NeoAxis Group is pleased to announce that NeoAxis Engine and it's SDK was updated to version 1.1. NeoAxis Engine is an all-purpose 3D engine for game development, simulation and visualization systems creation. New version introduced significant improvements in rendering as well as new pathfinding system, toolset localization support and some other improvements. Full story also available at engine's website.

What's New in NeoAxis Engine 1.1?

NeoAxis Group has done much since 1.0 to provide new and exciting features that certainly will be useful for 3D projects developers. The key new features are the following:

• Depth buffer access — the long-expected option to use depth buffer as usual texture has been added. This feature allows to integrate numerous modern rendering features such as Soft Particles, Depth of Field, SSAO, etc.
• Soft Particles — built-in Soft Particles technology support based on the new depth buffer access feature. Soft Particles is intended to eliminate graphic artifacts that can appear when particle intersects with scene geometry.
• Animation Tree System — a new Animation Tree system has been added. With this major feature you can configure animations much easier. You don't need to write that much code for animation support anymore — now you can do this by means of an animation tree file, which is a scheme with operations and connections. A visual editor will also be added in later versions..
• Navigation mesh pathfinding — new navigation mesh pathfinding has been added. In addition to grid based and way point navigation systems NeoAxis SDK now includes powerful pathfinding system based on navigation mesh technology. The engine uses the open-source Recast pathfinding system internally.
• Vegetation material — advanced Vegetation Material has been added. With this material it is now possible to make high quality trees, shrubs and grass.
• FXAA anti-aliasing — new anti-aliasing post-effect allows to achieve better image quality with less resources and higher performance, rather than when using FSAA or MSAA algorythms.
• Awesomium — the Awesomium library has been integrated into NeoAxis 3D Game Engine. The Awesomium library enables embedding full-fledged web browser functionality into applications and games. The library is provided as an additional engine plug-in.
• Localization — the toolset supports localization now and can be easily translated to another language. Russian localization has been added.

The key improvements in 1.1 include:

• Autodesk Maya 2012 export support has been added.
• Physics Editor: You can now set body mass manually by specifying the Mass property. The old method, where body mass was calculated from shapes density also remains.
• The TPS camera in the game has been improved. The camera no longer penetrates through walls.
• ColladaMeshLoader: Better importing and exporting support. Google SketchUp support.
• Fixed Frame Rate support has been added. EngineApp.Instance. MaxFPS property has been added.
• Skeleton animation: Blend masks for animation states have been added.
• The engine will now automatically unload old textures before loading a new map.
• Weapon class has been improved. Now, it is possible to use two alternative weapon meshes separately, one for usual TPS camera, second for FPS camera.
• Better game character physics in PhysX.

Some optimization work has been done. Rendering system was optimized, clip volumes for reflections has been added, UISystem has been significantly optimized, less memory use during compilation for ShaderCacheCompiler. More than 15 known bugs werefixed in new version.

New Demos in NeoAxis SDK

NeoAxis Engine SDK 1.1 has three new demo maps added.

• A new "Mountain Village" demo map has been added. This new demo is a complex demo map, which demonstrates new vegetation shaders, special camera behavior based on splines and water plane reflection optimization.
• A new "BallGame" map has been added. This new game type demo is an example of a casual physics-based ball control game.
• A new " DynamicGeometryExample" map has been added. This new map demonstrates dynamic mesh creation and updating.

NeoAxis Engine 1.1 is Evolution of the All-Purpose 3D Engine

With the release of version 1.1, the all-purpose 3D engine NeoAxis has become even more powerful, with rich functionality and tools. Improvements and new features that have been added in NeoAxis 1.1 made it even better solution for game and simulation development in any genre and area, including quick prototyping and ideas visualization. NeoAxis Engine is not just an engine, but a complete powerful and easy-to-use toolset  for creating 3D applications. Demo maps included in the SDK enable fast start of development, based on the demos "skeleton" that are in fact templates/prototypes of games in different genres, as well as to save additional resources, involved into development, meaning that is saves you your time — and money.

Official NeoAxis Engine website

Download NeoAxis Engine SDK 1.1 with included demo maps 

Full release changelog

About NeoAxis Engine

NeoAxis Game Engine is an all-purpose, modern 3D graphics development tool for 3D simulations, visualizations and games.

About NeoAxis Group

NeoAxis Group Ltd is a company focused on modern real-time 3D solutions. The development studio is located in Kazan, Russia. The main activity of NeoAxis Group is the development of NeoAxis Engine, a cross-platform engine for 3D simulations, visualizations and games.