The Nebula Device / News: Recent posts

While we recently released updated documenation, the current binary build that is posted is quite old. A new binary build should be posted by this weekend though!

For the brave and the daring: head to the Nebula Device CVS repository and check out the new Nebula2 stuff! All-new gfx and scene graph subsystems with shader centric architecture. Fully supports DX9 High Level Shaders and other goodies. Disclaimer: this is early code and may blow up in your hands. Have Fun!

I've removed the old releases from the files section. They were way too old, and just caused confusion. The (usually stable) CVS code is available either from the CVS, or as a daily updated snapshot at http://nebuladevice.sf.net/downloads/nebula-cvs.tgz.

Getting a new release out is important, and should be done soon. Finding a suitable moment to make releases is difficult as Nebula is always growing, and there always seems to be some new improvement ahead that should be in the next release. But enough excuses, the plan now is to just make releases on a regular basis, maybe monthly. These will probably be little more than snapshots of the CVS, but there will be compiled binaries to help people get a quick idea of what Nebula is like.

There have been a lot of changes in Nebula recently. For those of you that aren't on the CVS notification mail list, there is a list of them here http://nebuladevice.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Nebula/LatestChanges, and the CVS change log is available here http://nebuladevice.sf.net/changelog.html.gz. Most of the work has been merging in code from the version of Nebula used in Project Nomads, but there have also been some changes to the build process.... read more

There is a wiki site for Nebula. It's only just started, but there is already useful content. Get stuck in, read and contribute.

http://nebuladevice.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Nebula/WebHome

Many thanks to Ling Lo for setting this up.

The site's presentation is still being worked on so forgive us if it looks a little rough.

I know that the releases of nebula have been slow, this is mostly because of time constraints, but also because I was hoping people would get into using the CVS code. If you use the CVS code then I don't have to worry about releases and you get all the latest changes straight away.

It's quite simple to get hold of the source code from CVS. If you don't want to use a CVS program then there is a daily updated tar-ball available at http://nebuladevice.sourceforge.net/downloads/nebula-cvs.tgz. Once you have got the source code then windows users should also get the nebula-extralibs.zip from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=7192&release_id=15956, and extract it on top of the source. Now read nebula/doc/source/compiling.txt for instructions on how to compile.... read more

Big Nebula Device merge orgy today with new stuff from RadonLabs. Check out the relnotes.txt file for what's new and what's changed. I hope I didn't break too many things during the merge, but expect it will take a few days before things have settled again. Code maintainers and contributors, please drop me (floh) a mail if you're stuck or simply have questions. I'll also try to add a few more doc files covering some of the new code and features during the next few weeks, and maybe add a tekdemo or 2. Have fun :)

There's a daily updated tarball of the CVS code available at
http://nebuladevice.sf.net/downloads/nebula-cvs.tgz

Hopefully this will help those who are having trouble with cvs.

Ken Melm's Flat Terrain object has been added to Nebula's CVS. Thanks to Mike Bresnahan for sorting out the latest changes and getting it into the CVS.

For those of you who haven't been keeping track of the CVS code, here's a new complete install file for win32. I'll upload a src only release for linux and win23 soon.

CVS has been updated with the latest RadonLabs stuff. Apart from a bunch of bug fixes the new feature of the day is a stencil buffer based shadow system, plus infrastructure which should simplify adding other shadow casting techniques. Check out the new shadow tekdemo and of course relnotes.txt.

Enjoy,
-Floh.

[off for a week in the mountains :)]

Big checkin today of RadonLabs changes. The D3D8 server has been fixed, and a new animation channel subsystem has been implemented, plus lots of little optimizations, additions and bugfixes. See /doc/source/relnotes.txt and /doc/source/channels.txt for details, especially if you derived your own nVisNode subclasses. I also added our current tekdemos and a few essential doc files to CVS, so that it will be easier in the future to keep them uptodate.
Let me know if I forgot something :o)

I'd like to move towards using the mail list for nebula discussion and questions, it's a lot easier to reply, especially for people who aren't on permanent/fast connections.
I'm still monitoring the forums and the posts already there are a good source of information, but perhaps we could start posting on the list a little more often?

The CVS changes are now posted to the cvs mailing list http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/nebuladevice-cvs.
Subscribe if you want to keep abreast of development.

The OpenIL texture loading in class nGlTexture has been fixed to also work under Linux with the nVidia drivers. Leaf checked in Mat Tiveys mouse handler code for nDXInputServer. Everything still experimental of course.

Doh, I love it! Spending 10 minutes on a super polished news item, and hitting submit tells me that the server could not be found. Here's the short version: I just checked the latest Radon Labs fixes into the CVS. Notable changes include EXPERIMENTAL support for OpenIL to load OpenGL textures (get the stuff from www.openil.org, the links libs go to /code/lib/win32_blabla, and the dlls (ilut, ilu and openil) go to /bin/win32), and there's also some doxygen support. Check out /code/doxycfg. The sources may not compile yet under Linux, will be fixed ASAP. Now submit, button! :o)

Tom Miskiewicz has very kindly been translating some of the German comments to English, he has also changed them to match the doxygen style comments that are being used in Nebula now. So far some of the kernel classes have been done and I've updated the CVS with them. Many thanks to Tom for this.

CVS should work now again. I have imported the 28-Feb-01 source tree which is in no way a tested or stable release, I guess that's ok, since CVS is meant that way. We will still make "official" source tarball releases frequently which will contain a somewhat stable and tested snapshot of the source. For a quick overview: the obsolete classes have gone as promised, and there's a half completed nd3d8server contained which also led to some minor changes in the vertex buffer and index buffer code. This stuff has NOT yet been tested under Linux. After the checkout you have to do a "tclsh84 updsrc.tcl" to generate the missing build files before compiling. Have fun :o)

I have updated the max exporter, with the missing header file, and also added a dll of njointanimtime so you can check out the bones export.

The first release of Kritzelkratz 3000's Max exporter has been added. This plugin exports your Max scenes to Nebula files. It currently exports static objects, ipol based animations and jointed animations (Character Studio or Bones).

I've created a module in the CVS repository called 'nebula'. At the moment this is just the source code from 16-Dec-00 linux release, so there is no need to rush and check it out.

Whitegold has released an update to the Maya2Nebula converter. More details at http://www.flyingplastic.com/maya2nebula