Updated 1.1 Beta 3 version of PhysXLab, authoring tool for APEX Destruction module, is now available.

PhysXLab 1.1 is compatible with APEX 1.1 release.

• New Features
  • Ability to export “Do Not Fracture” chunks as a single ApexRenderMesh.
  • Mesh texture visualization while in cutout mode.
  • Option to make the playground mesh transparent, so that the bomb widget may be manipulated more easily.
  • PhysXLab project file icon association.
  • Tutorial links in documentation.
  • Instanced chunk highlight options available together.
  • Updated release notes.
  • US7706: Visualization to distinguish non-instanced and instanced (but with 0 offset) chunks.

• Bug-fixes
  • Removed non-functioning group fracture menu.
  • Fixed DE4674: Asset is jumping in place after damage is applied.
  • Fixed defect with behavior of asset setting flags, depth All has correct effect.
  • Fixed DE1161: Saved destruction preset not loading correctly.

PhysXLab 1.1 Beta 3 can be downloaded through PhysX Registered Developer Program.

If you are experiencing trouble with registration, please refer to our new guide.

In pair with 2.72 plug-in, NVIDIA has presented new 2.85.0427 version of PhysX plug-in for 3ds Max 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

2.85 plug-in is roughly equivalent to MassFX 2013 in terms of features, except that it provides APEX Clothing support instead on mCloth simulation engine.

• General
  • General: Support for APEX 1.2 (however, PhysX 3 cloth is not yet functional)
  • General: Support for PhysX SDK 3.2 engine.
• Rigid Body
  • New convex decomposition algorithm for approximating non-convex meshes.
  • Controls to assist in more control over the contact shell (aka skinWidth, aka collisionOverlap) to allow and favor the shell to be outside of the shape so that at maximum overlap objects do not penetrate.
  • Resizable contact buffer for PhysX 3 engine.
• Constraints
  • New targeting sub-object modifier to help with singularity conditions.
  • New targeting sub-object modifier to set the twist starting location.
  • Improved workflow around parameters which are tied together and may be enable/disabled.
• Ragdolls
  • Now provides pre-configured constraint limits on biped.
  • Now maintains constraint position at bone pivot point (reset on simulation start if moved but maintains orientation).
  • Regeneration groups manager.
  • Mass redistribution.
  • Basic CAT support (Not to the same level at biped yet).
• APEX Clothing
  • Latch To Nearest system now only support 30 instead of 32 channels.

PhysX plug-in version 2.85 for 3ds Max is available through PhysX Registered Developer Program.

If you are experiencing trouble with registration, please refer to our new guide.

NVIDIA is about to meet the wishes of developer community with more friendly way to take advantage of PhysX SDK and APEX Tools – Registered Developer Program.

In comparison to previous account registration process, Developer Program features automated account approval (matter of minutes, not days) and simplified downloads structure (easier to find demanded files).

Attention ! Registered Developer Program only provides access to free binary versions of PhysX SDK, APEX DCC Tools (PhysXLab, PhysX plug-ins) and APEX SDK.

Source versions will still be available through PhysX Developer Support website only, as well as paid support.

IF YOU ARE NOT REGISTERED AT NVIDIA DEVELOPER ZONE

Step 1. Go to NVIDIA Developer Zone and click “New Account” (upper right corner)

Step 2. Fill-in account information, than press “Create new account” button

Step 3. Instructions and password will be sent to your e-mail. Complete the registration

IF/WHEN YOU ALREADY HAVE DEVELOPER ZONE ACCOUNT

Step 1. While logged-in, click “My Account” (upper right corner)

Step 2. Complete Basic Registered Developer Profile

You will be required to provide your Last and First name, information about your company and your location.

Step 3. Now you can apply to APEX/PhysX Registered Developer Program (PhysX RDP)

Step 4. Fill-in provided questionary

Please note that you will be required to agree to the terms and conditions specified in the PhysX/APEX EULA. Read it carefully.

Step 5. Wait until you Developer Program status will change from “Submitted” to “Approved” (may take up to 30 minutes – you will be also notified via e-mail upon completion).

You can access PhysX RDP website by clicking program’s title or direct link

Step 6. Now you can download latest binary PhysX SDKs, APEX SDK and DCC tools.

Subsequently, while logged, you access PhysX RDP via “My Account” panel, or through “Registered Developers Website” link on devzone main page, or via direct link.

If you have trouble with new account registration or existing account you can send your problem description to support@physxinfo.com (with subject – “PhysX RDP”) – we’ll try to provide a shortcut to PhysX dev. team.

Remaining presentations from GDC 2012 are now available at GDC Vault.

Particularly interesting detail was revealed during “Mastering DX11 with Unity” (PDF) talk – NVIDIA APEX framework will be added to popular Unity game engine, which is currently using modified PhysX SDK 2.8.3 as physics engine.

A short demo (bus smashing through propane shop) of basic APEX Destruction module usage was presented, followed by promises to expand integration on other APEX modules in the future.

Next presentation, “Enhancing Games with Clothing and Destruction” is absolutely indentical to Game Technology Theather talk of the same name, we have reviewed it earlier.

Finally, it is worth to check a “Solving Rigid Body Contacts” tutorial from Richard Tonge, however, it is a bit technical.

QQ Dance 2 is a sequel to ultra-popular (over 2 million concurrent users, 100 million registered users) Chinese online dancing game called, obviously, QQ Dance.

Build on proprietary H3D engine, QQ Dance 2 will not only provide significant improvement in visual fidelity, but also feature fully simulated clothing and hair on characters using PhysX SDK 2.8.4 and APEX Clothing module.

Presented demo is containing 50 000 simultaneously simulated cloth vertices (for example, even most intense scene in Mafia 2 has no more than 15 000 cloth vertices).

QQ Dance 2 is supposed to be released in Q4 2012. This game will not only support GPU acceleration, but also have a CPU path for non-NVIDIA systems.

NVIDIA has uploaded a following video, revealing new, never seen before, module for APEX Framework, called APEX Dynamic Systems (it is still an early prototype, however).

Detailed description is not available yet, but it seems that this new module is supposed to speed up the creation process of complex dynamic actors like articulations, ragdolls and vehicles, by providing artist friendly environment, where one can easily create and tune such objects and preview their behaviour.

NVIDIA has uploaded a set of demontrational videos, which were used to showcase features of NVIDIA APEX toolset, its authoring capabilities and games integrations examples at GDC 2012.

APEX Turbulence Module

We find APEX Turbulence demo particularly impressive, since particle simulation of such magnitude and complexity (scene contains up to 180 000 particles combined) is yet to be seen in games, while it can be used to create new generation of realistic smoke, dust and explosion effects.

It is good to see that this module has finally reached production stage. Turbulence is promised to be released as part of APEX 1.2

APEX Destruction Module

This video showcases assets authoring and real-time destruction using updated Art Gallery demo and Alice: Madness Returns title as examples.

APEX Clothing Module.

APEX Clothing can be used not only to simulate character clothing itself, but also to create great environmental cloth assets, like interactive banknotes, posters or rugs in recent Batman: Arkham City title.

If you are interested in Clothing module, following presentation from GDC contains far mode details.

Ever since the existence of Unreal Engine 4, next-generation game development platfrom from Epic Games, was revealed, one question was bothering us – will it still rely on PhysX SDK integration for physics sumulation, like UE3 and UDK?

And it seems the answer is “Yes”.

During presentation of PhysX and APEX features, that NVIDIA employee was giving to Gametrailers at GDC 2012, following words were said:

So here we are showing some of our technologies that are already incorporated in the games and game engines.

In this case all three of these demos are in Unreal Engine.. we are integrated in both Unreal 3 and upcoming Unreal 4.

Gametrailers has published several videos, revealing what kind of newest additions to PhysX SDK engine and APEX Framework were showcased at NVIDIA Booth, at current GDC.

First video is showing yet experimental technology – new cloth solver and real-time fracturing.

Wooly character contains 840 000 particles simulated as 100 000 invidual strands of fur and is running on new solver that is currently under active research.

Real-time fracturing will be nice addition to the APEX Destruction module, which, currently, is utilizing only pre-fractured meshes. Fracturing happening in real-time, accordingly to impact force and point of damage application will certanly make destruction look more natural and immersive.

Update: more detailed videos of new fracturing engine.

Update #2: fur simulation technology video

Second video is showcasing production technology: APEX Turbulence, APEX Destruction and APEX Clothing modules integrated in UE3.

APEX Turbulence module, so far only featured in Dark Void title is making a coming back ! Fully realisitic and dynamic smoke or dust it can produce would be welcomed addition to upcoming games.

APEX Destruction was demonstrated in a form of good old Art Gallery scene, used at previous GDC as well.

And finally, Samaritan character was utilized to showcase capabilities of clothing simulation through APEX Clothing module.

Almost a year has passed since NVIDIA and Epic Games presented APEX 1.0 integration in Unreal Development Kit (UDK) engine.

And now, February 2012 release of UDK can “please” us with silent introduction of newest APEX 1.1 Framework, which includes updated APEX Clothing and APEX Destruction modules.

Unfortunately, UDN documentation was not yet updated, and some flaws were found in this release - for example, APEX GPU Rigid Body libraries are missing from the February distribution. Not to mention, that not all APEX 1.1 features have made it into UDK.

UPDATE: March UDK is released. Issues with missing GRB libraries were resolved.

Please note: only assets created with latest authoring tools - PhysXLab 1.1 and 2.71 DCC plug-ins - are compatible with APEX 1.1

Let’s take a look on some of the new features in APEX 1.1 integration we were able to discover:

APEX DESTRUCTION 1.1:

For additional data on Destruction Module please refer to UDN page

• GPU Rigid Bodies (GRB). One of the most interesting features of 1.1 release is new ability to calculate rigid body physics on CUDA-capable GPUs, thus achieveing performance improvement in scenes with many destructible actors and simulated chunks, while using exact same assets and settings as for CPU physics.

----- Following is valid only for February 2012 UDK

As we have mentioned, current GRB implementation is missing vital libraries and also has some bugs: you can either wait until March UDK release or try it out now (for your own risk) – using our .dll package (36 mb).

Copy “GRB_1_x86.dll” and “pxtask_cuda_x86.dll” to “UDK\Binaries\Win32\” folder.

Copy “GRB_1_x64.dll” and “pxtask_cuda_x64.dll” to “UDK\Binaries\Win64\” folder.

---- Previous is only valid for February 2012 UDK

Now, to enable GRBs you need to set following parameters in “Engine\Config\BaseEngine.ini” file:

bDisablePhysXHardwareSupport=False

ApexGRBEnable=True

You may also want to tweak following settings:

ApexDestructionMaxChunkIslandCount – maximum number of simulated chunks.

ApexDestructionMaxShapeCount – each chunk could have multiple shapes, so you can limit those too.

ApexGRBGPUMemSceneSize – GPU memory allocated to store scene data (shapes, actors).

ApexGRBGPUMemTempDataSize – GPU memory allocated to store contacts and collision data.

Please note that GPU acceleration: #1 Is only working for Destructible assets, not regular UDK physics actors.  #2 Is not effective in scenes with small amount of physical objects. #3 Supports only one-way interaction with CPU rigid bodies.

It is recommended to install latest GPU driver.

• New Sort by Benefit option defines how chunks are removed from the scene when resource budget is reached. Benefits calculation is based on screen size (which, itself, depends on size of the chunk/island and distance from the camera) and age of the chunk, not just relative lifetime, as before.

It is enabled by default:

ApexDestructionSortByBenefit=True

Thus, enabling this option will prevent undesirable situations, when, for example, chunks dissapear in front of you as something gets destroyed in the background. New system will also preserve large chunk inslands and delete smaller insignificant chunks in the first place.

• Ability to have multiple collision hulls per chunk for better representation of objects with concave geometry.

PhysXLab 1.1 performs convex decomposition automatically, while complexity of physical mesh can be controlled by “Collision Quality” settings under “Asset” tab.

Collision hulls (red wireframe) on various quality settings

Increased collision quality can also help to avoid interpenetrations between chunks, but will consume more resources.  But if your chunks are perfectly convex (for example, if Voronoi shattering is used), you can safely reduce quality to 1 or 2, in order to improve performance.

• Chunks instancing and tiling. Matching chunks created from cutout fracturing can be instanced within the same actor, as well as other destructible actors which reference the same asset – to speed up rendering.

Instancing option (it is located under “Graphics” tab) must be set during authoring process.

APEX CLOTHING 1.1:

For additional data on Clothing module please refer to UDN page

• Per-actor scaling. Each actor can now be scaled individually and simulated correspondingly.

• Asynchronous cooking. Cooking will be delayed if another actor already started cooking, in case if several actors with different per-actor scale are created. Actors will not be simulated during this process.

This option is also enabled by default:

ApexClothingAllowAsyncCooking=True

• Adaptive Target Frequency reduces the high frequency jittering that happens due to slightly varying timesteps, by adapting the per-cloth gravity slightly.

Target frequency is computed as the average over the real last N (normally 60) simulation steps. Number of steps can be defined with following parameter:

ApexClothingAvgSimFrequencyWindow=60

We’ll update this page as more official information will be released.