New Prelewd Release / New Pragma & PFM Preview Updates (Patreon)

Hey all!

Sorry for the late post, I was going to create it a few days ago, but a few things got in the way 😅. Anyway, here's what's new:

Filmmaker

LuxCoreRender

LuxCoreRender is now fully integrated and can be selected in the render settings in the latest preview update! It will be the primary renderer from now on and it also comes with a few new features (Cycles is still available, but these are limited to LuxCoreRender):

• Optix support

If you have a RTX GPU, it should be using Optix by default if you select GPU as rendering device, which should drastically increase rendering speed!

• Transparent backgrounds/skies

This one was requested quite a few times, so there's now an option to make the HDRI sky transparent (while keeping its lighting influence):

(Special thanks to WigWoo1 for the render!)

• New render tool options: I've added a bunch of new commands for the external render tool when using LuxCoreRender, you can find more information about them in the full changelog.

LuxCoreRender also comes packed with a bunch of other features, some of which I'm already working on integrating. Here's an overview of some of its core features, please let me know if anyone has any special interest for any of them:

https://wiki.luxcorerender.org/LuxCoreRender_User%27s_Manual

Flex Controller Re-Targeting

I've made some more enhancements to my re-targeting system, and it now includes support for re-targeting flex controllers. This means that you can, for instance, re-map the facial animations from one character model to another, as long as both models have morph targets that are similar enough to roughly match them up. It does take a bit more time to set up than skeletal re-targeting, but it's pretty flexible:

https://pragma-engine.com/share/prelewd/ciri_rena_retarget_flex.mp4 

Engine

I've finally gotten around to writing some build instructions (Windows only for now) for Pragma and cleaning up the GitHub repository:

https://github.com/Silverlan/pragma#readme 

So if anyone wants to try building Pragma for themselves and/or contribute, it should be fairly straightforward now. There are a few third-party libraries that still need to be built by hand, but instructions for that are included as well.

Asset Format Overhaul

One of the things I've always found a hassle to deal with when working with the Source Engine are the overcomplicated, bloated asset formats (.mdl, .bsp, config files, etc.). Almost every branch of the Source Engine then also has its own versions of those formats, which creates incompatibility issues, and makes it unnecessarily difficult to work with them.

I want to avoid that pitfall, but Pragma's formats are currently not much better, so I've been working on a new, unified format (Unified Data Model, UDM), which I'm planning on transitioning all asset types towards soon. I've based it on various other formats (like glTF) and tried to incorporate the best aspects of all of them:

• The format is fully backwards and (mostly) forwards compatible. This means that even if new features are added (e.g. for the model format), the files will still remain compatible with older Engine versions or importers/exporters (e.g. for Blender).

• It's a generic format that can be used for a wide variety of different asset types (similar to something like XML).

• Built-in LZ4 compression support: Massively reduces disk space requirements for asset files and decreases multiplayer file transfer times.

• ASCII and binary variants: The format has two variations which are interchangeable and functionally equivalent; a binary version, and a human-readable text-based format. This makes debugging asset files and making manual adjustments to assets or configuration files much easier.

• It's implemented as a stand-alone library, which makes it simple to integrate in other software (e.g. importers/exporters).

• There's also a Lua udm library in Pragma for loading/saving/working with udm assets

The core implementation is done, I just need to actually apply it to all of the individual asset types (which is almost complete as well). This means that most of Pragma's asset types (maps, models, materials, animations, etc.) will change in the near future, but there will be legacy support for the old formats.

The new format will also open up other options, such as easily copying the configuration of an actor (or a light source, etc.) in PFM from one project to another, or sending it to another person for use in their project.

Prelewd v0.1.2

I'm finally releasing a new version of Prelewd (timed exclusive for $5+ Tiers), you can get it from the Patron settings page!

It includes the recent performance improvements, the radial menu ($10+ Tiers exclusive), as well as the new animation by DesireSFM 😄!

https://pragma-engine.com/share/prelewd/ciri_riding_v0.mp4 

https://pragma-engine.com/share/prelewd/ciri_riding_v0_pov.png 

The new animation isn't final, I still need to do some lighting adjustments for the POV perspective, the IK system (for VR limb and upper-body movement) is not included yet, and the retargeting system is not available for the new animation yet, since there's still some tweaks I have to make, but I'm planning on releasing some pre-made retarget rigs for a few models soon!

Here's the full changelog for PFM/Pragma: https://wiki.pragma-engine.com/books/pragma-engine/page/changelog 

Thanks everyone, that's all for now 😄! Next post should (hopefully) be a little sooner this time.