Autodesk has published a recorded video of a presentation – “The Latest Advances in NVIDIA PhysX / APEX Technology” – that was performed by Daniel Horowitz, engineering manager for PhysX dev. tools in NVIDIA,  at Siggraph 2011.

Update: MassFX: what is coming in future versions of 3ds Max

This presentation is covering such topics as design principles of PhysX and MassFX plug-ins, relationship between those tools, and is also giving an overview on APEX Clothing authoring process and upcoming features.

Some interesting facts:

• APEX Destruction functionality will be added to PhysX plug-ins in the future. It was also mentioned, that it will be possible to use to use 3d party tools for fracturing (not only default solution in PhysXLab) and also tweak graphical and physical meshes separately.
• Next release – PhysX plug-in 2.7 will support PhysX SDK 2.8.4, PhysX SDK 3.1 and APEX 1.1
• APEX Softbodies module was mentioned.
• Contact Layers feature (basically, collision filtering) will be added in 2.7 plug-in for Maya, and 2.x plug-in for 3ds Max.
• Patner integration program. For example, PhysX based rigid bodies from Particle Flow plug-ins will be able to interact with MassFX rigid bodies.
• mCloth module will be based on ClothFX plug-in from Size8Software, but it will fully interact with MassFX rigid bodies, ragdolls, atachments and so on (nice solution to keep PhysX cloth and APEX focused on clothing simulation for games only).

It was promised that new 2.7 PhysX plug-ins will arrive shortly, in a few weeks, so keep an eye on our website for a full review.

Nvidia has recently uploaded APEX related presentation called “APEX : Creating scalable immersive game environments” from their  SIGGRAPH 2010 sponsored sessions list.

Usual overview of APEX framework and current modules (like Destruction and Clothing), which are already familiar to us from past GDC10 and SIGGRAPH09 sessions, is followed by topic never described in detail previously – Scalability and LOD features inside APEX (starts at 32:55).

In general, it’s devided into two components – scalable parameters for each of the modules (like number of particles or cloth vertices), that can be adjusted during authoring to fit into platform computing capabilities..

..and dynamic LOD system, that manages resources destribution between actors and modules, based on current situation and resources budget (for example, clothing on character closer to the camera will be simulated with higher fidelity).

Now, as we know almost everything about APEX, we just need to wait until it will be released to public (standalone, or integrated into popular engines like UE3).

November’s Nvidia Developer Newsletter #49 has brought some very interesting material – 50 min. long video of “Creating Immersive Environments With NVIDIA APEX” session from SIGGRAPH 2009 conference.

It contains in-deph overview of all APEX Modules (FYI, APEX is artist focused framework on top of PhysX SDK), new details and demos, never shown before. Must watch for PhysX developers and people who are simply interested in PhysX future.

Download video (197 mb.)