Basefount has announced release of Miarmy 1.2 – plug-in for Autodesk Maya that is capable of behavioral animation, crowd simulation, physics calculation and rendering.

Amond other features, physics engine in Miarmy 1.2 is now based on PhysX SDK 3.1 (in previous releases – 2.8.4), which provides faster and more accurate rigid body physics simulation even with high number of complex jointed objects.

In addition, usage of new PxCloth solver allows “100 times faster” simulation of cloth and clothing assets.

With new PhysX 3.1 Engine, The limit on the number of dynaimc agents is gone. On an average home PC, one can easily create a scene with more than 5,000 agents enable dynamics which contains more than 85,000 RBD objects and 80,000 dynamical joints. The cloth simulation will became almost real-time.

NVIDIA has released yet another version of PhysX System Software – 9.12.0213. It is supposed to fix some compatibility issues, introduced by previous releases.

• Includes the latest PhysX runtime builds to support all released PhysX content.
• Changes & fixed issues in this release
  • Fixed a bug that caused cloth (paper) to jitter in Batman Arkham City.
  • Fixed a bug that caused Alice 2 to crash.
• Supports NVIDIA PhysX acceleration on all GeForce 8-series, 9-series, 100-series, 200-series, 300-series, 400-series, 500-series, and 600-series GPUs with a minimum of 256MB dedicated graphics memory.

You can download PhysX System Software 9.12.0213 from NVIDIA website.

P.S. There is one more new PSS version – 9.12.0209 – inside 295.73 GPU drivers.

Along with APEX 1.1 release, NVIDIA has prepared new 2.71 version of PhysX plug-ins for 3ds Max (2009-2012) and Maya (2009-2012).

Update: 2.72 plug-ins available

2.71 PhysX Plug-in for 3ds Max – Release Notes:

• General: Fix a HW check issue for old driver causing crash for some users.
• General: Saving file at the end of a simulation will capture transform all objects in scene.
• General: Sprinting improvement for 3rd party plugins utilizing this plugin.
• General: Exporter locale issue. Force to keep as period instead of comma.
• General: Removed unused materials and shapes in exported XML files.
• General: Fix the crash with previewer, waving flag sample.
• General: Upgrade 3.x mode to use PhysX SDK 3.1.1
• General: Minor toolbar tweaks.
• General: Prevent some convex hull failure cases.
• General: Increase contact buffer for PhysX 3.x.
• General: Fix the bug that when in the middle baking, it restarts from time start. The reason is that Max does occasional preSave event and we prefer to rewind before saving.

• Rigid Body: Fix button based initial motion calculation.

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NVIDIA has released APEX SDK 1.1 (Build 112), next version of NVIDIA APEX – scalable dynamics framework, oriented on complex physical simulations.

In comparison to APEX 1.0 Beta, new version includes many bugfixes, several additions to underlying framework and various new features, like ability to calculate rigid body physics on GPU.

APEX 1.1 contains only Destruction and Clothing modules, and is still based on PhysX SDK 2.8.4.6 – first version with PhysX 3 support is going to be APEX 1.2 (that is supposed to be released in a few months).

We must also note that APEX 1.1 requires corresponding authoring tools – PhysXLab 1.1 and 2.71 DCC plug-ins.

NVIDIA APEX SDK 1.1 is available for download at Developer Support Center.

If you are experiencing trouble with registration of PhysX Developer account, please refer to our registration guide.

Release Notes:

APEX DESTRUCTION 1.1

New Features

• GPU Rigid Bodies: the NxModuleDestructible has settings to enable calculation of Rigid Body physics on GPU.

Highly anticipated feature. While using same assets and same settings, GPU Rigid Bodies are showing significantly higher performance – 70 fps for 5000+ rigid body chunks on single GTX 580 vs 10 fps on Core i7 2600K.

One-way interaction with dynamic CPU actors is also supported (via transfer of momentum). GPU accelerated rigid body physics requires NVIDIA driver 270.81 or later, PhysX 2.8.4 RC6 or later and a CUDA capable GPU.

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NVIDIA has revealed presentations schedule for Game Developers Conference 2012 (GDC 2012), taking place on March 5-9 in San Francisco.

As usually, certain talks will be demonstrating latest advances in PhysX and APEX technologies. Let’s take a look:

March 7th, Booth #1424

3dsMax with MassFX

11:00am - 12:00pm. Chris Murray, Autodesk

Autodesk’s implementation of MassFX within 3dsMax will show you just how easy the workflow is for rigid body dynamics and how versatile to the tool can be. Additionally, Autodesk will be giving a technology preview of some aspects of MassFX currently being experimented with in 3dsMax.

IKinema IK for Combining Physics and Animation in Maya

2:00pm - 3:00pm. Alexandre Pechev, IKinema

IKinema is a production-proven solution for animating with inverse kinematics (IK) in Maya. Come see how we combine IKinema IK with NVIDIA’s PhysX Plugin for Maya to produce animations that can capture a character’s intent and physical simulation at with an improved speed and accuracy over handmade animations. Dressing the character with APEX Clothing can add even more dramatic physical effects and secondary motion to your film or game.

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“NVIDIA and Gearbox are bringing something really special to PDXLAN 19.

Attendees are in for an exclusive treat that will blow your mind!!”

These welcome words can be found on official page of upcoming PDXLAN event.

Rumors are saying, that NVIDIA will demonstrate special PhysX demo of a game from Gearbox Software, running on next-gen “Kepler” GPU.

UPDATE [19.02.2012]: NVIDIA presentation was held on Saturday (18 Feb), at 5 pm.

According to some people, who was participating in the event – NVIDIA was not showing Kepler GPUs.

Intead, there were Tegra 3 presentation, giveaway contests (with T-shirts and even Transformer Prime tablets) and Borderlands 2 demo. But, unfortunately, “no word on PhysX“  support in Borderlands.

Certainly, many of you will agree that the addition of GPU PhysX effects to PC games has a positive influence on overall gaming experience and immersion in such titles. But how difficult is to attach hardware accelerated physics effects to a game?

Today, with the help of David Schoemehl, Manager of GPU PhysX Content in NVIDIA, and Johnny Costello, Technical Artist, we will try to give you a brief “behind the scenes” view on the process of enhancing games with extra PhysX content.

PhysXInfo.com: Hi, Johnny and David. Can you please introduce yourself?

Johnny Costello: My name is Johnny Costello, I’m 29 years old and am a native to the Midwestern United States. I went to college at Savannah College of Art and Design and received my B.F.A. in game development. I have been a technical artist at NVIDIA for about two and a half years. During that time I have worked on several GPU PhysX titles such as Batman: Arkham Asylum, Batman: Arkham City, Mafia II, Dark Void, and Alice: Madness Returns.

David Schoemehl: My name is David Schoemehl, I joined AGEIA in 2006 as an applications engineer and was the project manager on Warmonger. Since the purchase of AGEIA by NVIDIA in 2008 I have led or supported several shipping GPU PhysX titles and demos including Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Samaritan Demo, Sacred 2, The Great Kulu Demo, and Alice: Madness Returns.

My current title is Manager of GPU PhysX Content and I am responsible for aligning NVIDIA’s engineers and artists to support developers on GPU PhysX engagements. I also work closely with Epic Games to ensure a solid integration of GPU PhysX/APEX features in UE3.

PhysXInfo.com: Johnny, what is your task as a PhysX technical artist?

Johnny Costello: My tasks can change a lot from day to day, but usually I’m working on a game title in some capacity. Our goal at NVIDIA is to provide the tools that developers need in order to add great GPU features to their games. So I spend much of my time working with developers to help guide them as they use our technology to create exciting content.

Depending on the structure of a particular engagement I may also work alongside the developer to create GPU PhysX content. Then there are other days where I help design and review our tools and production workflows.

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As always at the beginning of the year, Ken Pimentel (Director of Visual Communication Solutions within Autodesk) has revealed some details about new features and capabilities of upcoming versions of 3ds Max.

Few words were said about MassFX - PhysX SDK based physics simulation solution, introduced in 3ds Max 2012.

We introduced MassFX and mRigids (based on PhysX and our partnership with Nvidia) in 3ds Max 2012. It was a start on our march to a more unified dynamics experience. We’ve continued that effort with Nvidia and we think you’ll be pretty pleased with the results in general. We’re not done, but definite progress in the right direction, we hope you’re pleased with it.

“Results” will include, at least, the addition of mCloth module for cloth simulation (as revealed at SIGGRAPH 11) and forcefields functionality through standart Force objects (as you can notice from a “teaser” video below).

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After year of silence, OpenC1 project (previously known as OpenCarmageddon) – fan-made remake of classic Carmageddon racing game -  returns in a form of new and stable version 1.4.

OpenC1 utilizes XNA for graphics and PhysX SDK as physics engine. It implements almost all features of the original game (vehicles, tracks, vehicle damage and car deformations, pedestrians, AI and opponents, checkpoints, UI, etc) and can use data files (car models, levels, textures, sounds) from Carmageddon title and Splatpack add-on.

In comparison to 1.3.1 version, usability has been improved greatly – OpenC1 can now automatically download free content from Camageddon and Splatpack demos, it also includes data management functionality and is far more stable.

All you need is to download archive with 1.4 version from OpenC1 project page or our server (virustotal report), extract it, install latest PhysX System Software, XNA Framework 3.0 and run the OpenC1.exe file.