Nimi

Follow camera / Sunlight range: These features were removed with the introduction of Cascading Shadow Maps and directional lighting to provide correct shadows casting across the entire scene. These options won't be returning. Most likely a bug. Math inputs are now supported, type "360 * [number here]" and Mine-imator will calculate it. Are your graphics drivers up to date? Download to affected project or way to recreate would help us. Ambient lighting now behaves like a proper light source instead of "mixing" into dark areas. Does raising the sample count improve this? Hashing is the only solution Mine-imator can really provide given how it renders it's scene and it requires a decent amount of samples to good. (Can access "Samples" by going into "Project settings", changing "Render settings" to "Custom" and a new tab will appear.) Bug, will look into it for Pre-release 6. "Subsurface" determines the distance a light source can penetrate an object, the RGB fields determine the strength per channel to replicate more complex materials. To add, "Bleed light" was also removed due it using tricks that didn't adapt to other lighting changes(it was a super hacky effect to begin with) and the removal of "Shadow blur size"/"Shadow blur quality" as lights now have their own "Size" setting to determine softness. "Shift + Right click" is now used for fast resetting values. Finally, we're looking into optimizing rendering for Pre-release 6, for faster render times I'd recommend lowering samples down to ~24 and disabling "Indirect lighting" and "Reflections" as these rely on a form of raytracing and are most intense on rendering.

Hello everyone! The second phase for Mine-imator 2.0's pre-releases is now available for testing, this phase includes overhauls to the interface, rendering, and animation, and plenty of quality-of-life additions. The features included here have been in development for over 2 ½ years, so expect bugs! As always, please report them in the Issues and Bugs subforum with as much information as possible included in your topic and project files if possible. Note: Back up your projects before installing, or install in a separate location! Get for Windows Get for Windows (.zip) Get for Mac Get for Ubuntu/Debian Get for Linux (.tar) Get for Windows 32-bit Get for Windows 32-bit (.zip) 2.0 Pre-release 5 (2022-11-18), changes: Interface Updated interface to use the Inventory, an interface design by Voxy. Updated Mine-imator logo and program icon. Timeline changes Added icons to timelines. Added icons to preview the contents of folders. “Loop” options have been combined into a single button, clicking will cycle the modes. Changed timeline zooming to require the 'Control' button to be held. (Shift for horizontal scrolling, no button for vertical scrolling.) Selected frames/time is displayed next to the time. Startup changes Added splashes when loading assets. Added project pinning. Projects can now be sorted by name and date last opened. Changed project thumbnail size. Added new program modes: Simple: Recommended for beginners, complex settings are hidden. Advanced: For users familiar with the software, access to all settings. (Requires upgrade.) Viewport changes Added "Flat", "Shaded", and "Render" quality modes. Grid overlay settings are per-project. Added "Render pass" setting to preview data in "Rendered" mode. Added math support to textboxes. Added filter settings to sortable lists. (ex. Library has settings to filter each instance type.) Added support for manual input in sun/moon time and rotation wheels. Added “About Mine-imator” popup with credits and links. Added themes (Light, Dark, and Darker) and customizable accent colors. Added preview images in the workbench. Reorganized the Workbench. (ex. Lights and Shapes are in one menu.) Replaced the toolbar with “File”, “Edit”, “Render”, “View”, and “Help” dropdowns. Audio can now be previewed at different points in the resources tab. Holding “Shift” now allows precision when dragging components. Shortened panel tabs now show a tooltip of the full name when hovered. XYZ scaling is proportional. Rendering Added alpha modes to change transparency is rendered: Blended: Transparency behaves as it has previously. Has clipping issues but can be tweaked with “Render depth”. Hashed: Noisy, but fixes most rendering issues with transparency. Added PBR support: Introduced metallic and roughness properties. Supports material and normal maps, using the SEUS PBR format. (Red = Glossiness, Green = Metallic, Blue = Emissive) Added “Subsurface scattering”. (Replaces “Bleed light” settings.) Added “Indirect lighting” render settings. Added “Reflections” render settings, and specular highlights from lights. Added “Gamma correction” render setting. Added “Transparent shadows” render setting. Added "Size" setting for light sources, determines shadow softness. Rendering now uses multiple samples from the scene to produce better results for some effects. Improved Anti-aliasing. Improved sun shadows, now directional and visible from anywhere in the scene. Improved ambient lighting. Improved blurring effects. (Glow, bloom, etc.) Improved anamorphic bloom streaks. Timeline features Added new playback buttons: Skip between keyframes in select objects. Move forward/back by 1 frame. Play from the start of the selected region. Added timeline markers. Added "Color tagging" to help highlight and filter timelines based on selected color. Added "Ghost" toggle for timelines to hide them from the list. Added custom settings for timing markers. Added scrollbar for timeline name list. Keyframes can be selected by clicking them once. Paths Added "Path" and "Path point" timelines, paths are constructed by parenting points to "Path" timelines. Added "Follow path" setting in the constraints tab. Particles can use paths as a spawn region/bounding box. If a path is a particle attractor, two settings are available: Directional force: Adds force along the direction of the path. Vortex force: Adds a spinning force around the path. (Like a tornado.) Controls Added interface setting to split controls into specific tools: Select tool (No gizmos.) Move tool (Position arrows and planes.) Rotation tool (Rotation wheels.) Scale tool (Scale handles and XYZ editing.) Bend tool (Bend wheels.) Transform tool (Move, rotation and scale tools combined.) Added support for common textbox shortcuts: Home/End key support to jump between the start/end of lines. Word skipping. (Ctrl + Left/Right) Added "Save as" shortcut. Added camera panning. (Shift + Drag left mouse button) Added "View instance" shortcut to jump to a selected object. Holding "Control" while group-selecting keyframes will now deselect them. Holding “Shift” now allows better precision when moving objects. Environment Added new color settings for leaf blocks for 'custom' biome setting. Added directional wind settings. Added "Twilight" toggle for environment changes during sunset/setrise. Updated default clouds settings to better resemble Minecraft clouds. Default clouds texture is no longer cropped to 32x32 pixels. Biomes are combined in one list and can now be animated. Particles Added rotation support for particle timelines, now rotates the “Launch angle” of particles. Added new particles; “Electric spark”, “Potion effect”, and “Teleport”. Updated default particles. Default particles now use the language file. Improved bouncing when hitting their bounding box. Minecraft support / Assets Added structure block file support. (.nbt) Integrity can be changed to randomly filter out blocks. If available, palettes can be chosen. Added support for custom player heads in scenery. Added support for shields in the new “Pattern editor”. Added "Trees4.schematic". Updated Minecraft assets to 1.19. Inverse kinematics Added “Inverse kinematics” settings to limbs: Target: a setting for choosing another object in the animation to rotate/bend towards. Angle target: another object in the scene to use for rotating towards. Angle offset: A rotation value to offset the twisting from the angle target. Blend: How much IK should rotate/bend the limb. Limbs that meet this criteria will support inverse kinematics: The body part must have bending. Can only bend on the X axis. Defines the "End offset" setting. (Ex. Distance from elbow to hand, knee to foot, etc.) Animation Block texture animations, wind, clouds, and particles are synced with the animation. Particles will be cleared if the marker goes backwards. Added "Bézier" transition. Added “Wind influence” slider for objects. Organized the transitions list. Camera Added “Zoom amount” setting for the distort effect. Added “Rotational” mode for camera shake. Cameras can be closer to objects without clipping through them. Changes Renamed settings: “SSAO” -> “Ambient occlusion” “AA” -> “Anti-aliasing” “Alpha” -> “Opacity” “Brightness” -> “Emissive” “Graphics” (Timeline panel) -> “Appearance” “Background” -> “Environment” "Show seconds" -> “Show intervals” Added mesh caching to speed up bending limbs. To prevent excessive memory use, bend angles are snapped by 0.05° internally and only update every quarter frame. “Render” and “Graphics” settings are combined and are per-project. Renamed "schematic" resources to "scenery" in the interface. Updated cloud name settings. Optimized noise texture generation. Loading popup will now show overall progress when loading multiple assets. (Ex. When loading a project.) Resetting camera position/rotation now always defaults to 0. Updated text when canceling movie exporting to "Are you sure you want to stop rendering?". Sunrise and sunset no longer affects fog size. Timelines no longer use a random color for keyframes. Moved Moved playback time and buttons into a new timeline header. Moved the "Select all keyframes" button into a right-click menu. Moved “Blades” and “Blade Angle” settings into a new “Aperture settings” group. Moved “Grid snapping” to the viewport. Moved “View Grid Size” to the viewport. "Add folder", "Duplicate/Delete/Export objects", "Walk cycle", "Run cycle", & "Copy/Cut/Paste/Delete/Export keyframes" buttons are in a right-click menu. Position, rotation, scale, and bend tabs are combined in a new "Transform" tab. Color and texture tabs are combined in a new "Material" tab. The workbench button has been moved into the viewport. Removed Warnings when attempting to create a project: Empty project names will use a default name. Duplicate project names will be given a numerical suffix. Rotation loops setting. Custom interface color settings. Custom interface font setting. "Shadow blur size" and "Shadow quality" settings. "Follow camera" and "Sunlight range" environment settings. “Gigantic (8192x8192)” option for Point light buffer size. FPS interface setting. (Custom FPS can still be set in the settings file.) Custom watermark settings. "Desaturate night" environment setting. "Noisy grass/water" graphics setting “Block glowing” / “Block glow threshold” graphics settings. "Custom object fog color" environment setting. "Foliage tint" appearance setting. "Bleed light" / "Foliage light bleeding”. “Advanced Color Effects” button. Bugfixes Fixed texture filtering artifacts. Fixed frame outlines leaving particle sheet preview. Fixed "redo" creating particle creator new particle type in particle creator. Fixed "undoing" creating particle creator not working. "Redo" creating a new particle creator. Fixed crash when "redoing" duplicating particle type. (If "redoing" from before particle creator was created.) Fixed "redoing" deleting particle type not working. "Undo" crashes after redoing. (If "Redoing" from before particle creator was created.) Fixed crash when deleting huge hierarchies. Fixed sunlight in low-quality rendering. Fixed timeline selecting being offset depending on scrollbar. Fixed crash if an asset's file extension wasn't fully lowercase. Fixed timelines and keyframes disappearing on edges of the timeline. Fixed slow viewport navigation during lag. Known issues Particles spawned from the “Spawn particles” shortcut won’t show until the marker moves forward. Preset particle loading issues. End time value for sound effects not working. Crash when selecting items with the "Surface properties" tab open with material maps enabled. Installation: Windows: Run the installer executable or extract the .zip archive before running. Mac: Open the disk file (.dmg) and drag the Mine-imator icon to your Applications. Ubuntu/Debian: Either double click the .deb file to run the Software Installer or run the following command in the folder: sudo apt install ./Mine-imator\ 2.0\ Pre-release\ 2.deb Mine-imator can then be found in your Applications menu. Fedora/Arch Linux/Other distributions: Download the tar.gz archive and extract all the files, then run the Mine-imator executable. We hope you enjoy the 2.0 update, also please consider donating to help the project if you can! Donate to Mine-imator development ($5+ one-time or recurring)

Late this month, there's no specific day. Could even be the last day of the month but not even we know.

2.0 will be the last major update david and I will have involvement in, pre-release 5 will mostly reflect the full release aside from having bugs. We don't plan on overhauling particles with physics or adding better texture/audio options, though I'm currently looking into alpha hashing(gives noisy results with low samples, but improves most transparency issues) before the full release to fix some current major issues with rendering. .obj importing won't be in 2.0.

Pre-release 5 is aimed to come out in the second half of September. There's no confirmation on when the full release will be out.

The new indirect lighting (/global illumination) and reflections use screen space ray tracing.

The blurred text was for suspense for Twitter, the blurred options are; Keyframe settings: - Constraints (Above the "Material" tab, will have options for path following and IK if supported.) Render settings: - Reflections - Gamma correction - Object material maps (Projects won't have the options visible by default for UI cleanliness for new users, will need to manually show the options.)

Hello everyone! Today marks the 10th anniversary of Mine-imator, and with the second phase of 2.0 just around the corner in September with Pre-release 5, I've revealed 7 of the biggest features coming on our Twitter page. But just in case you haven't seen them, I'll show them below. These features have been in development since 1.2.6 was released and were originally going to be in Pre-release 1 but we decided to release the new engine and importer by itself first to get it stable in the first pre-releases. Now without further ado, the true potential of 2.0... A full view of 2.0's new interface system, Inventory Custom render settings in projects Bezier curves/custom transitions Paths (cool rollercoaster video) Anti-aliasing improvements Materials and reflections (+ PBR resource pack support) (video) Inverse Kinematics As you can see, with 2.0 being the last major update David and I have involvement in, I wanted to go out with a bang and cover as many bases as possible. We're still grinding out the last serious bugs before Pre-release 5 comes out (...with more bugs ), so I hope you're looking forward it, there's a lot to mess around with! However (since not many people are aware), volumetric fog/light rays will not be coming to Mine-imator, you can read more about that here. Now despite that, before I go, I want to say thank you for the support I've received recently and to everyone else that's donated to @david and I, we couldn't have made this update as legendary as it is without everyone's support. /Nimi

They're custom-made icons for "Inventory", a UI system designed for Mine-imator's new branding. Made by @Voxy.

It's called "peter panning"(where casted shadows are "disconnected" from their caster), a common artifact in shadow mapping techniques.

My bad, I wasn't aware those were put in the 1.2.8 (and onward) translation files, they were likely added by mistake. 2.0.0's development has been going on along side 1.2.7, 1.2.8, and 1.2.9. Only Mine-imator 2.0.0 will actually read and support those translation keys.