------------------------ RELEASE 1.2.3 ------------------------ This release is to fix two major bugs: * Packpanda has been broken forever. * I broke the tcl/tk stuff in the last release (1.2.2) It also fixes a few other minor bugs. ------------------------ RELEASE 1.2.2 ------------------------ This is a minor bugfix release. * Adds 'ppythonw', a version of ppython that doesn't open a console window. * If you have a bad fmod DLL in your windows folder, this version compensates. * Fixes a small bug in the VRML-to-egg converter. * Small stylistic improvements in some sample programs. ------------------------ RELEASE 1.2.1 ------------------------ This release is likely to be much more stable than its predecessors. It contains many new features: * lots of performance optimizations * a preliminary OSX port * new modes for animation blending * easier partial-body animations * more powerful shader-to-engine interface * better support for rotating bodies in physics engine * support for compressed model files * multiple render targets (ie, glDrawBuffers) * support for stereo rendering * more complete API reference manual * ability to control mipmaps explicitly * better tools for debugging offscreen buffers * new sample programs * a number of packpanda repairs ------------------------ RELEASE 1.1.0 ------------------------ This is a BETA release. It's pretty reliable, but there are still a few quirks here and there. Over the summer, Panda3D was overhauled top to bottom. The new code is dramatically improved, but it needs a little bit of testing. The new features are: * Much faster rendering of high-poly models. * Dramatically improved vertex and pixel shader support. * New demo programs using shaders and render-to-texture. * Play movies by using an AVI as a texture (windows only). * Python scripting uses much faster python to C++ interface. * Support for procedurally-created geometry (eg, fractals, etc). * Cleaner, simpler internal data structures. * Comes with Python 2.4 support built-in. * A lot more. The new demo programs are: * Render to Texture Demo * Cartoon Shader Demo * Motion Trails Demo * Procedural Geometry (Fractals) Demo * Normal Mapping Demo However, a caution: this is a BETA release: reasonably stable, but not quite perfect. Please send us your bug reports. ------------------------ RELEASE 1.0.5 ------------------------ UPDATE: this release broke support for visual studio. Use panda3d 1.0.4 if you wish to compile panda from scratch using visual studio. This release consists mainly of compatibility improvements. * Now compiles under MS Visual Toolkit (makefile changes) * Now compiles under Mandrake 10.1 (a fix in the makefile) * Now compiles under Debian Sarge (a fix in the VRML lexer) * Now compiles under Ubuntu HH (same as DEBIAN SARGE) * Add code for building debian 'deb' archives. * Fix scene editor and particle panel so they work on linux. * Add support for --no-python to makepanda. * Tidied up makepanda a bit. ------------------------ RELEASE 1.0.4 ------------------------ * This version includes the new Max exporter and the new Maya export panel. * We have added the --genman option to makepanda (to regenerate the API reference manual). This uses the epydoc documentation-generation system. * Several bugs in the new tutorials have been repaired. * A bug in fmod positional audio has been fixed. * Makepanda now puts the maya and max plugins in a separate 'plugins' directory, for convenience. * The 'libpandaegg' library has been exported to python. ------------------------ RELEASE 1.0.3 ------------------------ * The binary release contains a brand new collection of sample programs. The new sample programs are much better. * If you install the windows binary release, the sample programs can now be run from the start menu. * Lighting under DirectX was broken. This has been repaired. * The binary release has been compiled with support for pstats. (Previously, it was compiled with pstats disabled). * Various changes to make panda3d more compatible with the 'epydoc' documentation-generation system. ------------------------ RELEASE 1.0.2 ------------------------ This is a bugfix release. * makepanda contained a bug: it was compiling maya2egg6 against the Maya 5.0 libraries, making it largely useless. This is fixed. * Maya2egg65 has been added, for Maya 6.5 users. * The configuration combo "want-tk=false, want-directtools=true" used to confuse panda, because directtools uses Tk. Now it's smart enough to do the right thing. * When you ask controlJoint to create a control node for you, it initializes the control node to the joint's initial position. * The scene editor supposedly works now. We'll see. * The models directory was missing the animation 'panda-walk4', which is necessary for the tutorial. * A new directory 'win-extras' has been added to the thirdparty tree. This contains some miscellaneous python libraries needed at the Entertainment Technology Center. The script that builds the windows installer will include these libraries in the distribution. ------------------------ RELEASE 1.0.1 ------------------------ This is a bugfix release. * In the previous binary release, Config.prc did not contain a load-display line. This confuses pview. Pview is being fixed, but until then, the load-display line has been restored. * The Max and Maya plugins were inadvertently omitted from the previous binary release. This has been corrected. * An error in the distributed object networking layer has been fixed. The error only affected those who were trying to write LAN games using the CMU LAN server and p2p messages. * An error in the physics code has been corrected. * Python Megawidgets (pmw), which is required for "directtools", was not supplied in the previous release. We are now including pmw. In the Linux RPMs, to avoid overwriting any distribution-supplied pmw package, we put this package into /usr/share/panda3d. * To be consistent, we moved all the other python code into /usr/share/panda3d as well. This requires a file 'panda.pth' in the python lib directory. * In the binary RPMs, the file permissions of the python source files have been changed to 555, so that even if root runs panda, the '.pyc' files will not be modified or regenerated. ------------------------ RELEASE 1.0.0 ------------------------ Configuration, installation, and execution environments: * This is the introduction of the new Panda version numbering system. The Panda version will be represented with three dot-separated numbers. The first number, the major version, will change only very rarely. The second number, the minor version, will increment frequently, with each new feature release. The third number will increment as needed to indicate bugfix releases on the minor version. * Use PandaSystem::get_version_string() (or PandaSystem.getVersionString() in Python) to return the version number of the currently-running Panda. * New runtime config system allows for dynamic loading of prc files and supports querying of available variable names. Use ConfigVariableString, ConfigVariableBool, etc. to get a value from the prc file(s); use the ConfigVariableManager and ConfigPageManager classes (or the cvMgr and cpMgr global objects in Python) to make general queries. * The ppremake build system now properly detects intra-tree dependencies, but only if each tree is fully built and installed before ppremake is run within the next dependent tree. Requires using ppremake version 1.18 or higher. Miscellaneous: * New support for encrypted streams, including encrypted subfiles within a multifile, using the OpenSSL encryption library. Adds pencrypt and pdecrypt programs. * The default port for PStats is now 5185, to avoid a conflict with Instant Messenger. * New "smooth" checkbox on PStats graphs provides a better sense of overall trends when graphs are noisy. * The meaning of the three components of HPR angles has been officially changed, in particular the meaning of the R component. This change was introduced to make the three components more consistent with each other, and to make P and R work together in a more sensible way. Existing code which used hard-coded HPR angles may be invalidated by this change. To convert existing code, you should use the global function old_to_new_hpr() to determine what new HPR triple that corresponds to an old HPR triple. As a temporary stopgap, you may define temp-hpr-fix 0 in your prc file. * Add support for weak reference counts using the WeakPointerTo class. * Add optional support for STL's semistandard hashing containers, e.g. hash_map and hash_set. * Panda no longer requires any registry keys or environment variables. This means it is now possible to run panda directly from a CD, install multiple copies of panda on a single machine, or install panda by copying the tree from another computer. Note that the installer does add the panda 'bin' directory to your PATH, and it does store an uninstall key in the registry, but neither of these is needed for panda to function. * The 'makepanda' build system is now capable of building prepackaged games for Windows. These prepackaged games are simply copies of panda with the game code included, some of the unnecessary stuff stripped out, and some changes to the start menu. See "Airblade - Installer" on the panda downloads page for an example. * This is the first release to include not just a binary installer for windows, but also binary RPMs for fedora 2, fedora 3, and redhat 9. * All of the sample programs have been tested. The ones that didn't work have been removed, the ones that do work have been (lightly) documented. * In the Win32 binary release, the 'config.prc' file has been moved to the 'etc' directory. This is to make it consistent with the Linux version. Rendering system: * Multitexture support is now part of Panda. This introduces the TextureStage and TexCoordName classes, as well as new interfaces like NodePath::add_texture(). As of the present release, multitexture is only supported when using the OpenGL renderer. * Support for programmable shaders is now possible using the Cg shader language. Assign a CgShaderAttrib to a node to apply a programmable shader. * New support for the Helix library allows playing of a streaming movie in a Panda texture. Presently only supported on Windows. * Deprecated the old "win-origin-x" and "win-origin-y" prc variables in favor of "win-origin", which takes two numbers separated by a space. Similarly with "win-width" and "win-height", in favor of "win-size". * Deprecated the old Camera::set_scene() interface; now a Camera implicitly renders whatever scene graph it is parented to. * Removed the old GraphicsLayer and GraphicsChannel classes. Instead of using these interfaces, you can now create any number of DisplayRegions directly on the window. * Offscreen render-to-a-texture will now be properly oriented under DirectX (previously, it would render the texture image upside-down and backward). * Support for automatic keystone correction caused by an off-axis physical projector using Lens::set_keystone(). * New framebuffer-mode prc variable allows explicit control over the default framebuffer properties requested by Panda, including whether software or hardware rendering is required. * Added "multisample" transparency mode (alpha keyword "ms" in an egg file), which allows good-quality transparency (especially for alpha cutouts) without requiring back-to-front sorting, and without artifacts from improper sorting. This does require special multisample hardware capabilities, however. Presently supported in OpenGL mode only. Automatic fallback to "binary" transparency mode if multisample is not supported on a given platform. * New cursor-filename and icon-filename config variables replace the old win32-mono-cursor and win32-window-icon variables. Also, runtime control over these properties is now provided by the WindowProperties class. * Better management of potential memory leaks due to cyclic reference counts in the RenderState and TransformState caches. Now cycles are automatically detected and broken. Scene graph: * GeomNodes now have a CollideMask, just like CollisionNodes, which deprecates the old set_collide_geom() interface to detect collisions with visible geometry. There is a new NodePath interface for querying and setting the collide masks for single nodes or for entire subgraphs. * New NodePath interfaces to control lighting eliminate the need to create an explicit LightAttrib. The new lighting interfaces are designed to be similar to the new multitexture interfaces. * New NodePath interfaces to control the texture matrix, including a new project_texture() method to enable hardware-assisted projective texturing. * New NodePath::flatten_multitex() interface to bake in certain kinds of multitexture effects into a single texture, generated on-the-fly. * New options for ColorBlendAttrib and RenderModeAttrib. * NodePath::set_transparancy() now accepts a TransparencyAttrib::Mode parameter to specify exactly what kind of transparency you'd like. * New NodePath::set_render_mode() interface accepts a RenderModeAttrib::Mode parameter, deprecating set_render_mode_filled() and set_render_mode_wireframe(). * LerpQuatInterval can be used as a drop-in replacement for LerpHprInterval; it performs spherical lerps in quaternion space, rather than lerping each component of a HPR individually. LerpHprInterval is not deprecated; it remains useful within its limitations. * New DirectSliderBar gui object implements a standard slider bar with a thumb (like a window scroll bar). * Lighting normals are now automatically counterscaled properly when lighting is enabled in the presence of a scale, uniform or nonuniform, in the scene graph. You can also use RescaleNormalAttrib for explicit control over this behavior. * Improvements to RopeNode for rendering splines in various representations. Collisions and physics systems: * New CollisionSegment and CollisionInvSphere collision solids. * The collision system now reports normals for intersections detected from collision rays, segments, and lines. * Several improvements to the physics system. Model converters: * x2egg and egg2x added to converters, as well as to inline conversion supported via ptloader. This adds support for DirectX's native so-called "retained-mode" file format. This file format supports animation and joint hierarchies as well as basic polygonal models. * vrml2egg added to converters, as well as to inline conversion supported via ptloader. This adds support for VRML 2.0 model files only. * Added -noabs option to many model converters, to help detect problems with unintended absolute path references. * Added egg2bam -flatten and -combine-geoms. * We now have working exporters for Max5, Max6, Max7, Maya5, Maya6. (Update: these were accidentally omitted from the binary release) * The Max exporter is dramatically improved: it now includes support for character studio, and the polygon winding bug has been fixed. ------------------------ RELEASE 2004-07-27 ------------------------ Configuration, installation, and execution environments: * We have moved to a new, more explicit naming convention for our import statements. Rather than installing all Python files into one big flat namespace, we now import them from their appropriate directories, e.g. "from direct.actor import Actor". * "from ShowBaseGlobal import *" is replaced with "import direct.directbase.DirectStart" and/or "from pandac.PandaModules import *". * The old "generatePythonCode" script has been replaced with a new "genPyCode" script that automates the Python wrapper generation process without requiring any special parameters. * The old dependencies on environment variables have been removed. There are no longer requirements for any environment variables to be set in either the build process or the runtime environment (although a few optional environment variables remain to allow custom configuration). * INSTALL document greatly enhanced for clarity. * An automatic build script is now provided to further simplify building Panda3D for Unix and Cygwin users. * The old "Configrc" filename to identify runtime configuration files is deprecated; configuration files should now be named Config.prc, or in general, *.prc. The system-default configuration files are auto-generated as 20_panda.prc, 30_pandatool.prc, and 40_direct.prc (the numeric prefixes control the order in which these are loaded at runtime). Rendering system: * Some deprecated methods of CollisionEntry have been flagged to raise an exception now; these are replaced with the newer interfaces that can return a collision point in an arbitrary coordinate system. * Camera::set_cull_center() can be used for debugging culling by setting the effective point of visibility culling different from the actual point. From Python, use base.oobeCull() to examine this effect. * Alt-Enter in pview toggles between fullscreen and windowed modes. * Added experimental support for GL display lists. Scene graph: * Exposed methods to directly retrieve and set the individual vertices of a GeomNode from Python code. * The new PortalNode defines the interface for Panda's new cell-portal visibility system; each PortalNode is a window into another zone, or a separate subgraph; the PortalNode can hide or show the subset of its zone's geometry visible through its "portal". * The new PolylightNode applies a simple lighting-like effect without actually using lighting; objects will brighten or darken as a whole according to their proximity to the light. Use PolylightEffect to enable this effect. * The new FadeLODNode works like ordinary LODNode, but the switches are alpha-blended in over a short period of time rather than popping immediately. Text display: * Text now supports embedded mode changes--special characters to switch fonts, colors, scale, etc. within a line or within a paragraph. * Windows IME is better supported by Panda/Direct widgets (e.g. PGEntry and/or DirectEntry) in fullscreen mode as well as in windowed mode. Model converters: * dxf2egg and egg2dxf added to converters, as well as to inline conversion supported via ptloader. ------------------------ RELEASE 2004-03-29 ------------------------ Miscellaneous: * We once again support the Microsoft VC6 compiler. * The "pstats" program is now provided in the Windows environment as part of pandatool. It is similar to "gtk-stats" on a Unix environment, and can be used to view a real-time graph of performance timing in a running Panda process. See panda/src/doc/howto.use_pstats. * New session recording and playback support allows capturing user and network input to a disk file, for replaying later, offline. Use "record-session filename.boo" and "playback-session filename.boo" in your Configrc file. * The genPyCode script now uses PythonWare's SqueezeTool to "squeeze" the large number of generated .py files into a single shared library, for substantially improved startup times on Windows. * The Task system now has substantially reduced overhead when many doLater's are waiting in the system. * The png image file type is now supported. Rendering system: * Introducing native DirectX9 graphics support, although we do not yet support any features specific to DirectX9, such as programmable shaders. * DirectX7 and DirectX8 modules are now somewhat more robust. * New support for offscreen rendering and render-to-a-texture, which will become part of a general multipass-rendering interface. Presently supported in OpenGL, with limited DirectX support. Use GraphicsWindow::make_texture_buffer() to make a buffer you can render into and apply the result as a texture map to objects in your scene. The NonlinearImager in the distort directory is a complex example of using this interface. * Explicit support for the Mesa 3D library's software-based offscreen rendering, allowing a Panda program to generate offscreen images as a background process, independently of any graphics card or desktop environment. * GraphicsLayer and GraphicsWindow render order can now be easily adjusted dynamically with set_sort() methods. * Built-in frame rate meter can be activated by setting "show-frame-rate-meter 1" in your Configrc file. Scene graph: * New tag system on PandaNodes allows storing of arbitrary string data on nodes, keyed by a string dictionary. The NodePath::get_net_tag() interface retrieves the data value for a particular tag on a node or the nearest ancestor of the node. NodePath::find() can search for a node in the scene graph with a given tag or tag/value pair. * Explicit shear transforms are now supported on nodes, as well as in character animation tables. * Characters now have an interface to control joint and slider values dynamically, instead of strictly from an animation file. Use Actor.exposeJoint() and/or Actor.controlJoint(). * Nurbs surfaces and curves can now be rendered directly by Panda, which will tesselate them on the fly at some CPU cost. This is a modeling convenience only; it is not intended to be used for production code. Triangle strips are still the fastest way to render complex surfaces. * However, Rope.py is now provided as a high-level wrapper around Panda's runtime NURBS curve evaluator; it can render dynamic curves in a variety of ways. * The egg library is now published to Python, allowing construction of geometry on-the-fly by show code for convenience. This is also intended as a developer's convenience more than a production feature. Text display: * The special character \3 (ASCII 0x03) embedded in a text string indicates the position of a soft hyphen when wordwrap mode is in effect. The character \4 (ASCII 0x04) serves as a hyphenless invisible break point. * A default font is compiled in even if the FreeType library is not available. * pnmtext library added for rendering text directly into an image. * New egg-mkfont utility uses FreeType to generate static font models that Panda clients without FreeType can use to render text. Collision and physics system: * More robust collision interface, supporting NodePaths properly so that collisions detected into (and from) particular instances of nodes can be differentiated. CollisionEntry has a much simpler mechanism for getting the intersection point and normal in an arbitrary coordinate space defined by a NodePath, instead of the user having to convert the coordinate space by hand. * New CollisionVisualizer object to visually show collisions as they are tested and detected, useful for optimizing collision performance. Activate this with base.cTrav.showCollisions(render). * Implicit velocity system is now integrated with scene graph; the relative velocity of moving nodes is automatically considered when testing for most kinds of collisions. Use NodePath::set_fluid_pos() to indicate that a node is moving fluidly to its new position and should test for collisions along the way (as opposed to the more traditional NodePath::set_pos(), which unconditionally sets the node to its new position). * Introduction of "tube" collision shapes, sometimes called "capsules" in other libraries. It is a cylinder capped with hemispheres. * CollisionSolid::set_effective_normal() provides a way to define a sloping surface with an apparently vertical normal, to prevent characters standing on the surface from sliding down. * Collision polygons now respect clipping planes. * Many changes to physics system. HTTPClient and net systems: * More verbose error reporting. * Better support for proxy servers, including SOCKS5 proxies. Model converters: * maya2egg converter now supports skeleton/morph animation files fully, including soft-skinning, hard-skinning, and morphs (blend shapes). NURBS and polygon meshes are both supported. * A new Maya plugin called libmayapview allows opening a Panda window from within Maya to view how the scene will look once it has been converted to Panda. * New soft2egg converter supports models and animation stored in SoftImage 4.3 files. (Newer versions of SoftImage are not supported.) * New egg2flt program more or less reverses flt2egg. * The ptloader Panda loader allows direct loading into Panda of most model file types defined within pandatool: Maya, flt, and lwo. Specify load-file-type ptloader in your Configrc file. * New egg-optchar preprocessor improves character animation runtime performance by eliminating unneeded joints. It can also reorganize a skeleton and/or expose joints for the show code's convenience. * New egg-qtess utility converts NURBS egg files to polygon egg files with either a trivial interface for quick conversions or a sophisticated parameter file for more precise control. It preserves soft-skinning and animation information. * New visibility flag in egg format allows model files to define invisible subtrees which will be initially stashed when loaded. * The egg library now allows implicit forward references to vertex pools, making it much easier to generate a valid egg file from a third-party model format.