Fabric Engine 1.11.0 Release Notes¶
Table of Contents
Important Notes - Read Me First!¶
- Fabric Engine requires a video card and driver that support OpenGL 3.2 or later.
- These notes assume you either do not have Fabric Engine installed or have version 1.10.0 installed. If you have an older version installed, you should remove it first before installing 1.11.0; see Fabric Engine 1.10.0 Release Notes for more information on how to do this.
Downloads¶
All downloads for Fabric Engine 1.11.0 can be obtained at http://dist.fabric-engine.com/FabricEngine/1.11.0/. For information on downloads for specific platforms, see Installing Fabric Engine.
Major Changes in 1.11.0¶
Fabric Engine Scene Graph¶
- Layout issues were addressed fixing usability with widgets nested in the array and dictionary widgets.
- The SceneGraphApplication now provides a method ‘setupScene’ which can be overridden by derived classes that require specialization of the Scene construction.
- A bug fixed in the FileLocation class enables applications to launched from volumes different from that which the application is being stored.
Fabric Engine Extensions¶
- All Fabric Engine are now built using the kl2edk tool, which you should also be using to build your extensions. See kl2edk ユーティリティ for details.
Fabric Engine Realtime Renderer¶
- RTR was refactored into an extension, and uses interfaces for render parameter generation.
- Material and viewport (passes) parameters are now directly fetched from KL using RTVals in order to display in the UI.
- GenericParameters were added, enabling to have a same shader parameter that accepts either a uniform, a vertex attribute, a texture, or a per-instance uniform (texture-baked). Limitation: this is an early version and can’t be extended to other custom inputs types.
Fabric Core Changes¶
- We have introduced a new KL debugging layer that allows source-level debugging of KL applications. The debugging framework is a first iteration and currently only supports Linux; we are planning to extend support to Windows and Mac OS X in the next version. We provide a PySide-based debugger front end to LLDB called “zBug” that can be used to easily debug Fabric Engine and Splice applications in a GUI environment, or you can use GDB version 7.0+ for command-line debugging. For more information see the Fabric Engine Debugging Guide.
- The core now has the notion of an RTVal that can be used to instantiate and work with Core data without DG nodes and other containers. For more information see the RTVal Programming Guide.
- The KL language now has the notion of an interface, which is a set of methods that a KL object is guaranteed to provide. You can then take references to different types of objects that provide a common interface, allowing for very flexible, object-oriented programming. For more information see the section “インタフェース（Interfaces）” in the KL Programming Guide.
- We have introduced the kl2edk tool that automatically builds a C++ header file that includes C++ versions of KL types and function prototypes that ensure that KL and C++ types and functions match correctly. kl2edk greatly eases and accelerates Fabric Engine extension development. For more information, see kl2edk ユーティリティ.
- GeometryAttributes now use interfaces, which cleans the code, and make it possible to support custom attribute types (although custom attribute connection to the RTR remains an open problem)
Installing Fabric Engine¶
Fabric Engine runs on Windows 7 SP1 (both 32- and 64-bit), CentOS 6.3, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion” or later.
Install Python¶
If you don’t already have Python on your system, you need to install it first.
For Windows, you can get the latest version of Python 2.7 directly from http://python.org. You will also need to add the Python folders, usually C:\Python27, and C:\Python27\Scripts, to your PATH environment variable.
- On 64-bit Windows, we also provide a build of Fabric Engine that works with Python 2.6.
For CentOS 6.3, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, your system already came with the right version of Python installed.
For OS X, Python 2.7 is automatically installed on your system as part of the base OS install.
注釈
On Mac OS X you must use the system-installed version of Python found in
/usr/bin/python. Using a different version of Python (installed via MacPorts or Homebrew, for example) will result on a crash when trying to run any Fabric Engine application.
Once the install is finished, make sure that you are able to open a command prompt and run python. Windows users will probably have to add the directory in which Python was installed (usually c:\Python27) to their PATH environment variable.
注釈
On previous Windows versions of Fabric Engine, it was possible
to disable the installation of PySide in the Fabric Engine
installer in order to use another version. It is not longer possible
to do this: instead, if you need to use another version of PySide simply
follow the steps for installing from an archive and then simply remove (or rename) the FabricEngine/Python/<PYTHON_VERSION>/PySide directory.
There are two ways of installing Fabric Engine: from an installer package or from an archive.
Installing from an Installer Package¶
Installing from an installer package is generally easier but is less flexible. We recommend this approach if you are evaluating Fabric Engine for a single user, you are fine with using the version of PySide that is bundled with Fabric Engine, and you only need to have a single version of Fabric Engine installed.
From http://dist.fabric-engine.com/FabricEngine/1.11.0/, download and install Fabric Engine for your platform.
注釈
When selecting the 32-bit vs. 64-bit version to install on Windows, note that it is the “bitness” of Python, and not Windows, that matters. To see if the version of Python you are using is 64-bit, simply run “python” from a command prompt. If it has 64 bit (AMD64) somewhere in the first line it displays then it is 64-bit.
On Windows 7 using 32-bit Python, the installer is
FabricEngine-1.11.0-InstallerPackage-Windows-32Bit-Python2.7.msi. It is a .MSI file that can be run directly. Note that the installer is unsigned, so your browser may tell you it’s not safe to run it.On Windows 7 using 64-bit Python, the installer is
FabricEngine-1.11.0-InstallerPackage-Windows-64Bit-Python2.7.msi(for Python 2.7) orFabricEngine-1.11.0-InstallerPackage-Windows-64Bit-Python2.6.msi(for Python 2.6). It is a .MSI file that can be run directly. Note that the installer is unsigned, so your browser may tell you it’s not safe to run it.On CentOS 6.3, the installer is
FabricEngine-1.11.0-InstallerPackage-CentOS-x86_64-Python2.6.rpm. It is a .rpm package that can be installed using ‘rpm -i’ or using a GUI tool.注釈
you must log out and log back in in order to get the environment variables set that Fabric Engine needs to run!
On Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, the installer is
FabricEngine-1.11.0-InstallerPackage-Ubuntu-amd64-Python2.6.deb. It is a .deb package that can be installed using ‘dpkg -i’ or using a GUI tool.注釈
you must log out and log back in in order to get the environment variables set that Fabric Engine needs to run!
On Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, the installer is
FabricEngine-1.11.0-InstallerPackage-Ubuntu-amd64-Python2.7.deb. It is a .deb package that can be installed using ‘dpkg -i’ or using a GUI tool.注釈
you must log out and log back in in order to get the environment variables set that Fabric Engine needs to run!
On Mac OS X Lion or later, the installer is
FabricEngine-1.11.0-InstallerPackage-MacOSX-64Bit-Python2.7.dmg. It is an executable on a .dmg file that can be run directly from the mounted disk image.注釈
you must restart your system in order to get the environment variables set that Fabric Engine needs to run!
Installing from an Archive¶
Installing from an archive provides the most flexibility. You can control the location of the install, use a custom version of PySide, and even install and use multiple versions of Fabric Engine on the same machine.
From http://dist.fabric-engine.com/FabricEngine/1.11.0/, download and install a Fabric Engine installer archive.
- The filename begins with
FabricEngine-1.11.0-InstallerArchive-- For Windows, the archive filename ends with
.zip.- For Linux and Mac OS X, the archive filename ends with
.tar.bz2.
Be sure to pick the archive that matches the characteristics of your system (eg. Python 2.7 vs. Python 2.6, 32-bit vs. 64-bit).
Unpack the archive in a location of your choosing, then edit the file environment.bat (Windows) or environment.sh (Mac OS X and Linux), changing BASEDIR to the directory into which you unpacked the archive.
Whenever you want to use Fabric Engine, open up a console/terminal window and then execute the environment script:
- Under Windows, run
PATH_TO_UNPACKED_ARCHIVE\environment.bat- Under Mac OS X and Linux, run
source PATH_TO_UNPACKED_ARCHIVE/environment.sh
Test Fabric Engine¶
The Fabric Engine installer ships with a simple application, HelloSceneGraph, that can be used to test the installation. To run HelloSceneGraph:
- On Windows:
- Open a command prompt (cmd.exe)
- Change to the Fabric Engine install directory (usually
C:\\Program Files\\Fabric Enginefor per-machine installs andC:\\Users\\<USERNAME>\\AppData\\Local\\Apps\\Fabric Enginefor per-user installs)- Run
python Python\HelloFabric.py
- On Ubuntu, open a shell and run
python /usr/lib/FabricEngine/Python/HelloFabric.py - On CentOS, open a shell and run
python /usr/lib64/FabricEngine/Python/HelloFabric.py - On Mac OS X, open Terminal and run
python /Library/FabricEngine/FABRIC_VERSION/Python/HelloFabric.py
Install Sample Applications (“Demos”)¶
From http://dist.fabric-engine.com/FabricEngine/1.11.0/, download the FabricEngine-1.11.0-Demos.zip file, which you can extract to a location of your choosing. The demos are located below the Apps subfolder of the created FabricEngine-Demos-1.11.0 folder, and are identical for all platforms. These demos can be run using the python command; for example, python Apps/GeometryDeformation.py.
Optional: Installing Fabric Splice¶
Once Fabric Engine has been installed, you can install Fabric Splice. Splice downloads are available at http://dist.fabric-engine.com/FabricSplice/1.11.0/.
Documentation¶
Complete documentation for Fabric Engine can be found here.
After installing Fabric Engine, you can also find the documentation in the Start menu in Windows, the Applications menu in CentOS and Ubuntu, and through a link in the ‘/Applications/FabricEngine/1.11.0’ folder in Mac OS X. The documentation can also be accessed from the “Help” menu of Fabric Engine applications.
Upgrading Applications to Version 1.11.0¶
Fabric Engine Extensions¶
Extensions should be upgraded to use kl2edk; not doing so may cause build breaks or instability for the extensions. Besides, kl2edk is awesome. For more information, see kl2edk ユーティリティ.
