Status Update (Patreon)

Hey guys!

I haven't posted any updates recently since I've mostly been busy with some internal engine updates that I can't really show very well, but here's a rough overview of some of the recent changes:

OpenGL support

This is something I've been working towards on the side for a while, but it's now (almost) complete. You can now switch between using a Vulkan or OpenGL renderer for Pragma, which has several advantages:

• OpenGL has much broader GPU support compared to Vulkan, which means Pragma should now also work with GPUs that don't have Vulkan support (as long as OpenGL 4.5 is supported)! I can try to add support for older OpenGL versions as well, if there is demand.

• So far I was unable to support Intel GPUs at all, since I don't have any Intel devices to test with. Since OpenGL behaves much more consistently between different GPUs and GPU vendors compared to Vulkan, this shouldn't be much of a problem anymore. I.e. this means that Intel GPUs should now work with the OpenGL implementation as well.

• The new system opens up options for easily adding new rendering APIs in the future (e.g. Metal for Mac).

Pragma now defaults to the OpenGL renderer (due to the broader GPU coverage), but you can switch between them by adding "-graphics_api opengl" or "-graphics_api vulkan" to the launch options of Pragma. There are currently still a few minor issues when converting textures from Source to Pragma if the OpenGL renderer is used, but I'm working on fixing that.

This was a bit of a tangent and not directly related to the Filmmaker, but I believe it's going to save me more time than it cost in the long run.

New VR/360 rendering and playback options

I've already implemented support for rendering 360° images/videos a while back, but I've now extended the system to also include options for rendering 180° images, as well as stereoscopic images (i.e. splitting the render into two separate images, one for the left eye and one for the right, which is required for proper depth perception in VR):

I also took the opportunity to implement a video player with support for these types of videos:

https://pragma-engine.com/sharex/360_player.mp4 

You don't actually need to own a VR headset to be able to render VR videos either, anyone can do it. The option for it is currently only available in the preview version, however.

Some of the other changes include:

• Support for SFM constraints (e.g. orient contraints, point constraints, etc.)

• Load and save options for PFM projects (i.e. the groundwork for the editing capabilities)

I'm also working on adding support for SFM rigs and locks, I believe I should have some progress on that some time next week! 😄