May 2022 Progress Report

 

GitHub Beta Releases

First things first, a few changes on how I'll be doing beta releases in the future:

I've set up automated builds via continuous integration (CI) using GitHub actions for the Pragma repository.
This means that from now on every time I commit new changes to the source code, there will be an automatically generated beta-release with those changes available on GitHub a few hours later:
https://github.com/Silverlan/pragma/releases/tag/nightly

These releases always include the latest features, as well as the latest version of the Filmmaker.

There will be a notification in the channel on Discord whenever a new version is available.

Please remember that these are beta-versions, which means they're not necessarily stable and some things may not work properly or suddenly break. If you want to be on the safe side, you can wait for the next stable release, however I don't have an eta for the next one at the moment.

If you have the Steam version with the preview DLC, you'll still get regular updates like normal.

Linux Support

I've been working on and off on adding Linux support to the Pragma repositories. Most of them are Linux-compatible now (indicated by the on the GitHub repository pages), but there's still a lot of work ahead for the core repository.
I'm hoping the new CI integration will make that easier for me, but it'll likely be at least another few months since it's a relatively low priority.

 

Graph Editor

The graph editor is now mostly complete and functional. It supports:

• Constant, linear and bezier interpolation
• Aligned, free and vector handle types
• Same easing types and modes as Blender (Sinusoidal, Cubic, Exponential, Bounce, etc.)

Some of the buttons don't do anything yet, and there's always room for QOL changes, but the core implementation is complete.

Cycles X & Improved live raytracing

Cycles X is a new major update to the Cycles renderer that was added to Blender last year. A few months ago they also made it available as a stand-alone version, so I took some time to upgrade to it.

• There should no longer be rendering issues with certain GPU models
• Rendering should be significantly faster now
• Adaptive sampling is enabled by default when rendering with Cycles X in PFM, which should decrease render times even further
• Improved denoising with the OptiX denoiser
• Cycles X can now be used for the live raytracing render viewport, which is almost real-time:

Live scene updates are limited to light sources at the moment, but I'll be adding support for more in the future.

Unfortunately the current version of Cycles X does not support AMD GPUs, so those are limited to CPU only (or LuxCoreRender) for now.

 

Internal Web-Browser

I've added an internal web-browser to the Filmmaker interface:

It has bookmarks to several big SFM and Blender content websites (e.g. SFMLab, SmutBase, etc.) and any files you download through it will automatically be analyzed by Pragma. If Pragma detects any asset files in the download (e.g. models, maps, etc.), they will automatically be imported and will be usable immediately. This works with most downloads from most websites, although some archive types (e.g. .rar) can cause some issues in rare cases.

 

Improved asset import support

Alongside the web-browser, asset import has been improved overall significantly. On top of the previously supported formats, new supported formats include: blend, fbx, dae, x3d, obj, abc, usd, pmx (MMD). (You can find the full list here.)

To make things even easier, you can now also just drag-and-drop an entire compressed archive onto the model asset explorer, and Pragma will detect and import all of the assets within.

TODO: Video?

 

Wetness shader

I've had several requests for this, so I added a "wetness" shader for rendering with Cycles X.
To use it, all you have to do is crank up the "wetness" slider for the material you want to use it for in the material editor:

The effect only applies when rendering with Cycles X at the moment, and will create the appearance of wet skin:

It's not perfect, but it's significantly better than to just rely on the roughness slider.

Fur / Hair rendering with Cycles X

Fur and hair rendering is now fully functional with Cycles X as well (previously only LuxCoreRender).

(From left to right: No hair → Increased levels of hair.)

Terrible combination with this particular model, but I don't have time to render anything else at the moment and I think you get the gist:

Support for the Source Engine "Eyes" shader

Not a major update, but I've finally added support for the old "eyes" shader from the Source Engine.

Basically, the Source Engine has two different ways of rendering eyes, an older version (used by older Source games, like Half-Life 2, as well as a lot of custom models), and a newer version (used by TF2 and newer Source games). Previously there was only support for the new shader and not the old one, which meant that the eyes of characters using the old versions would not be rendered correctly. That is now functional as well:

 

IK Posing

The IK posing I added a while back is now finally integrated into the filmmaker interface:

Unfortunately IK limits (e.g. to prevent an arm from bending more than 90 degrees) are currently not supported, and it's not quite usable for animating yet, but it's almost there.

Particles

 

Old system fixes (water, etc.)

 

New project format?

 

Some other noteworthy changes:

Support for high-poly Meshes

The vertex count of meshes was previously limited to 65535 vertices per mesh. The limit has been increased to 1872457 vertices, which should cover the vast majority of models.

New asset manager system

I've completely overhauled the engine's asset management system(s). I don't want to bore anyone with the details, but the most important change is that it's now fully multi-threaded, which means that asset loading (in particular models and textures) should be significantly faster now, especially for projects or maps with many different models.

New PFM project format

There's a new project file format for PFM.

The old format is no longer supported!

Auto-save, etc.

Rebindable keybinds

Currently only rebindable via "pfm_bind" and "pfm_unbind" console commands, no UI interface yet.

Detachable Windows

You can arrange your workspace however you want by detaching windows from the primary window:

This is particularly handy if you have multiple monitors available.

Engine Fixes / Cleanup

- Portals
- Water
- Gravity gun
- Particles
- Equirectangular skyboxes with animatable skies
- 3D Skybox

Prelewd

Unfortunately there's still no new version of Prelewd yet, but I do have some exciting news for the near future!

- ew animations

- interface updates

- etc.

 

I've added an internal Web-Browser to the Filmmaker:

 

https://wiki.pragma-engine.com/books/pragma-filmmaker/page/downloading-and-importing-assets#bkmrk-web-browser

Its main purpose is to make the import of assets significantly easier. Any files you download with the browser are automatically analyzed, and if any assets are detected they are automatically imported and immediately available in the asset explorer windows.

•  

TODO: Image

• Engine Cleanup and general fixes/improvements

 

- New Filmmaker project format

 

improved blender support

 

 

Prelewd

- New animations coming up

- UI overhaul

• Significantly improve peformance of retargeted actors

 

Full Changelog

(For previous versions, see https://wiki.pragma-engine.com/books/pragma-engine/page/changelog)

Filmmaker v0.4.6

• Replaced Cycles with Cycles X (With OptiX and OptiX denoising)
• Significantly improved performance of live raytracing render
• Live raytracing render now automatically updates on certain scene changes (e.g. lighting)
• Graph Editor is now mostly functional and can be used for animating
• Added internal Web-Browser which automatically detects and imports downloaded assets
• Added new project file format (old format is no longer supported)
• Added reflection probe and lightmap baking
• Added option to copy/paste and share actors with animation data between projects
• Added secondary and tertiary viewports
• Significantly reduce real-time peformance impact of retargeted actors
• Sky settings have been moved to "sky" actor component to allow animating sky properties
• Sky overrides and angles can now be previewed in the game viewport
• Actors and actor components can now be removed
• Improved asset explorer filter
• "emission_factor" entry field in material editor is now a color field instead of a simple slider
• General load and save performance improvements
• Added quicksave and autosave
• Added new rebindable hotkey system and default hotkeys
• Bones can now be animated with transform widgets in 3D viewport
• Support for volumetric spotlights when rendering with Cycles
• Generated model asset icons now zoom in and focus on the character head for character models
• Added IK configs, IK posing and animating with IK
• Actors can now be right-clicked in game viewport to edit materials directly
• Fixed timeline zoom issues and improved zooming behavior
• Fixed incorrect camera FOV values when importing a SFM session
• Lots of crash, interface, general bug fixes, improvements and QOL changes

Engine

• Added support for meshes with more than 65535 vertices
• Significantly improved asset loading times
• Added model asset import support for formats: blend, fbx, dae, x3d, obj, abc, usd, pmx (MMD)
• Assets can now be automatically detected and imported from archive files
• Added support for Source Engine "Eyes" shader
• Added support for "$alpha" VMT parameter
• Added console commands:
  • asset_multithreading_enabled
  • asset_file_cache_enabled
  • render_enable_verbose_output
  • debug_dump_font_glyph_map
  • locale_localize
  • util_convert_cubemap_to_equirectangular_image
  • util_convert_equirectangular_image_to_cubemap
• Added "-console" launch parameter arguments: "gui", "guid"
• Console command launch parameters that appear after "+map" are now executed after the map has been loaded
• Added entity components:
  • game_animation_player, game_animation_recorder
  • func_portal, portal
  • liquid_surface, liquid_volume, buoyancy, surface, liquid
  • weapon_physcannon
  • wireframe_camera
• Added maps: test_3d_skybox, test_ai_nav, test_fog, test_mirror, test_physics, test_portal, test_water, test_particles
• Added gravity gun script
• Added support for rotating GUI elements
• Added support for UTF8 fonts and localization
• Added "local view target factor" for controlling character eyes
• Updated particle system to new renderer
  • Various blob particle improvements
• Fixed water buoyancy physics
• Fixed fog not rendering
• Fixed 3D skybox not rendering
• Fixed water not rendering
• Fixed issue where light source could appear as turned on despite being turned off or removed previously
• Fixed crash when loading models with custom activity names
• Added Fortress Forever to default mount list
• Added support for equirectangular skyboxes and sky angles
• Fixed crash when attempting to export model asset with invalid flex rules
• Fixed some model meshes not being rendered
• Maps in new-game menu are now split into native maps and external maps
• General performance improvements

• Spot-light inner cone angle has been replaced with blend fraction

• Spot-light outer cone angle has been changed from half-angle to full-angle

• prop_dynamic entities no longer spawn with physics
• General crash fixes and improvements

Lua

• Lua-defined component members can now be animated
• Add "prepared render command buffer" system for issuing multi-threaded render commands
• Component member flags can now be specified as strings
• Added Component member meta data information
• Added function bindings:
  
  • asset.find, asset.clear_unused, asset.normalize_asset_name, asset.load, asset.reload, asset.precache, asset.is_supported_extension, asset.wait_until_loaded, asset.wait_until_all_pending_jobs_complete, asset.poll, asset.poll_all
  • ents.Entity:GetUri, :GetMemberValue, :SetMemberValue, :DebugPrintComponentProperties
  • ents.EntityComponent:Log, :GetUri, :GetMemberUri, :GetDynamicMemberIndices, :GetStaticMemberCount, :GetMemberIndices
  • ents.ModelComponent:ReloadRenderBufferList, :IsDepthPrepassEnabled, :SetDepthPrepassEnabled, :IsAutoLodEnabled, :SetAutoLodEnabled
  • ents.BaseEnvLightSpotComponent:GetBlendFractionProperty, :GetOuterConeAngleProperty, :GetConeStartOffsetProperty
  • ents.CameraComponent:GetFocalDistance, :SetFocalDistance, :GetFocalDistanceProperty
  • ents.PanimaComponent:DebugPrint, :GetCurrentTime, :SetCurrentTime, :GetCurrentTimeFraction, :SetCurrentTimeFraction, :ReloadAnimation
  • ents.LightComponent:SetLightIntensityType, :SetLightIntensity
  • ents.ReflectionComponent:GetLocationIdentifier, :GenerateFromEquirectangularImage
  • ents.LightComponent:IsBaked, :SetBaked
  • ents.add_component_creation_listener
  • ents.find_installed_custom_components, ents.get_registered_entity_types
  • ents.RenderComponent:IsInPvs
  • ents.TransformComponent:Teleport
  • ents.WorldComponent:RebuildRenderQueues
  • ents.ModelComponent:UpdateRenderMeshes
  • file.is_empty
  • debug.render_mesh
  • game.get_number_of_scenes_queued_for_rendering, game.get_queued_scene_render_info, game.set_gameplay_control_camera, game.reset_gameplay_control_camera, game.get_gameplay_control_camera, game.clear_gameplay_control_camera, game.get_primary_camera_render_mask
  • geometry.calc_rect_circle_touching_position
  • gui.create_render_target, gui.create_color_image, gui.register_default_skin, gui.set_focus_enabled, gui.is_focus_enabled
  • game.DrawSceneInfo:AddSubPass
  • gui.Base:CheckPosInBounds
  • gui.DropDownMenu:FindOptionIndex
  • gui.Element:GetRelativePos, :SetLocalAlpha, :GetLocalAlpha, :IsRemovalScheduled, :ResetRotation, :GetRotationMatrix, :SetRotation, :SetStencilEnabled, :IsStencilEnabled, :SetLocalRenderTransform, :ClearLocalRenderTransform, :DrawToTexture, :GetLocalRenderTransform, :AnchorWithMargin, :ClearFocus, :SetParentAndUpdateWindow
  • gui.Text:GetTextHeight, :UpdateSubLines, :SetMaxLineCount, :GetMaxLineCount
  • gui.Shape:ClearBuffer, :SetShape, :GetBuffer, :SetBuffer, :GetVertexCount
  • gui.WIContextMenu:IsPopulated
  • gui.ProgressBar:SetLabelVisible
  • input.InputBindingLayer, input.add_input_binding_layer, input.get_input_binding_layers, input.get_input_binding_layer, input.remove_input_binding_layer, input.get_core_input_binding_layers, input.update_effective_input_bindings, input.get_effective_input_bindings, input.set_binding_layer_enabled, input.is_binding_layer_enabled, input.is_binding_layer_enabled, input.InputBindingLayer:FindBoundKeys
  • locale.localize
  • math.snap_to_gridf, math.get_power_of_2_values, math.calc_bezier_point
  • math.Mat4.create_reflection
  • math.Quaternion:MirrorAxis
  • math.Transform:ToPlane, math.Transform:Reflect
  • math.Vector2:GetAngle, math.Vector:Reflect
  • Model:GetExtensionData, :GetSubMesh, :FindSubMeshId
  • Model.Mesh.Sub:GetTriangle, :GetIndexType, :SetIndexType, :AddIndex, :SetIndex, :GetIndex, :HasUvSet, :GetExtensionData, :ReverseIndices, IndexType and MaxIndex enums
  • Renamed Model.Mesh.Sub:GetTriangles to :GetIndices
  • panima.Animation.load, :RemoveChannel
  • panima.Channel:Resize, :GetSize, :SetTime, :SetValue, :ClearValueExpression, :GetValueExpression, :RemoveValue, :FindInterpolationIndices, :FindIndex, :RemoveValueRange, :AddValueRange, :SortValues, :GetInterpolatedValue, :FindIndexRangeInTimeRange
  • prosper.blur_texture
  • prosper.RenderTarget:GetColorAttachmentTexture, :GetDepthStencilAttachmentTexture
  • prosper.Window:GetMonitorBounds, :Maximize, :IsMaximized
  • shader.BaseTexturedLit3D:IsDepthPrepassEnabled, :SetDepthPrepassEnabled
  • table.is_empty, table.table_to_map
  • util.File:GetSize, util.import_assets, util.generate_hair_file, util.generate_hair_data
  • udm.is_numeric_type, is_generic_type, is_non_trivial_type, type_to_string, get_numeric_component, lerp, get_numeric_component_count, is_vector_type, is_matrix_type, get_matrix_row_count, get_matrix_column_count, is_array_type, get_class_type, parse
  • input.is_ctrl_key_down, is_alt_key_down, is_shift_key_down
  • udm.Array:ToTable, udm.PropertyWrapper:ToTable, :ToAscii
  • udm.Property:AddValueRange, :RemoveValueRange, :SetValueType, :RemoveValue, :Copy
  • Material:SetLoaded
• Added classes/enums:
  • util.ThreadPool
  • util.ZipFile
  • gui.DrawToTextureInfo

  • asset.AssetLoadFlags

  • shader.BindState

• Fixed EntityComponent:GetMemberValue, :SetMemberValue not working correctly for some member types
• Fixed util.remove not removing all objects in table correctly in some cases
• Fixed Lua-defined component members of type string not working correctly