Important!
If this version causes problems for you, you can use previous versions.
They are available under Settings -> Betas along with release date.
About this release
In the works for 3 years, the new graphics engine will enable a lot of new cool opportunities, it's currently in beta at this point as it's likely there are some more small bugs in it.
One visual has been released for free, in the "beta" pack. Please treat it as such and don't include it in live streams until you've verified it.
Streamers and video artists have reported they really appreciate the new video delivery mechanism - SPOUT which lowers latency and simplifies integration with other software such as OBS.
SPOUT Output in Pro Player and Artiste
SPOUT is a video sharing API using video card memory (VRAM) which is a more efficient way of sharing graphics between applications than "game capture" and other such techniques.
Both Pro Player and Artiste support alpha channel for SPOUT which means you can create custom overlays in Artiste, stream them into OBS (needs an OBS plugin) and overlay them on top of anything else.
Here's a minimal demonstration: https://youtu.be/B0Ocvu6GDS4
PBR Graphics Engine (BETA)
There is one visual (in the beta pack) that uses this new rendering engine. We are working on more.
Here's a list of features for the rendering engine:
- GLTF loading
- Skinning / bones, shape keys, animations from GLTF
- GPU-accelerated skeletal animation (FK)
- Access to whole node structure in Artiste to manipulate objects. Rotations can be first controlled by the animation track and then extra rotated in Artiste
- Physically Based Rendering (PBR) Materials
- PBR materials (values and textures) can be either manipulated or overridden in Artiste using traditional OpenGL dynamic textures allowing for lots of rendering tricks
- Image Based Lighting (IBL) using equidirect HDR light probes as lighting
- Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
- Support for up to 1024 point lights per scene
- Shadow Mapping for up to 4 directional lights
- Screen Space Reflections
- Legacy rendering pass: You can still render most traditional VZX modules on top of the new rendering engine. This is useful for particles, transparency, glowing stuff and more.
- Access to output of legacy pass as a texture for post processing
The "dolphin" example in Artiste has been re-made using the new engine. The old character animation system has been removed as this new one is far superior.
Auto Gain and Global FX Level in Pro Player
Both Artiste and Pro Player have Auto Gain support for audio visualization.
This automatically increases the audio intensity to a set level. A dampening factor (attenuation) is needed because it gets too strong otherwise.
Pro player has global FX level also.
Audio Status in Pro Player
Based on an idea from the community, this is a handy debugging tool to easily see if Pro Player is receiving audio from the audio server.
Artiste Improvements
- Most of the rather obscure right-click menu is now in a nice "main menu". This is still a WIP, we would like to put the settings into a dialog instead.
- Audio input has been moved from right-click menu to a dialog.
New modules:
- A set of delay modules for float, float3, float4 and quaternion.
- A module which can generate a linear sequence
- Scene Graph modules for loading GLTF files, rendering with PBR rendering, 2 types of cameras, matrix stack operations and a point light module.
- Bezier Path loader. Reads a custom JSON format (VBZ). We've created an exporter for Blender which is on our github https://github.com/vovoid/blender_export_bezier
Smaller improvements
- Logging what is happening with all the network connections being formed for Pro Player, Controller, Pro Player Manager, Pro Audio Server has been improved a lot.
- "Player" button on 2nd row in Controller is now called "Playback Controls". This caused some confusion before as there were 2 "PLAYER" buttons.
- Artiste has a new background. Unlike the previous one which had a blue/purple tint, this is pure gray which helps the eye discerning and differentiating between colors in the design. Color information in modules and connections should pop more with this background.
- Modules and type lists in the documentation are now sorted which improves readability.
- Color chooser controller in Artiste has a new gain knob. This is useful in conjunction with the PBR / Scene Graph renderer where lights often benefit from being amplified.
- GL Debug can be enabled for Pro Player from Pro Player Manager. This is useful when dealing with bug reports but it ends up in the logs so anyone can have use for it.
Bug fixes
- When loading a state in Pro Controller, playlist items in "Player Controls" wouldn't show up unless one went to the "Playlist" persona first.
- Joystick module in Artiste was broken
- Generated documentation filenames were too long / corrupted which caused problems for some modules
- Controllers would disappear in Artiste when rendering in full window / performance mode