumUngPackageFiles and others).
• Per-node storing of properties and materials (use this feature carefully with materials because it can affect performance).
• More verbose scripts parser: filename for #warning and #error, added __FILE__ and __LINE__ defines, more informative asserts and breakpoints.
• Fixed PSD saving code.
• More samples with lights.

Artist news:

• New LightSpot object: very fast omni light without shadows, which can group by 4 sources and render at once.
• Adjustable diffuse scale for all light sources.
• Independent LOD system for lights, there are three new parameters: light distance (after this distance light starts fading), shadow distance (after this distance shadow starts fading), fade distance.
• The same LOD model for particle systems with visible and fade distances.
• Corrected ambient color calculation for water.
• LightCube R.I.P., LightOmni now can be modulated by a cubemap, if needed.
• ObjectMeshMorph support removed.
• Fixed lack of accuracy in color dialog (HSV colorspace).
• Adjustable background color of the scene (useful for blue/green screen composing systems).
• Bokeh filter, available in DirectX10 and OpenGL with geometry shaders (it can be turned on by "render_dof 2 && render_restart" console command).

Bokeh filter is disscussed in blogs for a while, for example in Vincent Scheib's one, "Beautiful Pixels". Here are examples of Bokeh filter usage in Unigine:

Ordinary DoF	Bokeh filter
Ordinary DoF	Bokeh filter

That's how multiple LightSpots can improve a look of the scene, where it's hard to use that many LightOmni:

LightSpot disabled	LightSpot enabled
LightSpot disabled	LightSpot enabled

Resulting image quality of LightSpot + lightmaps mixture is very good for night modes, especially taking into the account nice performance (the screenshot is taken from an unnounced Unigine-based game, developing by our content department):

We're also pleased to note that two more game developers have joined our crew, Alexey "FadeToBlack" Egorov (developer) and Stanislav "brrrrr" Zagniy (3D artist), welcome aboard! They shipped a funny game "Sumotoha" recently and now are working on our internal projects.

• OpenAL-based (with EFX extensions) sound module is done.
• Sound renderer can handle virtually unlimited number of sound sources with occlusion and supports single and multiple reverberation zones.
• More robust loading of WAV files.
• Updated sound samples.
• Shader constants s_ilight_radius and s_ilight_shadow_radius are renamed into s_light_iradius and s_light_shadow_iradius.
• Render speedup due to more effective shader caching.
• Fixed rare flickering of transparent surfaces.
• Fixed bug with recursive call of script functions through C++ API.
• Added support of operator== and operator!= for user classes in UnigineScript.
• Added data/core/scripts/math.h to simplify 3D math works.
• New character system with adjustable camera presets, see data/core/scripts/character.h and "actor_04" sample.
• Updated reference manual.

Artist news:

• Faster and better Depth of Field implementation, you'll have to re-adjust settings a little.
• Box occluders.
• New random type of particle emitters.
• Visualization of sounds and reverberation zones.
• Independent tuning of specular power and specular scale for light sources.
• Even more settings in scattering, independent adjusting of ray/mie colors.
• Added color scale for reflections.

New version of OpenAL works well in Linux finally, so it's the right time to introduce our new sound system. There is also a pretty nice software implementation of OpenAL, which supports EFX extensions with a single reverberation zone.

By the way, recently AMD has issued a Unigine-related press-release: "Momentum for Microsoft(R) DirectX(R) 10.1 Grows with Major Game Titles, Next-Generation 3D Game Engines, and Windows(R) 7 API". There is also an interesting press-release regarding a Unigine-based project: First production stage of "Magus ex Machina" is completed:

PS: We have introduced a more affordable pricing scheme prior to January 1, 2009: indie developers can get a binary license starting with $4990 (or even just $1985 per month during 3 months). Take a look at "Licensing & Prices" page for more info. Moreover, full licenses are now with lifetime updates access.

PPS: Here is a photo of our new development studio's hall (yesterday TV reporters were here, so now one can see a story about Unigine via local TV network):

• Instancing of skinned and dynamic meshes.
• Much faster stereo rendering due to shadows optimization.
• Terrain speedup.
• Alpha-channel of specular textures is no longer responsible for reflections, it modulates specular power (glossiness) now.
• Square brush in TerrainEditor.
• Manager has been renamed to RenderManager.
• Adjustable number of splits for WorldLights.
• Fixed material preview bug.
• Fixed flickering of water reflections.
• Added initial angle and velocity scale for particles.
• Visualization of occulsion query primitives in UnigineEditor.
• Added terrain sample with unique texturing (terrain_01).
• Intersection masks, engine.world.getIntersection() functions get a mask as third parameter.
• New order of arguments for initialization: Engine::init(UNIGINE_VERSION,argc,argv,project,password), where 'password' is a password for encrypted file packs.
• Script and shader preprocessor accepts only angle brackets for #include directive.
• Warnings on unused variables and arrays in scripts.
• More verbose script interpreter output on errors, including file name and line number.

Some notes on instancing follows. There is a pool for 64 bones drawn in once, so there is a huge speedup on skinned meshes with simple skeletons. Cloned ObjectMeshDymamic are also instanced, they are drawn by 32 in a batch. Plus there are some performance improvements in instancing of static meshes.

Here are pics for today, particle-based fountains from our unannounced game:

Recent changes:

• New Auxiliary buffer (RGBA8) for different effects (e.g. you can store some object's masks there), it can be accessed from a postprocessing shader.
• Fixed HDR bug with some rare configurations.
• Pixel Shader Model 3.0 support is required now, so minimal supported hardware is ATI Radeon X1xxx / NVIDIA GeForce 6xxx from now on.
• No more is*Available() functions in the render.
• New console variable d3d10_render_use_alpha_test_level_1 for DirectX 10.1 AA.
• 2D_Array textures are supported by Image class now.
• Fixed terrain tool crashes on heavy meshes.
• Fixed terrain seams.
• Terrain speedup.
• Restored clipmap material with unique material for the terrain (see below).
• A new format of the terrain palette without borders, "palette" tool R.I.P.
• Fixed too dark clouds in DirectX 10.
• Correct detection of NVIDIA GTX 2xx series.
• NULL render, which doesn't render anything (useful for server purposes).
• New Terminal class to work with a text console.
• Removed FMOD and xaudio2 support.
• Translucence flag is splitted into two options for casting and receiving (it allows to avoid biases adjusting).
• Fixed translucency in shadowed regions.
• A function for setting composite material, default one is render_composite.
• Foliage noise is reverted back on low shader profile.
• Fixed enabling of disabled NodeRef's after reloading of a world.
• Access to the list of filesystem's files.

Due to multiple requests we've got back old terrain material (with unique mapping) in addition to a new one, so now one can choose between them. Thus now there are two different materials available (if there is a mask, so it's a splattering material, if there is a diffuse clipmap, but no mask, so it's a climpaped one).

• Faster sorting of render surfaces.
• New console functions: isVariable() and isCommand().
• No more HDR artifacts caused by the vignette.
• HDR calculation now performs with 4 frames delay.
• "physics_multithreaded" renamed to "physics_num_threads".
• All thread controls moved to EngineThreads, node update can work in multithreading mode, this can get a performance boost for particle systems.
• Number of supported callback arguments was increased to 8.
• Log file name can be specified by new "-engine_log" CLI option.
• Preview works only for images smaller than 4 Mb.
• Shaders has unique id's for easy sorting.
• Fixed selection of objects under terrain holes.
• Terrain holes disappear starting only from 4th LOD.
• Shadows from grass bushes.
• Support of GL_ARB_draw_instanced extension for better ATI compatibility in addition to existing GL_EXT_draw_instanced.
• No more stack errors while calling UnigineScript functions from the C++ API.
• Fixed major stack bug in UnigineScript.
• Update of benchmarking scripts.
• More tutorials on terrain creation.

We have also successfully integrated a third-party networking solution with Unigine, now we are performing different performance tests to ensure that it was a right choice of the technology. If the testing will be successfull, our customers have a chance to get networking ready out-of-the box even sooner than it was expected.

News of this week:

• Unloading of corresponding libraries (material and property ones) on the world unloading.
• Fixed triangle visualizer.
• Access to Body, Shape, and internal Dummy object of a PlayerActor.
• Correct linear interpolation for float point images.
• Fixed D3D9 crash if a mesh is missing.
• "float" validator supports inf/-inf now.
• No anisotropy for point-filtered textures in D3D9.
• Clamp sampling of grass textures.
• Fixed 3dsMax export script, now it works with filenames containing spaces.
• Hidden objects are skipped now during export from 3dsMax.
• New "palette" tool for terrain palette conversion.
• Minor fix of normals treating in ResourceEditor.
• Fixed terrain_base_texture_scale in UnigineEditor.
• All selected objects show their wireframe in multiple selection mode, if "mesh wireframe" option is on.
• Input filters for numeric fields in UnigineEditor.
• Two more articles in "How to..." section of the manual: "Create a Blank Terrain Based on a Mesh or a Height Map" and "Use Terrain Palettes".

What's new:

• Terrain optimizations.
• No performance drop if there is an invisible water in the scene.
• Occlusion queries for smart culling.
• Fixed overlighting of impostors and reflections.
• Alpha-testing + anti-aliasing now works correctly on DirectX 10.1 capable hardware.
• Added anti-aliasing support for scattering pass for DirectX 10 hardware.
• Removed Oren-Nayar shaders due to increased compexity of material system.
• Support of mouse scroll in EditLine and SpinBox widgets.
• LODs for particles (particle count reduces with the distance).
• Optimized light scattering.
• A special "destroy" method of containers in UnigineScript for memory cleanup without direct call of a destructor.
• Fixed Image crashes on float and half images in rare cases.
• Grass performance optimizations.
• Fixed crash of ResourceEditor if config file missing.
• UnigineEditor now works more intelligent with textures, there is no need in ImageDDS tool for ordinary cases.
• Scene validator in UnigineEditor.
• Added "How to..." section in the manual, which will be useful for artists.

You can see antialiasing improvement by yourself: No AA, 4xAA on DX 10.0, and 4xAA on DX 10.1.

We have launched a "1% per day" discount campaign: every single day before November, 30 gives you 1% discount on licensing Unigine (or you lose 1%, if you are waiting), so you can get a fully-capable license with 60% discount, if you are on time!

Recent changes:

• Splatting shaders for terrain with 16 texture slots available.
• Improved terrain editing in ResourceEditor (editing of splatting maps; automatical conversion of textures and clipmaps; 'g' hotkey resets pivot point, like in UnigineEditor).
• Fixed terrain tesselation.
• New "Clipmap" tool for converting textures into clipmaps and vice versa.
• Optimized polygon count in the sky.
• Image class can load multi-channel PSD textures as 3D ones.
• BASE particles renamed to BILLBOARD.
• No more PhongRim shading and color noise on vegetation with low shaders profile.
• Correct detection of AMD videocards in Linux.
• unigine.mat is splitted into several material libraries.
• Updated generator of project files for Visual Studio.
• Handling of NumLock, CapsLock and ScrollLock buttons.
• Support of streams (Stream is a base class for File and Socket now) for save/restore system.
• FileBase class renamed to Stream.
• Access to world nodes via C++ API.
• It's possible to transfer classes with inheritance through the C++ API now.
• Fixed bug with members of inherited classes in UnigineScript.
• More strict accordance to Vista UAC (all user-writable data is stored inside user's home directory, use "project" argument during Engine initialization to override the location).
• More correct FPS calculation.
• Full control of mouse and keyboard events by means of UnigineScript.
• "reference" field in widgets for external references.
• NOW font wrapping is working.
• Smart language switching for GUI L10n, one only needs to call ui.update() after changing locale.
• Hotkey bindings for UnigineEditor can be altered from the editor itself.
• New procedural ObjectGrass: 2 LODs, fast geometry generation by CPU, support of density masks and a lot of other adjustable parameters.
• Added ObjectGrass sample.

It was decided to revert back to terrain splatting instead of huge clipmaps, which are too unconvenient for editing by artists.

There are also important news regarding network support. Right now we have syncronization of world nodes over the network almost ready, it will be available as a sample in Unigine SDK soon. We use a 3rd-party software for transport layer now, later it will be replaced by our in-house module. At the moment a dedicated developer (Anna "ANet" Ishina) is working on our networking issues, a lot of research work has already done, so we plan to complete our multiplayer solution in 5-6 months.

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:

• Password mode for WidgetEditLine.
• Automatic placement of WidgetSpinBox if it's attached to WidgetEditLine.
• Fixed font wrapping on labels and buttons.
• Fixed color codes for WidgetEditText.
• Correct localization for complex widgets.
• Fixed ObjectWaterMesh and volume fog.
• Support of double precision vectors in math library.
• Automatical approximation of meshes by convex hulls for BodyRigid.
• Auto-update of decals on change of their parameters.
• Optional Phong shading for foliage material.
• Added Xml::removeChild() into UnigineScript.
• Fixed spline exporters for 3dsMax.
• Automatical installer of plugins for 3D editors.
• Improved default look of the Sun.
• Correct import of RGB normalmaps in ResourceEditor.
• Template of WiX-based installer for Windows.
• Fixed impostors overlighting.
• More supported video modes.
• Added getFTime() function for detection of precise frame time.
• Support of password-protected zip packs.
• "Soft mouse" mode support.

There are a lot of "automatic" words in here :)

PS: Due to the popularity of indie developers support program it was decided to continue it, so small independent studios have a chance to license Unigine technologies by low prices, starting from $15k. Please see licensing page for more information.