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Mine-imator 2.0.0

Nimi

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Nimi

Nimi 8.3k

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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.
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ShotU

ShotU 946

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Amazing work to the both of you! I still remember using Mine-Imator for the first time way back during 1.1.2, 2 years-ish before I made a forums account. Mine-Imator has come a long way and has been the program that has gotten me into animation. Hope you both are happy with creating something so monumental. Mine-Imator has such an important place to many members and we thank you both for putting in the effort and creating something amazing! 

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AgentPhoenix

AgentPhoenix 2

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I am thankful to you, I am was first well.... Not the Fan of program first but I after I tried it out. I loved it and I am very thankful for you two hard work.

I thank David and Nimi. You two have earned rest. The Community is Thankful.

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SharkFinFace

SharkFinFace 2

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It's too bad y'all are gonna stop developing the program. I honestly hope you come back to it some day, but I understand you have more dreams to pursue. Well you pursued this project, and I'd say you did a pretty good job with it, so although you may not need it, I wish y'all luck with whatever you do next.

I trust it will be just as great.

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