Hilva XNA Graphics Engine

A new sample demonstrating how to implement a custom material using XNA’s Effect class and Hilva’s base classes is released. The sample can be downloaded from Tutorials page or by clicking here.

Hilva XNA Graphics Engine for XNA 4.0 Beta is out and some of the samples have been updated to current release. Check out Downloads page for more.

Download Hilva XNA Engine v1.8 for XNA 4.0 Beta.

What’s New:
- The library has ported to XNA Game Studio 4.0 Beta. Most shaders re-compiled and optimized for this version of XNA Framework.
- A new post process effect, HSL, added to the library to add support for Hue-Saturation-Lightness manipulation of the output frame and/or any other texture.

Changes:
- Hilva.Graphics.Materials.dll and Hilva.Graphics.PostProcess.dll assemblies are merged. The new assembly’s name is Hilva.Graphics.Extensions.dll. This library is only built for Windows and Xbox360 and there is no support of this assembly on Windows Phone since it does not support custom shaders.
- Fixed an small bug in Pinch effect.
- A better implementation of ModelAnimationPlayer class in Hilva.Graphics.dll assembly. No breaking changes in the public members of the class.

Known Issues:
- On Windows and Xbox360 libriaries, an InvalidOperationException may occur when instanciating certain materials and post process effects. The thrown expection contains the following message:
“Cannot mix shader model 3.0 with earlier shader models. If either the vertex shader or pixel shader is compiled as 3.0, they must both be.”

The version 1.8 release of Hilva is now out!
This release focused on fixing bugs and ensuring that the new XNA 4.0 CTP Refresh APIs were stable and the engine runs on Windows Phone Emulator. Additionally, the content pipeline framework was completely overhauled to better support model importation and animation playback. This should be the most feature-full and stable release of Hilva yet.

The new release of Hilva XNA Graphics Engine brings more functionality from XNA 3.1 to XNA 4.0. This version includes Hilva.Graphics.Materials.dll library along with several bug fixes.

Please download the new release and check out the Release Notes for more details.

Hilva XNA Graphics Engine for XNA 4.0 CTP has released now.

Regarding the breaking changes in XNA 4.0 CTP and support for Windows Phone platform, Hilva has broken into several libraries to support all of the three platforms supported by XNA 4.0; Windows, Xbox 360 and Windows Phone.

In addition, Skinned model sample ported to the new version of the engine so it can run on Windows Phone Emulator. The updated sample can be downloaded from here.

The old sample is still available on the Tutorials page.

Please visit the Download page to get a copy of the engine.

Skinned model sample updated to use lastest build of Hilva. The sample will show you how to play animations on an skinned model, update the bone hierarchy and to draw a debug skeleton with lines.

Please download the updated sample from Tutorials page.

Hilva XNA Graphics Engine version 1.7.1 is now online. it has several bug fixes and improvements. Bvh (Biovision Hierarchy) importer now it working.

Please download the lastest build from Downloads page.

Post Process Sample has been updated to feature more screen effects including Twirl, Sepia and Bloom effects. Please download the newly updated sample from Tutorials page.

A new tutorial showing how to load and play Skinned Model animations has been added to Tutorials page.

Hilva XNA Graphics Engine v1.7.0.2 has just released and can be downloaded from Downloads page.

Release notes for this version:

• A new implementation of High Dynamic Rendering pipeline.
• Added support for Biovision Hierarchy (BVH) motion files.
• Improved animation playback for skinned models to support bone-name instead of bone-index.
• Model class splitted into StaticModel and SkeletalModel. This may break your current codes.