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Ultimate 3D v 2.0 beta has been released; Christmas is one day earlier this year
Topic Started: Dec 24 2006, 02:25 AM (14,550 Views)
Dr. Best Dec 24 2006, 02:25 AM Post #1
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 The third beta is ready to download
Update: A slightly modified version of the third beta is available since 26th of February due to a bug with parallax mapping.

Hey everybody,
Christmas is one day earlier this year. The beta of Ultimate 3D v. 2.0 is finally done as well as the documentation and it has been released by now. You can find it on the website of Ultimate 3D. Ultimate 3D v. 2.0 is a complete remake. So although this is the very first beta release I expect it to be more bug free than Ultimate 3D v. 1.31. Anyway I can't except that there are still some bugs which need to be fixed. For that reason I appreciate any bug report. Please give as much information as possible when reporting a bug to help fixing it. If Ultimate 3D has showed you some error message quote this message. Error messages are the best information about possible reasons for bugs you can get.

Ultimate 3D v. 2.0 has so many new features that it makes no sense to list only the new features. So here's a complete list of all available features.

  • A system for drawing primitive geometry to get started easily and fast
  • Easy to use model loading system for
  • animated 3D Studio Max files (*.3ds)
  • animated Quake II model files (*.md2)
  • animated Anim8or files (incl. vertex skinning) (*.an8)
  • animated DirectX model files (incl. vertex skinning) (*.x)
  • Vertex tweening, a technique to make frame based animation as it's used by *.md2 files totally smooth
  • Easy to use lighting and fog engine
  • Support for sky spheres and sky cubes
  • Simple functions for drawing 2D graphics and texts
  • Fully automatic level of detail generation
  • Functions to manipulate model geometry in real-time
  • Cel-shading for comic like graphics
  • Multi texturing for techniques such as light mapping
  • Spherical and cubical environment mapping (for perfect reflections)
  • An easy to use management system for shader effects (vertex and pixel shaders)
  • The famous parallax mapping and bump mapping (also known as per pixel lighting)
  • An extremely efficient terrain renderer with texture splatting for big and detailed terrains
  • A complex particle effects system
  • Support for split screens
  • Render to texture and render to cube texture functions
  • Math functions for simple vector and matrix calculations
  • A provisional system for extremely efficient culling (for performance optimization)
  • 32-bit z-buffering and mip-mapping
Since the basic idea of Ultimate 3D is the combination of quality and simplicity all of these features are as easy to use as possible. For example you need to call only one function to enable parallax mapping and bump mapping. Anyway you really should use the documentation to get started with Ultimate 3D. It's important, especially for the features for advanced users. The documentation is available in form of a Microsoft HTML help file (*.chm) and can be found in the starter set or on the Ultimate 3D website (as online version).

If you have been working on a project with Ultimate 3D v. 1.31 before you'll find information on updating it to Ultimate 3D v. 2.0 in the documentation. That's just what I did with the old demo of Ultimate 3D v. 1.31. There is no new demo for Ultimate 3D v. 2.0 thus far. For that reason here are a few screenshots from test applications I made for Ultimate 3D v. 2.0. Some of them have been posted before in the topic “Ultimate 3D v. 2.0 – Work in progress”.

This picture shows parallax mapping and per pixel lighting with three light sources.
Posted Image

The next two pictures demonstrate the terrain renderer:
Posted Image Posted Image

This picture shows cubic environment mapping in combination with the render to cube texture functions which leads to perfect reflections:
Posted Image

And finally here's a screenshot of a custom shader effect that can be used to render fire in realtime. I'll post the Ultimate 3D effect file (*.ufx) that has been used to create this effect in the tutorials section very soon.
Posted Image

All these screenshots have been taken on a PC with 1 Ghz and an ATI PowerColor 9250, so you can expect better frame rates on other systems. If you don't like the fact that there's no new demo currently, why don't you just make one on your own. Just participate in the Ultimate 3D v. 2.0 demo competition. The best one will get it's place on the website of Ultimate 3D. For more information have a look at the corresponding topic.

Note that the new version of Ultimate 3D comes with an end user license agreement (EULA). In principle there's nothing special about this. I just wanted ensure a few rights some people didn't consider self-evident before :angry: . You can find the EULA in the license.txt that comes with every download.

As I already said I appreciate any bug report. If you have noticed a bug in the beta please post it within this topic. When the first bugs get reported I'll add a list of known bugs here.

Have fun with the new engine and a merry Christmas to all of you.
With friendly regards
Dr. Best

P.S.: Guest postings have been disabled now. It's confusing if people are posting frequently without giving some proper name. I hope that disabling the guest posting will make this forum become more like a community and less like a guest book.

Known bugs:
- Some *.x files can lead to unexpected errors when loading them.
- *.x files without a skeleton get loaded mirrored.
- Cel-Shading doesn't work for objects that use normal-skeleton animation.
- There's a typo in the Init() script that makes PreloadMesh() not be working. The solution can be found here (reported by Sektor_Z).
- The Left, Top, Width and Height parameters of the DrawTexEx(...) function don't work correctly.
- *.an8 files can cause a message telling you that Ultimate 3D failed to create a vertex buffer.
- In some particular cases the animations of *.an8 files get loaded wrongly.
- Parallax mapping doesn't work in combination with vertex skinning and vertex tweening.
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gww1 Dec 24 2006, 02:47 AM Post #2
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 To think, more than a year in the making!
I can't wait to try it out, well done (and merry christmas) :yahoo:
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MrUlukai Dec 24 2006, 05:51 AM Post #3
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 Thank you very much sir.

Brandon.
* Click here to go to see all my beautiful creations! *

Click here to check out some GREAT! Music =D

I love Jesus.. Yes I do.
Brandon =D.
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Jakethesnake3636 Dec 24 2006, 07:54 AM Post #4
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 Dude, I am so happy. Can't wait to try this out.
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57E Dec 24 2006, 10:32 AM Post #5
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 Thank you Dr. Best! ^_^
:U3D: :beta: :yahoo:

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Despellanion Dec 24 2006, 12:06 PM Post #6
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Suck it, Wolverine
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 Thanks for leting me be your first beta tester. It was an honor ^_^
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Shinnoki Dec 24 2006, 01:15 PM Post #7
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 Great, finally done. Rock On :music:
Posted Image
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The eleventh plague of Egypt Dec 24 2006, 02:49 PM Post #8
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 YEAH ! BETATESTING HERE I AM !!!

So, looking at the ground I saw its color change (you can see it well walking on the sand)
Then I looked at the mech: here are some pics, probably it's the same problem

Posted Image

Posted Image

Changing the point of view it seems normal or distorted :think:
Enigma R4 beta released.
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Dr. Best Dec 24 2006, 03:07 PM Post #9
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 Thanks for the bug report. It didn't do this on my PC. Anyway I think I've found the reason for the problem. There was a small typo that caused that environment mapping didn't get disabled after rendering the materials that use it. This has been added to the known bugs list by now. It will be fixed in the next beta release. Probably this will be quite soon. Maybe in one week or something like this. It's not that much work to update the dll.
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57E Dec 24 2006, 03:22 PM Post #10
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 Since my game project needed almost complete rewrite anyways, I decided to move only some camera movement codes to new basicGM6 copy.
If I move camera around room the game starts getting slower and slower and then it crashes completely. It doesn't show any error messages, only if I try to run it again after crash it sometimes starts flashing "...has caused an error in Kernel32.dll" popups.

The Upgraded demo works fine, it only has little problems with island's texture (like The eleventh plague of Egypt said).



Anyways, merry christmas to everyone! :)

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Evolver Dec 24 2006, 03:45 PM Post #11
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 Excellent! Good work! And best cristmas present to everyone. Took some time, but atlast it's ready. Now I will continue my developments. And I will report all bugs I find.
And nice,happy cristmas and year end to everyone!
:D
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Sektor_Z Dec 24 2006, 04:31 PM Post #12
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SektorZ.NET
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 Perfect! Apart from the bug "The eleventh plague of Egypt" mentioned, it seems to be working great. I love the bumpmapping! We (me and my friends who just got U3D2 too) would like if you post any test example/tutorials of the new features.
SektorZ.NET
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Dr. Best Dec 24 2006, 04:53 PM Post #13
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 @ 57E
I'll check this. Thanks for the report.

@ Sektor Z
You may not have noticed this but I've spent the past three weeks writing tutorials about the new features ;) . Just look into the documentation. And currently it's Christmas Eve so I'm not gonna make anything ;) . Maybe I'll make a few examples during the next weeks. But as all of you should have noticed there's a new forum in this Community for tutorials and examples. So anyone who has understood some more or less complicated feature or technique can make a tutorial or an example for it and post it there. Also there's the Ultimate 3D demo competition which I'd like to see some participants for ;) .
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Zip Dec 24 2006, 07:21 PM Post #14
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 I have a problem with Latitude and Longitude:
they are all inverted! :wacko:
All the coordinates i've created in the game using :U3D: 1.31 in 2.0 are messed!
Camera rotations too...

Anyway good Christmas Present!!! :clapping:
Sorry if i've made some errors, I'm not english!
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tofp Dec 24 2006, 07:40 PM Post #15
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 i hope there will be example with shadows.
and this engine use surface. so i have q:
because it use surface , i think it possible to make texture from gm surface.
if not :D is it engine suppurt some thing like surface . to make some thing like this:
http://www.myexamples.ho.com.ua/surf.gm6
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