Kanzi 3.1.1 release notes

New features

These features are new in Kanzi 3.1.1:

• Progressive rendering

  You can now distribute rendering workload across several frames to reduce the amount of work and time required to render one whole frame. See Distributing rendering across several frames and the example project in <KanziWorkspace>/Examples/Progressive_Rendering.

Feature improvements

• Create and maintain resources for all locales, including locale packs you load using the Kanzi Engine API in a single Kanzi Studio project. See Creating locale packs and Tutorial: Localize your application.

• In the State Tools you can now:

  • Add and adjust the Controller Property right in the State Tools.

  • See the list of all transitions in a state group, and access them from the State Tools.

  • See the name of the state manager and rename it right from the State Tools.

  • Save the value of a property to a state from the Properties.

  See Using state managers.

• In the Preview you can now:

  • Set the alignment, font size, and font of Text Block 2D nodes using the Text tool.

  • See 2D trajectories in the Preview when you enable in the Analyze mode the Debug objects.

  • See the cells of Grid List Box nodes when you enable in the Analyze mode the Borders of 2D nodes.

• In the Nodes window you can now:

  • Enable and disable the rendering of the content of nodes in the node thumbnails.

  • Set the size of the node thumbnails.

  • See the content of the instantiated prefabs.

• To improve the workflow of Kanzi Engine plugins you can now:

  • Create Kanzi Engine plugins straight from the New Project window. See Creating a native Kanzi Engine plugin using a template.

  • Preview plugins in the Preview.

  • Have multiple .dll files for each plugin to allow different plugin configurations.

  • Save the plugin metadata to a Kanzi Studio project.

  • Update the metadata while your Kanzi Studio project using the Kanzi Engine plugin is opened.

  • See the properties of plugin configurations in Kanzi Studio when you select Project > Properties, or when you select a plugin. For example, you can see whether the version of the plugin is release or debug, OpenGL ES wrapper, and the version of the Visual Studio.

• You can now specify which configuration file you want to use with your Kanzi application. See Application configuration reference.

• You can now use custom property types in any node.

• Replaced the Font Color property with the Foreground Brush property to set the color of text in the Text Block 2D nodes. See Setting the color of text in 2D text nodes.

• When you export a kzb file, Kanzi Studio no longer includes the default texture in the kzb file.

• You can now see and open the example projects that come with Kanzi straight from the Kanzi Studio Quick Start window.

• Kanzi Studio now opens projects with a lot of directories much faster.

• To build Kanzi applications for Android you now need JDK 1.8 and ANT 1.9.5. Run Kanzi Build Environment to set up your Android development environment for Kanzi.

API changes

In addition to the Kanzi Engine changes related to feature improvements, these are the changes to the Kanzi Engine API:

• All 2D rendering, including text, uses brushes.

• Simplified the implementation of custom rendering in custom nodes. See Node2D plugin example.

• Updated the texture creation API. See the Texture class.

Documentation

• Created new tutorials:

  • Learn how to create a button that changes its appearance based on user actions. See Tutorial: Creating a button.

  • Learn how to create a gauge and control the gauge needle using a property. See Tutorial: Create gauges.

  • Learn how to create an indicator and control it with a property using the Kanzi state manager. See Tutorial: Create cluster indicators.

• These tutorials include updated content and video tutorials:

  • Tutorial: Create keyframe animations

  • Tutorial: Create reflections

• Added procedures that explain how to reduce aliasing in your Kanzi applications. See Applying anti-aliasing.

• Added Localization Plugin API reference to documentation. See Csv plugin example and Localization plugin API reference.

• Added information on how to use Kanzi with version control systems. See Using version control systems with Kanzi.

Fixes in Kanzi Studio

• Kanzi Studio no longer deletes any data when a Kanzi Engine plugin is not available.

• Kanzi Studio now properly imports materials from .fbx files.

• Kanzi Studio no longer crashes if the .fbx file you import ends with an underscore.

• When you use Save Project As… Kanzi Studio now properly saves the Application directory of Kanzi Studio projects with C++ applications.

• The Pages window now works properly in Windows 8.

• Several bugs that caused Kanzi Studio to crash are no longer present.

See also

Known issues