CopperCube ‘no programming required’ 3D Engine Version 5 released

 

Version 5 of the CopperCube engine was just released.  In their own words, CopperCube is:

 

CopperCube is an editor for creating 3D apps, games and 3D websites. Import or create your 3D models, set camera controllers, materials, behaviors, click ‘publish’ and your app is ready. Create everything from simple model viewers to full 3D games. As WebGL websites, Flash .swfs, Mac OS, Windows, or Android apps. You can do all this without programming.

 

 

The following are the release notes of the new features in Version 5:

 

  • Terrain support

The editor now includes a way to create and edit terrain. There is also a terrain generator, completely with trees and grass. Terrain can be drawn with height painting tools directly in the editor, textures can be painted quickly with automatic texture blending into the terrain. There are also tools for placing grass and bushes, and for distributing meshes automatically over the terrain.
terrain support terrain rendering

  • Physics engine

    It can be switched on for the Windows and Mac OS X target in the publishing settings. There is also a new behavior available named ‘Move object by physics engine’ for making objects behave, collide and move like objects in the real world. Objects with the ‘Collide when moved’ behavior will also collide against those then and be able to move them, roll them over etc. There is also a way to react when an object collides with the world, for example to play sounds, and a way to manually apply forces to objects using scripting.
    physics simulation

  • Video Playback in 2D and 3D

    The professional version of CopperCube now includes an action to play back videos on the Windows .exe, WebGL and Flash target. Videos can be played back in 2D and 3D (like on any 3D object in a scene), it is possible to influence playback with actions (play/stop/pause) and to react when the video playback has been finished or playback failed.
    video playback

  • Network communcation

    You can now easily do HTTP requests on all targets, in order to exchange data with game multiplayer servers, PHP/MySQL database backends, or whatever you like to. This feature is available as new JavaScript function named ccbDoHTTPRequest(), but there is also an action for doing this without programming for download from the website. This feature doesn’t directly provide multiplayer support for your games, but it is now possible to build this yourself on top of this.

  • Added iOS 8 WebGL support

    Apps created with CopperCube and the WebGL target now also run on Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, …) with iOS 8.
    running on iphone and ipad

  • Shader programming

    You can create and add your own materials and shaders during runtime now using the JavaScript API. In the documentation, you will find a few examples showing you how to start. Note that this is nothing simple, and not for beginners. You need to know shader programming in order to use this feature.
    shader programming

  • Animation blending

    CopperCube now blends animations when switching between them. It is automatically enabled, but can be turned off or adjusted for every animated model manually in the editor or via script. This also means that you don’t need to create perfect animation loops anymore. The engine will now automatically blend non-fitting animation loops together so that they look nice.

  • Attaching nodes to animated meshes

    This is useful for example to let characters carry weapons in their hands, to switch them dynamically, change how they look like, or for example to even attach particle systems to moving parts of an animation. Use the command "Modify Selection -> Attach node to animated joint…" for this.
    attaching to animations

  • Directional light

    This is useful for simulating light sources from a very far distance, like for simulating the sun. Directional light can now be used just as the already supported point lights both with the light mapper as well for dynamic lighting.
    directional light

  • Procedurally generated trees

    There is a new scene node type available which generates a tree (a 3d model of a plant) based on user specified parameters. It is possible to create all kind of tree types from it, be it for example a full grown pine or a dead desert bush. This feature is beta, and not very user friendly yet, but planned to be improved in future versions.
    generated trees

  • Faster Lightmapper, with Mac OS X support

    The built-in lightmapper has been rewritten and is now much faster. Additionally, it now also works with shadows on the Mac OS X version of the editor, wich previsously only produced results with diffuse lighting only.
    lightmapper of coppercube

  • Optimized WebGL performance and compatibility

    Not only did we squeeze all these features into a tiny, 180KB .js file, we also improved the performance again by about 20% in certain areas, and improved compatibility with mobile and/or touch enabled WebGL capable browsers such as Chrome for Android.

  • Custom Icons for Windows Apps

    There is now a new option to select an icon for the windows target. Note that embedding the icon in your app might slow down the publishing process by a few seconds, depending on your operating system. (This feature is not supported in the Mac OS X version of CopperCube)

  • Manual Commands for the AI

    Use the function ccbAICommand() for this, so you can send any "Game actor with Health" to a specific location, command it to attack something, or similar.

  • 15 new prefabs

    15 new prefabs added: 2 new animated characters (a soldier; a sleep walker), 2 weapons to be attached to animated characters: a shotgun and a pistol, 11 high quality, low poly prefabs created by Efe: a classic car, a bicycle, an armchair, an ancient statue, a book, a nightstand, a flowerpot, a lamp, two tables, a television.
    prefabs

…and many other changes:

 

  • There is now a new command for converting a static mesh to an animated mesh (without animation). This is useful for ditributing huge amounts of static meshes over the terrain without much memory usage, since instances of animated meshes share their data and are culled more efficiently.
  • New, better looking examples come preinstalled with CopperCube now.
  • The ‘object controlled by keyboard’ behavior now has a more fine tuned animation playback system
  • The ‘object controlled by keyboard’ behavior now has the option to ‘pause’ after jumping, making the jumping feature look more like in some platform games.
  • The gravity value is now set per scene, in the root object of the scene.
  • Jumping in all behaviors is much nicer and more physically correct now. But this also means that you might have to adjust your jump settings in existing projects when upgrading to CopperCube 5.
  • Game AI movement is more smoother now
  • Scripting changes: New functions:
    • ccbCreateMaterial()
    • ccbSetShaderConstant()
    • ccbAICommand()
    • ccbSetPhysicsVelocity()

    The following functions are now also available in the editor:

    • ccbGetCollisionPointOfWorldWithLine()
    • ccbDoesLineCollideWithBoundingBoxOfSceneNode()

    Changed behavior:

    • ccbEndProgram() now closes the window in WebGL and Flash
  • When cloning nodes in the editor, also children will now get unique names and ids, and relinked with the behavior of the parent
  • 3D Editor change: When changing the parent child relation of a node, the position of the node is tried to be kept at the old position
  • 3D Editor change: When moving an object which is the child of a rotated parent object, movement will still move into the direction the arrows are pointing
  • When right-clicking onto a texture in the texture browser, there is now a command to save the texture as file to disk.
  • It’s possible to use the mouse wheel in the prefabs window
  • Removed feature: It is no longer possible to target Flash players older than version 11
  • When switching the perspective, orthogonal views now place the camera more nicely.
  • The path tool new works a bit nicer when adding new path nodes.
  • Lots of updates to the documentation.

 

A trial version is available for both Windows and Mac.

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