It seems that NVIDIA has finally decided to make APEX available for broader audience.

UPDATE: NVIDIA APEX 1.0 Beta released

Main APEX page on Developer Website was updated with following statement

APEX 1.0 beta provides access to APEX Destruction and Clothing. The NVIDIA APEX 1.0 (beta) tools and binary SDK are 100% free and can be used in both commercial and non-commercial projects. APEX is available for immediate download by all registered PhysX developers.

So, APEX Clothing and APEX Destruction modules are about to be released with authoring tools (new 3ds Max/Maya plug-ins and PhysXLab) and APEX runtime SDK (with all docs and tutorials) – this mean that developers will gain the ability to freely integrate APEX into their engines.

According to our sources, APEX 1.0 Beta release will happen this week (despite of quoted text above, it is not yet available).

Update: PhysXLab Beta was released, the rest will follow soon.

Update #2: New PhysX plug-ins for 3ds Max and Maya are released

Epic Games has announced March release of Unreal Development Kit (UDK), free version of Unreal Engine 3.

March UDK includes all DX11 features, that were presented in Samaritan Demo at GDC 2011.

Important DirectX features now shipping with UDK include:

• Tessellation and displacement;
• Geometry shaders;
• Multisampled textures; and
• Shader Model 5.

In addition, UDK is now fully integrated with NVIDIA APEX, high-level scalable framework oriented on creation of complex physical effects, like destructible environment of dynamic character clothing.

NVIDIA’s APEX technology has also been integrated into the engine and ships with UDK.

NVIDIA APEX technology enables artists to quickly generate physically simulated clothing and destructible environments.

However, to take advantage of APEX functionality, authoring tools are needed to be released by NVIDIA. According to our sources, this may happen very soon, probably within a week.

Update: APEX 1.0 Beta released

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Another NVIDIA developer session from GDC 2011 is now available – Realistic and Interactive Clothing in Epic Games “Samaritan” Demo Using NVIDIA APEX (in .pdf format).

Update: recorded session is now available at GDC Vault. Content of this post was updated accordingly.

New interesting technic was presented during presentation – highly detalized graphical mesh with many details (pockets, clasps, etc) was attached to a simplified uniformly tesselated mesh called “Drive Mesh“, that was used for APEX Clothing simulation. In this case, clothing with very complex geometry (like on the Samaritan character above) can be easily authored and simulated with high performance.

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NVIDIA has uploaded several new videos, showcasing APEX Destruction module in action.

First one is demonstrating long-anticipated feature – GPU accelerated rigid body simulation.

This is actually the first time, when GPU rigid bodies are presented as part of APEX module.

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User “kproudfoot” has published a short video, that is showcasing interactive demo of APEX Destruction module, running at NVIDIA GDC booth right now.

Update: new APEX Destruction videos

This demo contains one fully destructible level and is likely based on Unreal Engine 3. You can notice decent  number of active rigid bodies but still pretty smooth framerate.

Autodesk has updated full line of their products with new 2012 versions, and browsing through the website we’ve noticed something very interesting in feature video called “New Simulation Options” for Maya 2012.

Update: Release version of Deus Ex: Human Revolution is not using any PhysX/APEX tech. Probably, Adam character was used just as example.

A character, very similar to Adam Jensen from upcoming Deus Ex: Human Revolution game, was used to showcase clothing simulation via APEX Clothing integration.

Does this mean that Deus Ex: Human Revolution will use APEX Clothing module, or maybe even support GPU PhysX acceleration ? As you may remember, hardware PhysX support for Mafia II was spoiled in absolutely same manner.

What do you think ? Tell us in comments.

NVIDIA and Epic Games are teaming up this week at Game Developers Conference to showcase latest additions to Unreal Engine 3, like DX 11 support and NVIDIA APEX Framework integration.

“Thanks to NVIDIA’s excellent cross-platform physics technologies and DX11 expertise, we have enhanced Unreal Engine 3 to bring unprecedented new levels of realism and demonstrate what the next generation of gaming will be,” said Mark Rein, vice president of Epic Games.

Alpha and beta versions of certain APEX modules were used in UE3 based games previously (Dark Void and Batman Arkham Asylum), but now full APEX toolset will be available to all UE3 licensees and UDK users as well, and can be used to create high-fidelity physics content (character clothing, for example) even in CPU PhysX and console games.

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One of the main features of NVIDIA APEX framework is not only complexity or quality of simulation, but artist-focused authoring pipeline, that allows easy creation of physical content without significant programmer involvement.

Update: PhysX plug-ins for Max and Maya with APEX Clothing features are available.

Update #5: New complete set of official APEX Clothing tutorials.

Authoring process in promising APEX Clothing module (you can remember its debut in Mafia II title) goes through DCC plug-ins for 3ds Max and Maya.

Following tutorials (available previously for plug-in beta users) are giving perfect overview of clothing authoring process, basic capabilities and features, using 3ds Max plug-in as an example.

Tutorial I – Waving flag

Tutorial II – Physically simulated Cape

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In Mafia II, as you may notice from our comparison video, clothing simulation on main character (Vito Scaletta) is present regardless to APEX PhysX settings, main difference is in Cloth detalization and used technologies – standart PhysX Cloth (APEX PhysX Off) and more advanced APEX Clothing module (APEX PhysX Medium/High).

Clothing detalization is mostly determined by number of vertices, forming a physical cloth mesh.

So, just for curiosity, we decided to count them in Mafia II (with help of AgPerfMon profiler), using different APEX PhysX settings and various Vito’s suits.

Leather Jacket.

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Everyone who played Mafia II will eventually notice, that enabling special APEX PhysX content will not only bring you flowing clothing and particle debris, but also significantly reduce framerate – even if you have a proper NVIDIA GPU and latest PhysX System Software.

Update: APEX Clothing in numbers

Update #2: Tests with dedicated PhysX GPU added – PART III.

While preparing our PhysX tweaking guide we have discovered that physically simulated clothing on characters is affecting performance the most. Why that ? Cloth is one of the basic effects, used intensively in many GPU PhysX games – just remember Mirror’s Edge and it’s countless tearable banners and flags. Two answers come to mind:

• Clothing simulation in Mafia II is so detailed and so high-resolution, that only top dedicated GPUs can run it at proper fps.

Unlikely. Even in most intensive scenes total cloth vertices count is not exceeding 8000, while framerate is crawling around 20 fps – on GTX 470.

• Clothing simulation is running on CPU, while it is supposed to be hardware accelerated on GPU.

Plausible. But, as our further tests have revealed, proved to be true for single GPU systems only.

Combine it with facts that a) Cloth in PhysX SDK is not using all available CPU resources by default b) Clothing is heavy computational task in any case – and you’ll see the probable reason of poor performance. Let’s check this theory.

PART I – MAFIA II BENCHMARK.

For the first part of tests we’ll use benchmark, built into Mafia II, running with two sets of APEX effects – Clothing only (Particles are disabled using methods from tweaking guide) and Particles only (Clothing is omitted) – and PhysX acceleration enabled/disabled from NVIDIA Control Panel.

Settings: 1680x1024, AO/AA On, AFx16, APEX High. System: C2Q 9400, GTX 470, 4GB RAM, Win 7 x64, 198.32 GPU drivers, PSS 9.10.0513

Interesting results. While Particles are benefiting from GPU acceleration without doubt, PhysX switch is not affecting Clothing simulation at all.

It seems our assumption was correct – APEX Clothing is calculated on CPU in any case – but let’s confirm it with some deeper research.

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