BonnieRobloxRIP

On 3/1/2023 at 10:00 AM, Nimi said:

Mine-imator 2.0, the 10th anniversary update brings numerous additions including a new UI, new renderer, animation features, multiplatform support and 3D world importer. Thank you for your help with feedback and finding bugs during the pre-release phases and we hope you enjoy the update!

 

Windows Installer   Windows (.zip)

Windows Installer 32-bit   Windows 32-bit (.zip)

Ubuntu/Debian   Linux (.tar)  

       Mac OS

 

Note: Most AMD cards and integrated graphics cards are prone to have poor performance, artifacts, and crashes relating to high-quality rendering. If you encounter any of these issues, we recommend staying with Mine-imator 1.2.9 for your projects.

 

This being free software, please consider supporting the development team and website server costs with a small donation, thank you!

Donate to Mine-imator development

($5+ one-time or recurring)

 

 

Version 2.0.0 (Mar 1st, 2023), changes since 1.2.9:

Interface

• Updated the interface to use “Inventory”, a new interface design by Voxy.
• Updated Mine-imator logo and program icon.
• Startup changes
  • Added splash images to the startup screen.
  • Projects can now be pinned to the top of the project list.
  • Projects can now be sorted by name and date last opened.
  • Changed project thumbnail size.
• Multi-monitor support
  • Drag the timeline or secondary view out of the window to detach as a new window
  • Alternatively, click the new “Pop out”/”Reset” buttons
  • Monitor setup is saved when re-opening Mine-imator
• Added new program modes
  • Simple: Recommended for beginners, complex features/settings are hidden.
  • Advanced: For users familiar with the software, granting access to all features/settings. (Requires upgrade.)
• New world importer
  • 3D interface integrated into software
    • Left click: Rotate/Create selection
    • Middle click: Pan
    • Right click: Fly (+WASDQE)
    • Mouse wheel: Zoom towards/away from cursor
    • Shift: Ignore selection
• Increased performance and stability improvements
• After importing from a world, clicking the “Reload” option under “Resources” will update the block changes from the world (if still present on the disk)
• 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.)
• Timeline changes
  • Added icons to timelines.
  • Added icons to preview the contents of folders.
  • 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 "Ghost" toggle for timelines to hide them from the list.
  • Added "Color tagging" to help highlight and filter timelines based on selected color.
  • Added size and offset settings for interval markers.
  • Added scrollbar for timeline name list.
  • Keyframes can be selected by clicking them once.
  • Timeline selection time/frames is now displayed next to project time/frames.
  • “Loop” options have been combined into a single button, clicking will cycle the modes. (Disable looping, Enable looping, and Enable seamless looping.)
  • Timeline zooming now requires the 'Control' button to be held. (Scroll wheel now scrolls vertically through timeline, hold Shift to scroll horizontally.)
• Drag-n-drop mode when adding objects from the workbench after clicking “Create”
  • Objects are locked to the mouse and snap to the world until released.
  • Hold Shift while clicking “Create” to spawn at 0,0,0.
  • Hold Shift while dragging to toggle position snapping.
• Added basic math support for number boxes. (ex. “1/16” = 0.0625)
• Added support for common textbox shortcuts:
  • Home/End key support to jump between the start/end of lines.
  • Word skipping. (Ctrl + Left/Right)
• Added support for manual input in sun/moon time and rotation wheels.
• Added filter settings to sortable lists. (ex. Library has settings to filter each instance type.)
• Added themes (Light, Dark, and Darker) and customizable accent colors.
• Added interface scale setting for high DPI monitors.
• Added preview images for lights, cameras, and environment timelines in the workbench.
• Added "Save as" shortcut.
• Added “Cancel” option when exiting an unsaved project or exiting the software via “X”.
• Assets and files can be dropped into the software from the system file explorer.
• Added camera panning. (Shift + Drag left mouse button)
• Added "View instance" shortcut to jump to a selected object.
• 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 "Control" while group-selecting keyframes will now deselect them.
• Holding “Shift” now allows for precision when dragging components.
• Shortened panel tabs now show a tooltip of the full name when hovered.
• Added "Compact panels" setting, always on if the window is too small.
• Added "Reduced motion" interface setting. (Disables most UI animations.)
• Object proportions are now correctly preserved with XYZ scaling.
• Grid overlay settings are now saved per-project.
• Added an “About Mine-imator” popup with credits and links.

Rendering

• “Render” and “Graphics” settings are now saved per-project under the “Render settings” tab in “Project properties”.
• Added Render presets:
  • Performance: Basic rendering features for faster rendering.
  • Balanced: All render effects enabled with low-mid quality settings.
  • Extreme: All render settings enabled with best possible quality.
  • Custom: Allows for complete customization of all available render settings.
• Custom render presets can be exported and imported into other projects.
• Custom render presets can be “Set as default settings” to be automatically copied over into new projects.
• Added render quality modes.
  • Flat: No shading at all, the entire scene is set to fullbright.
  • Shaded: Basic lighting and shadows, similar to Low Quality mode in pre-2.0 Mine-imator.
  • Render: All advanced render features, similar to High Quality mode in pre-2.0 Mine-imator.
• Camera effects can now be previewed in Flat and Shaded mode, and toggled with the “Enable/Disable camera effects” button.
• Added High Dynamic Range (HDR) support, allowing for much brighter & darker lighting scenarios. (Only the scene is affected. Fog, sky, etc. are not.)
  • Added “Tonemapper”, “Exposure”, and “Gamma” render settings under “Light management”. (Also available in camera timelines.)
  • There are three options for tonemappers in the render settings:
    • None: The Default setting. Faithful to how Mine-imator typically looked pre-2.0, only with more dynamic range.
    • Reinhard: One of the simplest and most common TMOs, very good at circumventing over-exposure.
    • Academy (ACES): An industry standard TMO, typically used for Movies, Photography, and more. Great for preserving the full range of highlights, shadows, and colors your creations may have.
• Rendering now uses a sampling system, which takes multiple shots of the scene each frame to produce better results for certain effects.
• Added Physically Based Rendering (PBR) support:
  • Introduces metallic and roughness properties.
  • Supports material and normal maps, using the SEUS PBR or LabPBR formats.
• Added “Subsurface scattering”. (Replaces “Bleed light” settings.)
  • Added a “Highlight” effect for subsurface scattering.
• 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 “Indirect lighting” render settings, allowing emissive objects to illuminate surroundings.
• Added “Reflections” render settings. (Screen space only.)
• Added specular highlight setting to lights.
• Added Cascading Shadow Maps, allowing for sunlight to be visible from anywhere in the scene.
• Added “Transparent shadows” setting, which allows light to pass through transparent objects.
• Added "Size" setting for light sources, determines shadow softness.
• Added “Zoom amount” setting for the distort camera effect.
• Cameras can be moved closer to objects before visually clipping through them.
• Improved Anti-aliasing.
• Improved ambient lighting.
• Improved blurring effects. (Glow, bloom, etc.)
• Improved anamorphic bloom streaks.
• Watermark is now previewed in viewports if settings are open.
• New "Padding" setting to offset the watermark from the edge of the render.
• Reworked watermark scale.
• Added "Render pass" setting to preview data used in "Rendered" mode.

Animation

• Added “Inverse kinematics” settings for limbs:
  • Target: The object that the limb should try to point/bend towards.
  • Angle target: An object that the joint of the limb will try to rotate 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 the following criteria will support inverse kinematics:
• The body part must have bending.
• Can only bend on the X axis.
• "Joint end" (end_offset) setting is defined. (Ex. Distance from elbow to hand, knee to foot, etc.)
• Added "Path" and "Path point" timelines.
  • Paths are constructed by adding “Path points” into path timelines.
  • Objects can be set to move along a path in the constraints tab.
  • Paths can be used to generate a mesh. (Flat or tube-shaped.)
  • 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.)
• Added "Bézier" transition, allowing for greater customization of transitions.
• Organized the transitions list.
• Reworked “Camera shake” setting.
  • Now determined by strength and speed for individual axes.
  • Added toggle for “Positional” or “Rotational” camera shake.
• Block texture animations, wind, clouds, and particles are synced with the animation.
  • Particles will be cleared if the marker goes backwards.
• Added rotation support for particle timelines, now rotates the “Launch angle” of particles.
• Added “Wind influence” slider for objects.
• Added directional wind settings.
• Added "Twilight" toggle for environment changes during sunset/sunrise.
• Biomes are combined into one list and can now be animated.

Other features

• Updated Minecraft assets to 1.19.3.
• Default clouds texture is no longer cropped to 32x32 pixels.
• Updated default clouds settings to better resemble Minecraft clouds.
• Added new color settings for leaf blocks for 'custom' biome setting.
• Updated default particles. (Most now use “Launch angle” settings for rotation support.)
• Added new default particles; “Electric spark”, “Potion effect”, and “Teleport”.
• Added structure block file support. (.nbt)
  • Integrity can be changed to randomly filter out blocks.
  • Blocks filtered out by integrity can be inverted.
  • 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".

Engine changes

• Converted Mine-imator from GML to C++.
• MacOS support.
• Linux support. (Debian/Ubuntu)
• x64 Support.
• Scenery/.schematic importing up to x10 times faster, depending on CPU cores.
• Optimized memory usage for 3D meshes, meaning bigger scenery can be imported.
• Generated scenery 3D models are cached in the project folder, allowing instant loading.
• Project/resource loading stability improvements.

Changes

• Renamed settings:
  • “SSAO” -> “Ambient occlusion”
  • “AA” -> “Anti-aliasing”
  • “Alpha” -> “Opacity”
  • “Brightness” -> “Emissive”
  • “Graphics” (Timeline panel) -> “Appearance”
  • “Background” -> “Environment”
  • "Show seconds" -> “Show intervals”
• 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?".
• Exporting images now includes a progress bar. (Similarly to movie exporting.)
• Sunrise and sunset no longer affect fog size.
• “Sunlight Strength” is now 100% by default.
• Timelines no longer use a random color for keyframes.
• Moved settings:
  • The workbench button has been moved into the viewport.
  • Moved playback time and buttons into a new timeline header.
  • Moved “Blades” and “Blade Angle” camera settings into a new “Aperture settings” group.
  • Moved “Grid snapping” to the viewport toolbar.
  • Moved “View Grid Size” to the viewport toolbar.
  • Moved the "Select all keyframes" button into a right-click menu.
  • Moved "Add folder", "Duplicate/Delete/Export objects", "Walk cycle", "Run cycle", & "Copy/Cut/Paste/Delete/Export keyframes" buttons into 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.

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.
• Custom interface color settings.
• Custom interface font setting.
• FPS interface setting. (Custom FPS can still be set in the settings file.)
• “Spawn near work camera” option. (Replaced with Drag-n-drop.)
• "Shadow blur size" and "Shadow quality" settings. (Now controlled by the “Size” setting for lights.)
• “Gigantic (8192x8192)” option for Point light buffer size.
• "Follow camera" and "Sunlight range" environment settings. (No longer necessary with cascading shadow maps.)
• "Desaturate night" environment setting.
• "Noisy grass/water" graphics setting.
• “Block glowing” / “Block glow threshold” graphics settings.
• Rotation loops setting.
• “Advanced Color Effects” button. (Now always visible.)
• "Bleed light" / "Foliage light bleeding”. (Replaced with subsurface scattering.)
• "Foliage tint" appearance setting.

Bugfixes (Since Pre-release 7)

• Fixed exporting being stuck if a 2nd window is in "Render" mode.
• Fixed crash when applying color tag to timelines if you didn't right-click a timeline.
• Fixed issues with south pointing compass and mid-day clock item in keyframes.
• Fixed audio soundwaves disappearing if too quite.
• Fixed crash when loading structure block files. (.nbt)
• Fixed window location changing to default location when importing assets.

thanks, now my computer dies everytime i try to render something thanks to the new rendering system. 1 frame takes 18 minutes with that 64 samples thing. going back to 1.2.9

bro when pre release 5 coming out?

or the update as a whole

every time i open mine imator there's almost no textures. i checked the files and everything is right!
i reinstalled the program several times and restarted my pc and nothing works. it's always the same!!

there's only pink and black textures. the sky is dark. the clouds are pink and black too.

On 4/17/2022 at 7:08 PM, david said:

Greetings!

With the 10 year anniversary of Mine-imator coming up, I’ve decided to temporarily rejoin the developer team and add some long requested features you will soon be able to download in an upcoming version 2.0 pre-release arriving late May/early June! 

@Nimi has done some phenomenal work on new features (many not even announced yet!), however the graphics engine used (GameMaker) has been a big obstacle towards optimizing the software and ensuring good framerates and memory usage with all the new additions. Therefore I have jumped in to lend a hand and I've finally been able to successfully migrate Mine-imator to a new graphics engine using the C++ programming language for added performance, optimized memory (x64) and multi-platform support. For all the technical details see the bottom of the post.

In order to facilitate the development we have greatly appreciated your support throughout the years, creating and sharing content, giving suggestions, reporting bugs and especially with donations! Mine-imator has for the past decade been completely free and will remain so, but your donations have helped keep it alive with webserver costs and directly funded the development of version 2.0 (for instance, I had to get a MacBook for this update ). If you have not donated yet to the development team or wish to continue supporting, see the link below:

Donate to Mine-imator development ($5+ one-time or recurring)

With all that aside, let’s get to the new features found in the first 2.0 pre-release, later followed by additional releases with Nimi’s UI changes, animation improvements and rendering features (See Dev Update #21)!

Let’s get HYPED!   

 

Starting off small yet useful, an actually working Cancel option when clicking the program’s X!

 

 

Next up something for the multi-monitor animators: No more crammed workspaces, simply detach your timeline or camera view into a second window and drag it to another screen!

 

 

Scenery/.schematic file loading has been multi-threaded and optimized to be around 10 times faster as well as taking up less memory, allowing much bigger regions than before! In addition, the scenery is cached and instantly loaded upon re-opening your project (with no loading bar).

 

 

Mine-imator will soon be able to handle much more complex projects with a speedup between 3-5 times compared to earlier versions when rendering many objects. This is made possible with CPU optimizations and combining objects into batches before sending them to the GPU for rendering (Mine-imator will not be allocating more CPU resources compared to current versions, just using them more efficiently).

 

Linux users have been left out of using Mine-imator for 10 years, but no more! Version 2.0 will run smoothly on Debian/Ubuntu operating systems with all the same features!
(P.S. If you have another favorite Linux distribution let us know)

 

Same goes for Mac OS users after countless requests!

 

Finally, the “Import from World” option has been completely reworked to have a 3D interface for more easily selecting a section of your world to animate. Despite being 3D and having more options, it will also load worlds much more quickly compared to the current version and in general be more stable. It will also be integrated into the software rather than opening a pop-up window, and accessed with a shortcut in the toolbar.

 

 

Behind the scenes of the 2.0 C++ port:
(Things will get technical and nerdy, you have been warned!!)

  Reveal hidden contents

Porting Mine-imator away from GameMaker has been attempted several times in the past and was known for being an extremely laborious and complex task, sure to take years if attempted manually. For reference, the current codebase is well over 90,000 lines of code (think of each line as an instruction, each feature consisting of an intertwined network of thousands of lines) making it a huge task for anyone to tackle, given all the features added over 10 years by multiple developers. This is not to mention the extra code needed to fill in the gaps of the GameMaker functionality used, such as drawing the GUI, handling keyboard/mouse input and rendering geometry using shaders. The end goal would be to switch from GameMaker Language (GML) into a new chosen programming language with more performance, memory management and multi-platform capabilities, where C++ was chosen as the best option.

Given the nature of the task, I decided roughly 3 months ago to try a new approach for 2.0 and automatically have a script read the files in the codebase, figure out the functions and variables used and convert it line-by-line to working (and heavily optimized) C++ code. Having a program to act as a compiler of-sorts and convert between GML->C++ would also allow the team to keep using GameMaker as the development tool (IDE) for testing, while having the benefits of C++ for the final build released to the public.

After some experimentation I was able to convert the entire codebase into C++ using a C# script, taking no less than 20 seconds (compared to the years it would take manually). The problem still persisted of filling in said gaps of the GameMaker functionality which is where the majority of the remaining work was, along with making sure the converted code was bug-free and achieved the exact same behavior as the GML by carefully comparing the behavior of 1.2.9 and the C++ version of 1.2.9.

See below for a snippet of GML code on the left and the converted C++ counterpart on the right (created automatically in a few milliseconds by the script). Doing this manually and testing it to make sure it works and fixing the resulting bugs introduced by common mistakes would potentially take hours.

 

After the code was ported, I started looking into new features that could be added in this new C++ environment that were previously impossible in GameMaker, including optimizing the performance further, adding multi-threading, multl-monitor support, more advanced 3D rendering (such batch rendering and boosting the world importer) and the heavily requested Mac OS/Linux support.

To conclude, after many years I’ve been able to port Mine-imator to C++, which has without doubt been the most challenging programming task I’ve done but has taught me a lot and I hope the resulting improvements and features will be appreciated by countless animators for another 10 years ahead!

Be sure to keep an eye out for the upcoming pre-releases, following our Twitter page or joining our Discord chat might be a good idea. 

Once again thank you for all the support through the years and keep on animating our favorite block game!

/David
 

Will there be Bedrock Worlds support anytime soon?

Porting worlds to java causes corruption and unwanted results ya know.