Free Modular Shed with interior - model by denniswoo1993 from https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/free-modular-shed-with-interior-30b1eb71bb0e4b889160f8283e1750c1

We support now visible field on various X3D nodes:

Inline node.
- This is TInlineNode when looking at the graph from Pascal.
and on all X3DGroupingNode descendants, including Transform and Group.
- These are TAbstractGroupingNode, TTransformNode, TGroupNode in Pascal.

We also support very similar glTF extension KHR_node_visibility. The logic of this glTF extension directly maps to X3D visible field.

The main use-case is to toggle visibility of a group of visual things at run-time. From Pascal code in Castle Game Engine, you can find the TTransformNode that interests you using e.g. the TCastleSceneCore.Node method and then toggle the Visible boolean property. If you don’t know what transform nodes are available (e.g. because you load model in other format, like glTF) then inspect it, by first saving it to X3D using e.g. our Castle Model Viewer, and then open X3D in any text editor.

As a testcase, open x3d/visible_toggling.x3dv in our demo-models repository, https://github.com/castle-engine/demo-models/ . We recommend to just get the whole repository (git clone ...) to have all files. It shows spheres (some visible, some hidden by default) and allows toggling “visible” at runtime (using KeySensor.controlKey routed to “visible” fields).

For more notes see API docs on TAbstractGroupingNode.Visible.

TODO:

Both the X3D and glTF features specifications’ say to also disable light and fog nodes within a group that you made invisible. We don’t implement this yet — for now, the Visible field only affects the visibility of shapes. If you use this feature, be aware that we will toggle lights and fog in the future too.
In case of glTF, it would be great to also support KHR_animation_pointer. This is a bit like X3D routes: allows to animate almost every part of the glTF, in particular it allows to animate the visibility defined by KHR_node_visibility.

If you enjoy this, please support our work on Patreon!

Our screenshot shows house 3D model by denniswoo1993. Not really related to the feature described here, just something pretty arranged in our editor:)

Transform editing using CastleTransformManipulate

You love the super-long news titles, right? 🙂 Again I have a backlog of announcements to do, to communicate everything happening around the engine development. There will be more news in 2024 (stay tuned for traditional “summary of this year, plans for next”), for today a bag of improvements to announce:

We have a new unit CastleTransformManipulate with 2 new components: TCastleTransformHover (visualize the TCastleTransform we hover over) and TCastleTransformManipulate (visualize selection and move / rotate / scale TCastleTransform).
Together, they allow you to implement selection / manipulation of 3D objects in your own applications just like the Castle Game Engine editor does.

Their usage is rather simple:
- just create TCastleTransformManipulate, call TCastleTransformManipulate.SetSelected, set TCastleTransformManipulate.Mode.
- just create TCastleTransformHover, set TCastleTransformHover.Current.
Practical examples of using them are in:
- examples/ifc, example of using IFC in our engine.
- example of our engine integration with mORMot
Note: We still work on 2 examples above (we want to improve some things in IFC support, and we want to make mORMot example really support collaborative editing). But their usage of CastleTransformManipulate is now completely stable 🙂
We support toggling any TIndexedFaceSetNode to display as wireframe.

To do this, set TAbstractShapeNode.Shading to shWireframe using Pascal. If you’re unsure how to manipulate X3D nodes from Pascal, read Writing code to modify scenes and transformations manual, section 11. Building a mesh using code and X3D docs.

Or, in X3D file, set shading="WIREFRAME" following our X3D Shape.shading docs. Test X3D file is shading_wireframe.x3dv.

Wireframe display done this way is often useful for model debugging, inspection etc. While you can also construct lines explicitly (using TLineSetNode, TIndexedLineSetNode), it is sometimes more convenient to just define a regular mesh using TIndexedFaceSetNode and then toggle it (based on any condition) to wireframe.

For some design decisions (e.g. why this is called “shading”) see Shape.shading docs.
We have fixed Steam achievements usage (getting, setting) with Delphi.
I made a presentation about our engine at the beginning of December at Meetup Delphi in Bielsko-Biała (Poland). This was a bigger presentation about engine features, physics, Blender, Sketchfab, Steam integration.

Slides (in Polish) are here.

( If you don’t speak Polish, but you’re interested in the topics — slides from my previous presentation in Cologne are the closest equivalent in English. )

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