January 2018 Development Update

The new year has brought with it new developments to the Panda3D engine, some of which we would like to present to you today. This is however by no means a comprehensive listing of the improvements we’re working on. Stay tuned for more posts, as we’ve got some exciting plans for 2018 ahead!

RenderPipeline light system

The light manager of Tobias Springer’s excellent RenderPipeline project has made its way into the Panda3D codebase. This is a light system designed to be used in conjunction with the GPU light culling and deferred rendering methods provided by the RenderPipeline, and is implemented in C++ for optimal performance. Now that it is included with Panda3D, it is even easier to use the RenderPipeline in your projects as it is no longer necessary to compile any C++ modules to do so—you now simply put the Python module into your project and follow the usual steps from there on out.
This feature is mainly useful from a RenderPipeline setup, but we are continuing to work on bringing the built-in lighting system more closely in line with the RenderPipeline lights. Examples of this are additional light types such as sphere and rectangle area lights and the possibility to set a light’s color temperature.

Input device support

The input-overhaul branch has received plenty of changes again and is day by day getting closer to a state where it can be merged into the master branch. The latest improvements include more devices being supported as well as overall improved handling and mapping of devices’ buttons and axes, such as for joysticks. For Windows users, there is also a new input manager available based on the Windows raw input system, which is used for devices that are not supported under the existing XInput implementation. Panda3D automatically chooses the right implementation to use for a device, so this all happens seamlessly to the developer.
Support for 3D mice has also been added. This is a class of devices that allow movement in six degrees of freedom (thrice as many as a regular mouse), and is particularly used by 3D artists for intuitively navigating a camera around a model or through a scene. This may be of particular use for the various CAD programs that are built around Panda3D.

Android developments

Android support is actively being worked on and great strides have already been made in this area. Stay tuned for the next post, in which we will have some exciting announcements to make on this front!

5 thoughts on “January 2018 Development Update

  1. In particular, the input changes need to be gotten from the “input-overhaul” branch. It will be merged into the main branch soon.

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