SDF Physics and More

Well the Holidays have come and as you may know I have been working with Physics and Signed Distance Fields (SDF) for a while. First came the SDF Planets for Galactive Space Junk 3 and more recently replacing sphere and plane geometry primitives with SDFs. Now I am happy to announce I have developed a formula that seems to work with most convex SDFs and even some concave SDF shapes too. So why SDFs? Most SDFs have easy lighting capabilities called "normal vectors" and as the name implies they measure distances which are very important for physics engines. Check out a rough draft of the new SDF Physics Engine. Finally I am working on a video of the new features of Plumeria 4.8. New features include Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) meshes, a new lighting engine that includes spotlights, easy to use fog, and better mouse selection that works on all devices and all shapes.

ThreeJS Water

I just added a custom shader I found in ThreeJS for a water effect below the Solar Fusion Software logo. ThreeJS is used for 3D graphics on the web and written in JavaScript which encapsulates 3D WebGL shaders that are more difficult for some developers to write. I honestly prefer writing 3D shaders for Raymaching and Raytracing in WebGL but it was interesting to see the features in ThreeJS instead of WebGL shaders. Enjoy!

Raytracing in a Week

I have just finished some graphics projects and I want to point out how cool raytracing and raymarching are. If you are not familiar raytracing is a 3D technique where you model light rays and test their collisions with a scene per pixel. Raymarching is a 3D technique where you make increments of a light ray and test to see if it hits any thing in a scene. I know both of these approaches pretty well but I found an online book for raytracing called Ray Tracing in One Weekend that gave me a great foundation for 3D graphics. The book starts out with Larmbertian lighting which is really just a shaded sphere. Next Metal spheres then (my favorite) Dielectric spheres which look like glass. I will admit it took me more than two days to finish the book but the code was written in c++ and I converted it to JavaScript. The image below is generated from my code based on one of the last chapters (the big sphere in front is Metallic, the sphere behind it is Dielectric, and the smaller spheres in front are Lambertian.

Savor the Flavor

There is a new twist to the Donut Pong game. Now you must battle the computer to acquire new donut flavors by notching a net score of 0 to 2 = glazed, 3 to 6 = chocolate, 7 to 11 = strawberry, 12 and up = mystery berry flavor. For instance, score 3 more wins than the computer to see the glazed donut turn into a chocolate donut and 7 or more for strawberry. Also, this game is the first to use the new signed distance field physics engine from PlumeriaSC. Finally I came across a cool JavaScript programming course on YouTube. After watching the series myself I highly recommend these videos no matter what coding level you are at or programming language you are using.

Bricks, Blocks, and Beyond

It's the New Year! First off, we have added 3D toy bricks as a new shape and background effect option for PlumeriaGIF so check it out! New features coming to PlumeriaSC 4.8 beta 2 include a new physics engine based on signed distance fields (SDF), instead of the usual Racasting. Also, the planet physics have always used SDFs but were missing features. Now that the entire physics engine uses SDFs all of the missing features can be added including bounce, drag, and friction. Finally, several other unannounced features added last year should make it easier to add updates and new games to our website this year.

What is RWD?

Merry Christmas! Today we released a new version of PlumeriaGIF. To celebrate Christmas we have added a Christmas Tree where you can change the color of the ornaments. Now, for the biggest change, PlumeriaGIF uses Responsive Web Design or RWD. If you have ever used Bootstrap or Flexboxes for a website you know what RWD is. For those who do not know you may have seen elements of a website snap to different areas of the page while resizing a page, simply put, it is an interface that aligns website elements differently for Phones, Tablets, and Desktop Computers.

Happy Anniversary

This month Plumeria Smart Creator 4 turns 5 years young. Also, Solar Fusion Software turns 20! Make sure to check out the new features that are being added to PlumeriaGIF every month. This month a puzzle piece shape was added.

New Worlds to Conquer

That's right we have updated and created new levels for some of our most recent games. The Orange Grove game has not been updated for awhile so it needed to be totally rebuilt from the ground up. All of the games that were updated now use a super smooth font with ultra crisp edges that look great on devices with higher screen resolutions and even smaller ones. Also check out the newly added particle effects that have been added to the Orange Grove oranges and Galactic Space Junk rocks. And yes, the Donut Pong game was updated too.

One More GIFt

As you may have noticed there is a new tab in our navigation bar. Introducing PlumeriaGIF! It is totally free, you can render some pretty amazing 3D graphics, and export it all to a GIF video. PlumeriaGIF is a web app that allows you to personalize every aspect of a GIF and it runs both on Mobile and Desktop computers. No annoying accounts to setup just 3D bliss.

Holiday Gift

Hope everyone is having a great holiday season. To celebrate the Donut Pong and Galactic Space Junk games have been updated with better mobile support and smoother transitions when flying around planets. If you get a new phone or computer for Christmas (or another holiday) make sure to check out our games. And remember the Donut Pong game runs on both desktop and mobile devices. Enjoy! 

On another note, Plumeria Smart Creator 4 is having some major upgrades so hopefully more games with better graphics are coming. It's amazing that PlumeriaSC 4 was started in February 2019 and is still going strong even after almost five years of development.

We are Mobile

The next release of PlumeriaSC 4 has gotten a huge upgrade and we are ready to share it with you. The first game to get this upgrade is the Donut Pong game. It now features a mobile ready interface that can be played on desktop computers and mobile devices. Mobile users rejoice and enjoy!

PSC 4.6 is Done

It's been a while since my last post. Plumeria Smart Creator 4.6 now features box, sphere, and infinite plane planets. The physics engine is now designed to support new features that will be added in future releases. Also I have been testing features that have not been used recently in my games making this version the most stable and complete build yet.

Galactic Space Junk 3 is Here!

Galactic Space Junk 3 is finally finished. Galactic Space Junk 3 uses a new physics engine that is designed to handle planet physics. The physics engine uses signed distance fields which can use all kinds of geometry primitives to build different planets.

2 Trillion

Yep you read the title correctly. A little while back I posted companies spent 1 trillion dollars in 2016 on errors and bugs in their code. There is a new study that found companies in 2020 spent over 2 trillion dollars on bugs and errors*. Tools like PlumeriaSC that eliminate errors and bugs in code are needed now more than ever. Also in my 3D graphics research I found a great raytracing book series called Ray Tracing in One Weekend**. I think PlumeriaSC would do well to borrow features from raytracing since it is just starting to be rolled out for both CAD and 3D Modeling tools. I am still working on this idea but I think this might be the future of 3D graphics.

*https://gitential.com/gitentials-guide-to-the-cost-of-fixing-bugs/
**https://raytracing.github.io/

4.5.1 is finally here!

Plumeria Smart Creator 4.5.1 is ready for purchase. New to this version are built-in interactive tutorials that will help you to learn essential programming skills like Object Oriented programming, Physics, and Motion time stops. Also we have a new pricing table. You can purchase PlumeriaSC 4 for a one time download or you can purchase an extended download service which gives you free download updates for a year! To learn more about all of the perks of our extended download service check out the PlumeriaSC page on our website.

New For Spring [Update]

Plumeria Smart Creator is now on version 4.4.1 . The new update fixes several linking bugs that were not fixed in 4.4.0. Since it is spring I thought I should share my experience with some new accessories I bought for my computer (Note that I am not being paid in any way). As one person put it I was using the smallest keyboard ever. After searching on staples.com I found a company that makes really nice ones for half the price. The company is called Matias (https://www.matias.ca/products/) they offer wired, bluetooth, backlit, keyboards for PC and Mac. Some of the keyboards come with extra USB A ports but I highly recommend not using them. The reason is the ports are too small and it takes a lot of force to pry out anything attached to them. The one nice thing is that the keyboards come with a USB C converter so if you have a newer computer it should plug right in too. 

[Update] I have noticed that my Matias keyboard does not register one the keys if I press the spacebar, left arrow, and up arrow keys. Because of this I only recommend buying Macally keyboards on Amazon. Macally has been around since the first iMacs and they get better reviews than the Matias Keyboards on Amazon. Also I noticed that there are a lot of other complaints people have about the keyboards that was not aware of.

PlumeriaSC 4.4 with Lower Price

To help those who would like to learn programming we have lowered the price of PlumeriaSC 4. You can see the new price change on our "Purchase Now" product page. Also for the first time the project code for the newly released Robot Game is included in the PlumeriaSC 4.4 download. Finally we are releasing the first video lesson for free on YouTube so you can see the curriculum before you buy. Check out the new video and see if you get inspired to stop coding and start creating!

PlumeriaSC 4.3

Hopefully, by now you have played the Orange Grove Game. The game would not have been possible without the new features in PlumeriaSC 4.3. Some of the new features include 2D noise, better physics, and a global camera. Also on the Solar Fusion Software front page is a video that shows how noise is used with the graphics shapes and a behind the scenes look at how the Orange Grove Game was put together.

Orange Grove Game

It's almost Orange picking season and why not have an Orange Grove Game to celebrate. Enjoy our Orange Grove Game and get inspired to maybe one day write your own 3D game. Have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays with this gift from us to you.

PlumeriaSC 4.2

PlumeriaSC 4.2 has been released! PlumeriaSC's biggest feature for 4.2 is that the 3D graphics now run six times faster. The new games have all been updated in PlumeriaSC 4.2 so go check them out. Also you can use 3D noise with any color for a 3D shape. Finally you can make your App time based with the day, month, and year. There's much more to come so stay tuned.