Hey everyone,

CodeNext Technology Staging Website

For those of you who know of or are owners of SMEE 2.0, you know what this post is all about . If not, you're in for a treat.

As of a few months ago, development has been underway to bring the formerly discontinued SMEE 3.0 project to market. This new release of the software is being built upon a new technology developed in-house called the CodeNext Technology. This technology uses XML and emerging standards to generate shader code based on very general user input. This means that users can very quickly and easily use the software to create shaders of their liking.

Right now, the product is at v3.0.67 and will be releasing a 3.1 closed-beta in the nearing future. This beta will be closed to a limited number of users to test and help us make sure it is ready for full-public release. I will be releasing more information soon on how to get in on the Beta. Beta testers will be able to get the software for a reduced price, but will be required to be active on our database and responsive to our prompts for feedback. There will be need to apply using an application I will make available soon.

Unlike to the original software and v2.0, 3.0 will follow a different pattern than previous steps. It will be released in two editions, Basic and Professional. Basic will only be able to use the built-in component library and will also be restricted in some other forms to what can be made. Professional will be a much more advanced editor and it will include tools for editing and authoring new components from within the editor as well.

The shader tool will come packaged with a set of "template" components in a library of sorts. These components will contain things like standard dynamic lighting, normalmapped lighting, fog, multitexturing, and more. Each component is standalone- and can be combined with other elements, for example you could combine normalmapping with a cubemap, fog, and a uv-scroll for movement all into one shader.

Below is a screenshot showing the current "test" component library, also with a basic shader assembled from core components. There are also "Complete" components that will combine a lot of common components together to create a more complex effect (for example, Complete: Normal Map contains: Common: Model, Common: Tangent Space, Common: UV Mapping, and VS Normal Map). All of these components have the ability to work with several components, for example, Complete: Normal Map and Complete: Environment Bump Mapping both will use VS Normal Map together because they both use the same normalmapping variables. This means that common code is reused between components, resulting in an already optimized shader.



Also, all of the components in the component library are written in XML, meaning it is easy to create your own components and for other users to release "packs" of components that others can combine into their own shaders without any coding skill.

Now, some screenshots (using the kindly released cyberdemon from the D3 mdl pack)
Specular-normalmapping:


Specular-normalmapping + envbump cube map




Best regards,
Daniel Niezgocki / Rhuarc