A new Murl Engine Build 1.00.6405Beta is available for download. This is a major update release with support for Android Studio and several improvements and fixes.

Android:

We added support for Android Studio with its Gradle build system, updated the Android NDK to version r11c and switched from GCC to the Clang build toolchain. GCC is deprecated since version 11 of the NDK in favor of Clang and so we also switched the Murl build scripts effectively with this release. If you experience problems with Clang, you can file bugs in the official NDK bug database. Android Studio support will be discussed in more detail in a separate blog post.

Improvements:

• Android Studio and Gradle support added
• Built with Android NDK r11c
• Switched Android build toolchain from GCC to Clang
• Updated 3rd party lua to Lua 5.3.2
• Graph::NinePatchPlaneGeometry/NinePatchPlaneSequenceGeometry:
  • Added "enableCenterPatch" attribute and interface methods to enable or disable rendering of the center element (useful for transparent frames)
• Graph::TextGeometry:
  • Added "objectBoundingMode" attribute(s) and interface methods for better control of alignment in a Graph::Aligner node
• Graph::ResourceMeshGeometry:
  • Improved skinning performance if no bones have changed
• Graph::TimeController:
  • Improved update performance if used with a stopped Graph::MultiTimeline
• IAppConfiguration:
  • Added SetTrackerTraceLevel() method for better control over scene node warnings on init
  • Added SetMouseCoordinateClampingDisabled() method to allow for reporting mouse coordinates outside of the render window
• Scene converter:
  • Added "sourceStartTime", "sourceStopTime" and "destinationStartTime" attributes for explicit clip creation from an imported skeleton
  • Added "ignore" attribute for clips
  • Removed unused animations from generated packages
  • Added "defaultBlendWeights" attribute for mesh elements
• Resource::IObject/IPackage:
  • Added query methods for input file name and category
• Resource::ICollection/IPackage:
  • Changed "basePath" to "fileName" in creation interfaces
• Graph::ITracker:
  • Added SetChildrenProcessingEnabled() method
• Resource::XmlDictionary:
  • Added "registerGlobally" attribute to allow for scoping text resources either at package level (true, default) or within the dictionary's namespace (false)

Fixes:

• Scene converter:
  • Fixed handling of multiple offset matrices when importing skinned models from an FBX file
  • Fixed merging of blend shapes and skeletons when transferring animations from a different input scene (FBX)
  • Fixed incorrect clip length when source animation start time is greater than zero (FBX)
• Graph::PlaneSequenceGeometry:
  • Allow initialization without atlas resource (to be set in code later)
  • Fixed an atlas resource update problem
  • Fixed container alignment
• Graph::TextGeometry:
  • Fixed updating material & parameters slots
  • Fixed setting text resource target from code
  • Fixed incorrect IsCharacterPrintable() method for outline fonts
  • Fixed misc setter methods at runtime
  • Fixed rendering digits with unified width for outline fonts
• Misc re-init fixes for graph nodes
• Util::ExpressionEvaluator:
  • Fixed a divide-by-zero error
  • Fixed conversion functions from numbers to strings
• Fixed incorrect rendering in a Graph::FixedProgram with both vertex coloring and material coloring enabled
• Fixed input lag when switching the engine to sequential run loop mode

All changes can also be found in change log.

As always, if you encounter difficulties, find a bug or want to discuss development issues, head over to the Forum.