Build 9 is out!

Releases
1

b9.jpg1600×844 140 KB

Model is Astronaut by Domenico D’Alisa

New builds are up and can be downloaded at:

Getting started at:
http://armory3d.org/manual/getting_started/setup.html

Another one down! Most of the work on Build 9 is dedicated to renderer speed-ups. A patched (9a) builds already got out yesterday, delaying these release notes a bit.
In case of issues, previous Build 8 is still available on itch.

Changelog:

  • Shader complexity is reduced, lights management is improved, render paths are cleaner and more batching is employed.

  • SDK should now work out of the box when installed through itch.io app, no need to move it out.

  • Resolved conflicts with other Blender add-ons by moving Armory into it’s own package.

  • Project is now auto-cleaned when migrating to newer SDK, no need to do it manually.

  • Fixed troubles with glossy materials on Windows and Linux.

  • Minor animation fixes, more still needed. Armory now takes scene fps setting into account. Internal animation structure has been streamlined.

  • Global illumination advancements, leveraged to render the astronaut pictured at the top. More updates coming to the Voxel Based GI topic soon. Currently it is required to use C++ target to get things running - working to resolve this by next build.

  • Slowly adding more logic nodes. New example is up which will be dedicated to showing new ones in the simplest possible form.

    lnodes.jpg1600×863 129 KB

  • Example added on the in-development Batch Meshes and Batch Materials features. These are helpful especially if you have lots of materials(30+) in the scene. Batch Meshes internally bakes objects with shared materials into single buffers. Batch Materials will merge materials with similar node setup and offload differences as material uniforms. This speeds up shader compilation and reduces pipelines switches leading to better performance. Testing 400 monkeys, 1.5M+ tris, 50 materials with the same node setup on integrated Intel HD 5100 - performance increase is roughly from 25 FPS to 39FPS with no visual impact. :slight_smile: This also opens door to even more speed-ups by using ‘indirect rendering’ in the future.

matbatch.jpg1600×863 282 KB

New example added on point lamp shadows. Finally, omni-directional shadows are implemented in Armory. Shadows are captured into a cube-map and each face culls out invisible objects. Of course this is still more costly than regular spot-lamp shadows. In case your point lamp is placed ‘out’ of the scene, you can disable omni shadows in Armory Props for a performance gain.

plamp.jpg1600×863 126 KB

Created a new example to group small material tests. Object Info node has been implemented. (Thanks for report Petr Krejcik - if you are reading this!).

matrand.jpg1600×863 164 KB

Hope nothing explodes and things get once again more solid. :slight_smile:

Onwards to Build 10:

  • Armory turns 10! The plan is to take 3 week dev-time and come up with some bigger leaps (already in the making)
  • Improving animation system
  • Get closer to Cycles output using voxel GI
2 Likes
2

Sweet! I got a question, perhaps a silly one, but is there something I’m not doing correctly to get glossy materials to reflect other objects in the scene? It seems to work just fine with the floor in the armorbench file when I run that in the viewport, but I can’t seem to replicate it any other time with other examples or scenes that I set up myself. I can easily get materials to reflect the environment map, but not other objects. I don’t think this is any kind of bug since I’m sure it’s something I’m not doing right on my end (as per armorbench working just fine), or at least I hope so. My system’s specs:

iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010)
Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Core i5
16 GB RAM
ATI Radeon HD 5750 1024 MB

If this is a bug then I’ll be sure to submit an issue in Github, but I thought I’d ask about it here first. Thanks again!

1 Like
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Hey @Blood_and_Chrome!

In armorbench the floor reflections are using screen-space reflections(SSR). It is currently disabled by default to save some perf. Enabling is easy - select scene camera, scroll down to Armory Render Path in properties and switch the preset from Deferred Low to Deferred:

Alternatively, you can enable SSR manually if you scroll further down:

Need to somehow make this more clear. Let me know if that worked. :slight_smile:

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That was it, thanks Lubos! You rock :grinning:

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push push great to see armory develop with lightspeed!

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Build 10 still in the oven, should be out by Sunday. :hatching_chick:

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A build cooking this long must be one big baby.

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New builds already up on itch but still in testing before putting out the release notes - want to start making the announced builds a little more stable.

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Good on you for taking the time for that. I appreciate release notes that give me a good idea of how to work with the improvements that I’ve been given instead of just listing the new features. Glad to see you’re taking the time.

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1)realese note build 10 ?
2)logic nobes toturial ?
3)GPU Based 3D Painting ?

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He is for sure hard working on those things :slight_smile:

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I will start putting the release notes together immediately during the development to prevent waiting for that. Finishing the Scene 5 tutorial aimed at Logic Nodes next. :thumbsup:

1 Like