Power Render 6.8 for Borland C++ has been released to source code licensees.  A sample application which renders from a VCL form is included.   Full source code for PR, add on libraries (png, jpeg, openexr, zlib, DirectShow baseclasses) compatible with Borland C++ are included.

Nov 24th, 2006

Power Render 6.8.2 patch has been released to licensed users and for the personal edition. The following changes have been made:

• Fixed crashing bug when using chipsets without support for hardware accelerated transformations.
• Removed entity visible test display from PRO Edit when displaying frame rate (was used for debug purposes and left in by accident)
• Fixed default shadow map properties when creating new LStudio level
• Fixed shadow map bias display text
• Fixed bugs with animation sharing, tested with and without hardware skinning
• Fixed bug in CHR Edit with ToUpper on a const string in UpdateFile
• Fixed bug in LStudio with default non splat textures (needed to be .JPG instead of .DDS)

Oct 23rd, 2006

Power Render 6.8 has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Added PRFrustum class
• Added Frustum.ContainsBoundingBox and ContainsBoundingSphere routines, with results FRUSTUM_IN, FRUSTUM_OUT, FRUSTUM_INTERSECT
• Modified segment culling to use arbitrary frustum instead of homogenous one
• Added CalculatePlanes to PRCamera class
• Added PRBoundingSphere class and made frustum culling use spheres instead of boxes since they are faster but less accurate
• Added Normalize and ClassifyPoint to PRPlane class
• Renamed the PR_ORIENTATION class to PRTransformation
• Renamed Entity->SegmentOrientation to Entity->SegmentTransformation
• Added SetEffectOverride and SetTechniqueOverride to PREngine class to more control when using effect files
• Modified culling flags to be stored in Entity->SegmentFlags instead of Entity->Shape->Segment->Flags. (Visibility stored per entity instead of current object being transformed)
• Sped up keyframe lookups by storing the last index for pos/rot/scale in the PRTransformation class.  Takes advantage of the fact most animations play in a forward sequence
• Modified entities and characters so animation only needs to be called once per frame, and entity/character can later be rendered multiple times without requiring keyframe preparation each time.  This results in much faster rendering of characters, useful for reflections and multipass effects
• Added PRTransformWithEffect to PRTerrain class for rendering splatted terrain with an effect (was needed for rendering shadow maps on terrain)
• Added FirstPassMaterialPS to pixel shaded terrain rendering.  It was using alpha blending on the first pass which wasn't needed and wasting fillrate.
• Added Entity->RenderWithInstances for rendering 1 segment objects multiple times (ie trees, grass etc)  This does not use instancing but just renders the vertex buffer many times using different world coordinates in a tight loop instead of setting up render states, textures, lighting and so on for each instance.
• Added the PR.SetWorldTransform, PR.SetViewTransform, and PR.SetProjectionTransform routines for setting transformation matrices.  Current matrices can be accessed in PR.WorldTransform, PR.ViewTransform, and PR.ProjectionTransform.   PR.ViewProjection transform is also stored for convenience and updated when the view or projection matrices are changed.
• Added PR.ShadowMapEngine for rendering large scenes with shadow maps that get more detail as you move closer to objects. 
• Added PRWater class and example for rendering realistic ocean water
• Modified LStudio to use selection testing for picking.  Characters can be selected using the entity list.
• Added shadow map support to LStudio
• Added SplatWorld example
• Added Batching example for fast rendering of similar objects
• Optimized terrain visibility routines and many places in high level engine
• Changed to use clip planes in water reflection to remove a rendering pass

July 10th, 2006

Power Render 6.7 has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Fixed physics heightfield class which wasn't being exported from DLL.
• Fixed force feedback example which wasn't loading FFE files from correct directory
• Fixed bug in force feedback effects being released.
• Added ability to change HDR bloom and star scale factors
• Modified default HDR light settings for better results
• Added ability to change the default terrain patch size. You can change the following values:
  PR.Settings.TerrainSplatPatchSize = 64;
  PR.Settings.TerrainPatchSize = 16;
  The value should be a multiple of 8 and have limits. If you are using .FX effects on terrain materials which generate UV coordinates, TerrainPatchSize can be larger (ie 64), but normally the value should be 8 or 16 to work properly.
• Fixed vector crashing bug with console history
• Added SetVertexShaderOverride and SetPixelShaderOverride to PREngine class to allow overriding shaders from materials
• Fixed a number of bugs in Landscape Studio when creating new levels
• Modified engine package to use DDS textures for faster loading
• Fixed bug in terrain culling to improve speeds
   

April 9th, 2006

Power Render 6.6 Personal Edition has been released and is available for free!

March 31st, 2006

Power Render 6.6 has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Removed support for MSVC 2003 since STL is incompatible across compiler versions.  You must use MSVC 2005 or applications will crash in debug builds.
• Fixed PackageFilename string overflow in LStudio
• Fixed loading normal textured terrain levels with wrapping off
• Added AddRef, DecRef to PRViewport, PRRenderStyle, PLAYERINFO, PR_ProjectSettings, PR_GameEngineSettings
  Added flag to shadow map class to use pixel shaders (not fully implemented yet)
• Added PhysX support as alternative physics engine.  This is not fully implemented yet and is only available to source code licensees until it is completed.  Recompile the engine with //#define PHYSX uncommented in the PowerRender.h file to use PhysX instead of Newton.  Advanced things like ragdolls and vehicles and terrain are not implemented yet.
•  Zbuffer states after a renderstyle are reset to normal
• Split DisableWrapping flag in Terrain class to DisableTerrainWrapping, and DisableObjectWrapping for future paging modifications.

February 22nd, 2006

Power Render 6.6 Beta 2 has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Compiled with February 2006 DirectX SDK
• Angelscript 2.5.0c
• Newton 1.51
• New version of the simpleland example which uses scripting for game objects.
  The next stage will add script editing capabilities within Landscape Studio. Right now you have to use the library tool to manually insert script files into the packages. To see the scripts open a package and look at the .txt files.
• New routines in the GameEngine class to make scripting easier: AddInstanceByName, GetTerrain, AlterLand, MakeSound
• Included the Directshow Baseclasses files and headers since there were some minor changes required to compile with VC 2005.

Power Render 6.6 Beta has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Compiled with December 2005 DirectX SDK
• Integrated with AngelScript 2.5. Your scripts must be updated! Not all PR functions have been exposed in this release.
• Integrated with Newton 1.5 Physics engine
• VC.NET 2005 support
• Switched to latest versions of the DirectShow baseclasses. You must install the Platform SDK and add C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Samples\Multimedia\DirectShow\BaseClasses to the VC include paths, and C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\Lib to the lib paths.
• Added Unicode versions of the engine, only used for XFont class rendering right now.
• Safe String and File utility functions for VC2003/2005 compatibility
• Workspaces renamed for VC.NET 2005
• Hardware Instancing support and example (requires VS 3.0 card)
• Fatal error ignore option
• Faster alpha blended triangle rendering by caching triangles and reducing DrawPrimitive calls
• Added stat variable for counting the number of DrawPrimitive calls per frame
• Fixed color map painting in LStudio
• Faster rendering when using .FX files in terrain materials
• Decals working with non-splat texturing
   

November 17th, 2005

Power Render 6.5 has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Compiled with October 2005 DirectX SDK
• Fixed bug in PRO loader/writer when using textures in multiple stages, and empty texture stages
• Fixed bug in BSP only levels with collision in high level engine
• Added physics buoyancy support and example for water
• Multimon example now working properly
• Added PRXFont class for displaying fonts in other languages and XFont example
• Added Flash player example
• Added Terrain Minimap example
• Added Hardware Occlusion Query support and example
• Added ScreenSaver Example
• Added Winamp Visualizer Sample
• Added Character Selection Test example
• Fixed animated camera saving/loading in PRO Edit.  Scene camera is always named "SceneCamera" now.
• Modified regular terrain renderer (not the splat version) so .FX files can be used on terrain
• Modified bump mapped water to use scrolling UV coordinates

Power Render 6.4 has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Sped up terrain splatting by increasing terrain patch size.
• Sped up terrain deformation by marking dirty vertices and only updating regions of the terrain when possible.
• Fixed bug in texture clamping when using non splatted texturing.
• Added GetNormal and PutNormal to Terrain class
• Moved PointCoordinateFix from GameEngine to Terrain class
• Added Terrain decals for drawing blast marks, selection markers or bitmaps over terrain.
• Fixed bug in CHR Edit with hardware skinning flag not being loaded from existing character
• Fixed missing sampler states tab in PRO Edit material editor
• Added SetMultisampling routine to Engine class
• 17 Examples now working on XBox platform
• Modified some examples to use a media directory.  Contents of this are copied to the XBox hard drive when compiling and now the same example source code can be used for either platform.

July 28th, 2005

Power Render 6 Release 2 has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Compiled with June 2005 DirectX SDK
• Added support for ragdolls
• Added ragdoll editor
• Added environment mapping support when using RenderStyles
• Modified PRO Edit to use hex values for texture and blend factors in RenderStyles
• Added BSP collision in physics engine
• Fixed several memory leaks in character animation routines
• Added cones to ShapeBuilder class
• Added Maya 6.5 Exporter
• Added Physics examples: BspLevel, ConeStack, ConvexHull, Ragdoll,
• Fixed character translation in PRO Edit
• Fixed bug in entity rotation accumulation
• Fixed crashing when creating a new Landscape Studio level

June 14th, 2005

Power Render 6 Release 1 has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Added support for combining RenderStyle method with pixel shaders. This lets you control alpha blending and other states when using a pixel shader, something that was not possible without requiring custom code.
• Added Projected Shadow Engine class
• Modifed Biped exporter to start animations at starting frame instead of frame 0.
• Added ManualExposure and ExposureValue to HDR class to allow for manual exposure control
• Added HDR support to PRO Edit
• Added map channel support to MAX7 exporter (allows exporting of UV coordinates from map channels greater than 1)
• Added physics classes
• Added physics examples
• Removed old fogged rendering methods
• Renamed *TEXTURED8 render methods to *TEXTURED
• Added GetVertexShaderProfile and GetPixelShaderProfile for easier checking of maximum shader model supported by video card
• Added detection of DXT* texture format support
• Fixed DDS loader to uncompress DXT formats on cards that don't support texture compression
• Fixed Select all similar and select by type in LStudio
• Documentation added: File System, Particle System, Collision detection

May 19th, 2005

Power Render 6 Beta 2 has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Fixed: Character animations were playing twice
• Fixed: Animation queuing now working .  Note: Animations played immediately no longer clear the queue, so the last animation in a queue should be set to play immediately.
• Fixed: LStudio crashing when you remove an entity.
• Fixed: HDR example wasn't working on Radeon X800 cards
• Fixed: PRO Edit inertia backwards for right mouse button
• Fixed: MD2 animations always starting at frame 0, looping started back at 0 as well
• Fixed: LStudio reseting camera angle in world map
• Fixed: Dynamic shadows on characters not drawn in high level engine. (Remember to turn D3D pipeline off in entity properties)
• Fixed: LStudio wasn't saving entity names correctly
• Fixed: LStudio was crashing when compiling a level
• Fixed: Hardware skinned characters weren't building correctly
• Fixed: Bounding boxes of hardware skinned/tweened characters were wrong
• Fixed: Tweening animation not using floating point frame numbers
• Fixed: Default Camera position in pro edit for characters was too far away
• Fixed: Wireframe mode in PRO Edit resets to solid when window is resized
• Fixed: Fly mode in chr/pro edit required clicking on rotation icon to rotate camera
• Fixed: Loading a pixel shader wasn't compiling it until you pressed the compile button in the shader editor
• Fixed: Duplicate entities in LStudio not getting unique ID's
• Fixed: Spaceship sounds in simpleland aren't playing
• Fixed: Lights from grenades in simpleland aren't showing
• Fixed: LStudio Paths not showing wireframe
• Fixed: Movie destructor wasn't cleaning up
• New: Switched hardware skinning to use HLSL shader instead of assembly
• New: Added Bounding Box viewing in PRO Edit
• New: Added Skinning shader with normal mapping support to CHR Edit
• New: Modified specular and parallax shaders to fix some bugs and make lighting better
• New: Added light mode to PRO Edit so you can move the light away from the camera
• New: Sped up conversion to D3D pipeline data routines, large objects load much faster in PRO Edit
• Documentation added: Movies, Audio, Selection Testing, Render Targets, Shape Builders, Lens Flares, Image Loaders, Terrain, Shaders

April 27th, 2005

Power Render 6 Beta 1 has been released to licensed users on our FTP site. The following changes have been made:

• Compiled with April 2005 DirectX SDK
• Fixed bug with shadows in high level engine
• Fixed bug when duplicating entities in high level engine
• Added Parallax bump mapping wizard to PRO Edit
• Added several Parallax bump examples in the PRO Edit SamplesParallax directory
• Added HDR rendering support and HDR example
• Added OpenEXR and HDR file format support
• Added floating point texture mipmap generation routines
• Added EnvCube sample object
• Fixed framerate display in PRO Edit when wireframe is enabled
• Added a lot of new predefined vertex shader constants
• Updated PRO Edit documentation for version 6
• First version of the User's Manual
• First XBox version available to source licensees
• Added grid to CHR Edit
• Modified tools to use precompiled headers for faster compiling
• Ported LWO and LWS loaders for Lightwave 6 and up (not fully tested, remember to use triangles in meshes)
• Fixed Octtree generation routine crashing in release mode
• Fixed Quake3 BSP converter

February 25, 2005

Power Render 6 Alpha 6 is now available to Lite customers. This means you can get our cutting edge brand new 3D engine for under $100!!

We want your feedback and would like as many people testing out the new engine before it is officially released, so we are making this available to everyone that has bought any kind of PR license. You will get monthly updates to the engine from our private FTP server.

Existing Lite customers may need to renew their account if it has expired.
 

January 30, 2005

Power Render 6 Alpha 6 has been released to licensed users.

• Fixed bug with character attachment matrices
• Modified character attachments to support attachments with multiple segments
• Fixed bug in PRO loader release build, wasn't initializing loader variables to 0
• Added Terrain->SetMaterial function so you can load materials before terrain
• Changed CharacterEntity->InitateMotion function to allow animation queuing, looping, and speed control.
• Fixed bug in entity names when using AddInstance.
• Fixed bug in terrain example, not setting detail texture stage to 1
• Utility classes for upcoming scene graph class (RenderQueue, RenderElement)
• Changed #defines to constants
• Fixed bug in particles where default scale was 0 instead 1.0
• Fixed Reflective water (no bump) rendering in game engine
• Ported CHR Edit event editor
• Modified meshes with tangent space information to use D3DXMESH internally, and calls D3D function to compute tangents
• Initialized shader constants to 0 in constructor
• Fixed bug which made objects use more triangles than needed during conversion to D3D pipeline
• Added LIBEDIT tool

PRO Edit Changes:

• Changed loading and changing textures to strip off pathnames automatically if local
• Closed all windows when new scene
• Changed maximum texture stages to 16 for newer cards
• When you cancel picking a shader it now removes the shader from a material (there was no way to remove it before)
• Changed rotation inertia speed
• Fixed grid flickering bug
• Added Normal Map and Specular Bump wizards
• Fixed bug in material wizards, textures getting swapped

December 15, 2005

Power Render 6 Alpha 5 has been released to licensed users, with the following changes:

• Fixed bug in CHR Edit when creating MD2 model textures
• Added CreateSurface and DeleteSurface routines
• Added ChangeRendermethods, RestoreRenderMethods, SaveRenderMethods routines
• Fixed scripting common classes bugs
• Added PRVars class for storing user defined engine variables
• Added Glow example
• Added Depth of Field example
• Added PRConsole Class
• Added GUI Classes
• Added GUI example
• Renamed CharacterLOD example to Characters
• Added GetStringWidth to font class
• Added Vertex Color support to MAX 7 PRO exporter
• Fixed bugs in game engine entity new/delete
• Sped up DeleteResource function
• Sped up PRO to D3D pipeline data conversion
• Fixed lens flares in game engine class
• Added native C++ game AI callbacks
• Added script AI callbacks
• Updated to Angelscript 1.10.1b stable release