Verge3D 3.5 pre3 available!

Verge3D Plugins

You can now add new functionality to Verge3D and make it available for convenient usage in the form of new puzzles!

Adding your own puzzles is straightforward. You first create a folder in puzzles/plugins, and inside it, place an XML file named init.plug, where you define a new category to appear in the toolbox of the Puzzles editor.

<category name="My Puzzles" colour="green">
    <block type="printHelloWorld"></block>
</category>

In the same folder, you can create JavaScript files for each puzzle to implement their behavior. For the above example, you can create a file named printHelloWorld.block and put the following code inside it:

As a result, the Puzzles editor will automatically pick up these files and insert into the toolbox a new category populated by your puzzles.

To help you get started with Verge3D plugins, we refactored 4 previously available “E-commerce” puzzles as a plugin (this plugin was also made optional in the installer). You can check it out in the folder puzzles/plugins/E-commerce.

See more details on creating Verge3D plugins in the docs (coming soon!).

Physics

You can now implement soft body simulations besides previously available rigid body simulations.

To start using soft body physics, you first must enable the corresponding checkbox in the puzzle create physics world. Then you can make some objects soft using the new puzzle create soft body.

It is possible to create soft bodies of 3 types – ropes (any prolonged flexible stuff), patches (clothes) and volumes (various cushiony things). In addition, soft bodies can be pinned to rigid bodies using another new puzzle anchor soft body, thus making possible various cases such as a ball hanging on a string.

You can see soft body simulations in action in the updated Verge3D example app called Physics.

Another important feature available with the physics engine is constraints. By using constraints, you can limit the movement of rigid bodies to create various interesting cases such as hinges, springs, swings, etc. We have also implemented a puzzle that removes a constraint.

Next, the empty collision shape was added to the create rigid body puzzle (formerly called create physics body). You can use it to implement invisible objects that are required to make a constraint. For example, you can create an invisible point and attach a rigid body to this point using a hinge constraint. Another use case: make invisible points to pin a soft body.

The constraints created by the above-mentioned puzzles are also accessible through JavaScript, e.g.:

v3d.puzzles.physics.constraints['Suzanne']['Axis'];

The non-physical constraints that were present in the Puzzles’ Physics category before this update, were moved to the Animation category to prevent confusion.

Again, check out the updated Physics demo to see some of these constraints in action.

Next, new JavaScript API were introduced for synchronizing custom physics simulations with graphics:

// add obj / body to the sync list
// the type can be 'DYNAMIC', 'KINEMATIC', 'STATIC', 'GHOST', or 'SOFT_BODY'
v3d.puzzles.physics.addToSyncList(obj, body, 'DYNAMIC');

// remove obj / body from the sync list
v3d.puzzles.physics.removeFromSyncList(obj, body);

These methods can be used for implementing vehicle physics, for example. See more details on this page.

Finally, the amount of memory available to the physics engine was increased to 128 Mb to allow for more complex physical simulations.

Blender-specific

We improved the quality of the Closest mode of texture interpolation (available for Image Texture nodes).

Collections and visibility are now properly inherited for instanced objects.

We have fixed a bug with the Clear Coat input broken in version 3.4 (thanks for reporting this issue).

We added an option to disable anti-aliasing whatsoever.

3ds Max-specific

We added an option to disable anti-aliasing whatsoever.

Maya-specific

Dozen new shader nodes is now supported including:

• channels
• checker
• clamp
• colorMath
• condition
• floatMath
• gammaCorrect
• multiplyDivide
• premultiply
• reverse
• setRange
• unpremultiply

Texture filtering modes MipMap and Off can now be used.

Also basic wrapping modes are now supported for textures.

We added an option to disable anti-aliasing whatsoever.

We fixed an installation issue for users who are using an unconventional Documents path (for example, when documents are shared via OneDrive).

Other improvements

We significantly simplified the integration of React.js and Vue.js with Verge3D, and particularly with the Puzzles.

Also, the V3DApp.createApp() method now returns a JavaScript Promise. In React, the Verge3D application is now implemented as a separate component.

See more details on the above-mentioned changes in the docs.

Puzzles

Selecting bones and empties is supported by the puzzle get all objects.

Puzzles get date time, open web page, social share link, gamepad index, get gamepad prop are now available from the Init tab.

We decreased the maximum height of the multi-line puzzle to fit well typical screen resolutions.

We fixed a bug introduced in the pre2 build that relates to the puzzles make parent, ray cast and export gltf.