Amazon ships Lumberyard 1.23
Amazon has released Lumberyard 1.23, the latest beta of the game engine and development environment, adding a new cloth simulation system, and improving character animation performance.
The update also makes Slices, Lumberyard’s system of reusable components, human-readable.
New Cloth gem based on Nvidia’s real-time cloth simulation technology
The major new feature in Lumberyard 1.23 is the experimental new Cloth gem, a real-time cloth simulation system based on Nvidia’s cloth technology.
The system, which can be used for both clothing and environment assets, supports gravity, wind forces, and collisions. Cloth assets can be imported into Lumberyard from FBX files.
Updates to EMotion FX and Slices
EMotion FX, Lumberyard’s character animation system, gets a new FBX Settings modifier to determine the minimum set of joints that should be enabled to skin a character correctly.
The feature automatically generates skeleton LOD levels in which unnecessary joints are disabled.
Other changes in Lumberyard 1.23 include an updated XML-based format for Slices, Lumberyard’s system of nestable, hierarchical components for organising projects.
According to Amazon, the new format is human-readable, and provides users with more granular control.
There are also several workflow improvements, plus compatibility-breaking changes to online services.
Availability and system requirements
Lumberyard 1.23 is available now. The editor runs on Windows 7 and above.
The engine is free to use for developing offline and local multiplayer games, including source code access; online games must use Amazon Web Services, charged at Amazon’s standard AWS rates.
Read a full list of new features in Lumberyard 1.23 in the online changelog