Japanese website 4Gamer.net has published an overview of GDC 2010 session called “Physically Simulated Clothing by CCP (EVE Online) Using NVIDIA APEX“, we were specially interested in.

Led by Vigfus Omarsson and Snorri Sturluson from CCP, this talk was focused on APEX Clothing system integration with in-house engine, supposed to be used in Incarna add-on for EVE Online.

Using a nice custom character as an example, full clothing authoring pipeline was demonstrated.

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GDC 2010 (Game Developer Conference) is just about to start, and is going to be rich on PhysX related content this year. Apart from session on APEX Clothing integration with EvE Incarna we mentined previously, featured talks will include “Authoring Physically Simulated Destruction with NVIDIA APEX” and “Taking Fluid Simulation Out of the Box: Particle Effects in Dark Void“.

You can read session descriptions via provided links, but actually not only this has catched my eye. Nvidia GDC 2010 page was updated with schedule of presentations, that are going to be demonstrated at Nvidia booth #1702 at March 12-13

Those include such intriguing topics like:

Unity for Engineers – are they planning to demonstrate update physics system in Unity 3.0 ?

Authoring Runtime Animation with NaturalMotion Morpheme 2.3 – I’ve heard that Morpheme is going to be integrated with APEX Clothing, is that it ?

Softimage 2011 Enhanced with PhysX – next version of Softimage will include updated PhysX SDK integration ?

Streamlining PhysX Content in Max – is it related to rumored new physics system in XBR ?

Sadly I can’t visit GDC myself, but I’ll try to provide you with any open or insider information I’ll be able to gather

We wrote previuosly about upcoming new version of FluidMark, that is going to include Multi-Core CPU PhysX support.

Recently, with help of David Legrand from PCinpact.com, Jerome “JeGX” Guinot was able to test new FluidMark 1.2 on setup with 16 CPU cores. (click to view full image)

And as you may see, CPU PhysX simulation with 48 000 fluid particles is 100 % utilizing all 16 Cores. Amazing work

New FluidMark is going to be available soon enough, after JeGx will catch and kill remaing bugs.

Update: JeGX is participating in “What Would You Do With 48 Cores ?” contest by AMD with new FluidMark (which already support up to 64 CPU cores). That’s going to be interesting 

Source: PCinpact | Geeks3D

Old PhysX fans will certanly recognize this name – Novodex Rocket (PhysX Rocket later on). This application combines two roles: demo physics playground (with large number of  preliminarily created and configurable scenes, ability to change and visualize SDK parameters) and physics editor, which can export objects data to COLLADA or NxuStream.

PhysX Rocket was often used by Ageia to demonstrate SDK features and PPU computing capabilities in year 2005, and was included in SDK package as PhysX tool (till SDK 2.7.3.).

John Ratcliff, PhysX Rocket creator, has made a nice present recently – he revealed an updated legacy version of Rocket, which is based on latest PhysX SDK 2.8.3 and includes advanced UI options (unavailable in previous public versions), but is missing some vital demo scenes and object files. Fortunately, we were able to merge this updated Rocket with old one, from SDK 2.7.3 Tools – this means all demos like in regular Rocket, but SDK 2.8.3 solver and additional UI options from new one.

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PhysX developers may be familiar with John Ratcliff – author of NxuStream (XML file format which is used to capture state of a PhysX SDK scene), Novodex/PhysX Rocket (physics demo application and editor) and other physics related researches.

In recent days John has updated his blog, known as John Ratcliff’s Code Suppository, with new usefull PhysX tools and code snippets:

PhysX2Obj – library that allows one to export a PhysX SDK scene as either a single Wavefront OBJ file in world space or a series of OBJ files in object space. Code has been compiled and tested with PhysX SDK 2.8.3 but should work with earlier versions of the SDK with little or no modification.

Library is available for download via Google Code page.

Tool with reverse purpose – Obj2PhysX - is going to be released shortly.

NvCoreDump is a windows 32 bit DLL which allows any PhysX 2.8.3 based project to perform an NxuStream XML compatible core dump in a single function call.

Rather than including all of the NxuStream source code in your application, instead you can simply demand load this tiny DLL and save it out.  The value, purpose, and benefit is to take simply add the ability to export the contents of the current PhysX SDK in any application by simply adding this tiny code snippet and the DLL.

Project is available for download via Google Code page.

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PhysX FluidMark is popular benchmarking application, that is often used to test stability and performance of GPU PhysX configurations. It performs PhysX SDK based SPH Fluids particle simulation, which can be calculated on CPU or compatible Nvidia GPU, however, only one CPU core can be used in first case.

After all those “Multi-Core CPU Support Is Disabled in PhysX” claims by AMD and following hype, JeGX (FluidMark developer) decided to leverage multi-threading capabilities of PhysX SDK and augment FluidMark with actual multi-core CPU support.

According to short preview, published today – task was successful.

As you may see, updated version of FluidMark, running on JeGX dev. machine with ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU, is fully utilizing both cores of AMD X2 3800+ CPU.

Update: JeGX revealed another screenshot from upcoming FluidMark with multi-core PhysX support, running on all four cores of quad core Intel Core 2 Extreme X9650 CPU.

Previous version of multi-core FluidMark was able to load only dual-core CPU, but this, updated one – can utilize  quad-core or even n-core CPU.

Update #2: And now – FluidMark running on 16 CPU Cores.

We are proud to announce our new line of articles, called “PhysX From Inside Out” – view on PhysX SDK from developer’s perspective, within the bounds of certain PhysX based applications.

Or first, pilot article, is dedicated to RayFire Tool – awesome destruction plug-in for 3ds Max. Mir Vadim, RayFire Tool sole developer, has answered some of our questions about  RayFire history and PhysX SDK role in plug-in development.

Read The Article - PhysX From Inside Out: RayFire Tool

P.S. I’ve counted on small interview firstly, but Mir Vadim has sended a huge post-mortem like material – must read for every RayFire user and admirer.

Thanks Mir !

According to Nvidia GDC 2010 sessions plan, next major add-on for EVE Online, popular sci-fi space MMO game, known as “Incarna” or “Walking on Stations” will use APEX Clothing module for character clothing simulation.

Physically Simulated Clothing in Eve Incarna Using NVIDIA APEX

In this session, we will demonstrate how CCP added physically simulated clothing to their Eve Incarna characters using NVIDIA’s APEX Clothing. We will demonstrate, step by step, the full authoring pipeline, from DCC tools to final integration into the game engine. This session introduces the full NVIDIA APEX suite of artist friendly tools and runtime libraries (Clothing, Destruction, Particles, Turbulence & Vegetation), which significantly speed up creation and inclusion of scalable, dynamic content without a large engineering effort.

Previosly know as “Ambulation”, than “Walking on Stations” and now “Incarna” project is supposed to pare capsuleer pilots out of their ships and put them into stations – for the first time. (currently, players have no ability to control their actual avatars, only space ships)

Update: APEX Clothing and EVE Incarna – first look from GDC 2010.

Christmas present from Nvidia – new PhysX DCC plug-in for 3ds Max is now available officially.

Release Notes, thanks to Gavin Kistner:

This new plug-in has been rewritten from the ground up. A few highlights of the new release:

• Support for Max 2008, 2009, 2010 (and when available, 2011), 32-bit and 64-bit.
• A first-class toolbar and menu for creating and controlling the simulation.
• A modifier-based approach to match workflow in 3ds Max, with greatly improved artist interface to the options.
• A physical material system for using and adjusting physics properties on many objects at once.
• Convenient constraint presets for common workflows.
• Improved constraint visualization and performance.
• Convenient ragdolls, deriving collision volumes from a skinned mesh.
• Bake simulation results to keyframes for offline rendering.
• Super simple samples created by engineers and yours truly.
• New documentation rewritten from scratch.

This great progress comes at a slight cost, however. Some PhysX features available in the previous plug-in are not (yet) exposed on the new version. Fluids, cloth, force fields, and soft bodies are not supported with this release. As demanded and deemed important, we will be adding features and improving the plug-in for the next releases. (Look in particular for the inclusion of awesome APEX Clothing in an upcoming release.)

New tools are available for download via Developer Support Center. If you are experiencing trouble with registration of PhysX Developer account, please refer to our registration guide.

Once approved and logged in – Plug-ins are located under “Online Support” -> “Downloads” Tab

Update: Plug-ins leaked – x86 version (Mirror #1; Mirror #2; Mirror #3) ||  x64 version (Mirror #1; Mirror #2; Mirror #3) – Source: CGPersia

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This week is rich in leaked PhysX tools and software: 9.09.1112 drivers previously, and now – new beta PhysX 2.0 plug-in for 3ds Max. This plug-in was unavailable even on Dev. Support Center, only by personal e-mail request.

New plug-in  supports both 32- and 64-bit versions of 3ds Max 2008, 2009 and 2010. Features overview is located here

Download via Rapidshare (download limit reached)

Update: PhysX plug-in v2.01 for 3ds Max released

Source: sinefx.com