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.

 

Filmmaker

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.

 

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:

 

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.

 

Misc Changes

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?

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.

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.

 

 

Engine Updates

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.

 

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:

 

Fixes

Particles

Old system fixes (water, etc.)

 

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.

 

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!
I've recently acquired the usage rights to a large amount of high quality VR SFM and Blender animations by MetsSFM (a retired SFM animator). I haven't had the time to integrate them into Prelewd yet, but I will get started on that later this month.

I have also set up an automated build and release system for Prelewd as well, but that isn't active yet. Once it's active there will be regular notifications on the Prelewd Discord server about new pre-releases (hopefully starting later this month).

Other than that, there have been some UI overhauls and performance improvements, but I can't show those off quite yet.

There have been some UI overhauls and performance improvements, but those aren't quite ready to be shown off either.

 

Full Changelog

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

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