• Android: Fix VSM.
• engine: Introduce BufferObject API.
• engine: Add new isTextureSwizzleSupported API on Texture.
• engine: Add support to Metal and Vulkan backends for texture swizzling.
• engine: Add new DoF settings (native/half res, gather kernel ring counts, CoC radius clamp).
• engine: DoF quality and performance improvements.
• engine: Fix high-quality upsampling issue with SSAO.
• Java: Expose TransformManager.getParent(int).
• samples: Add Metal and Vulkan backend support to Suzanne sample.
• WebGL: expose fitIntoUnitCube to JS.
• WebGL: support for multiple elements.

• engine: Fix Metal bug when setGeometryAt is called multiple times.
• engine: Improvements to DoF.
• engine: Fix RenderTarget NPE when depth is not present.
• engine: Improvements to Camera APIs. Move focus distance from DofOptions to Camera.
• engine: VSM shadows now support shadowMultiplier.
• java: Expose several MaterialInstance APIs (setColorWrite, setDepthWrite, setDepthCulling) that
  should have been public.
• java: fix bug with Texture::setImage buffer size calculation.

• engine: Fix a DoF bug that caused black dots around the fast tiles.
• engine: Minor DoF optimizations.
• engine: Fix blanking windows not being drawn into on macOS.
• gltfio: Add support for data:// in image URI's.
• gltfio: Add internal MorphHelper, enable up to 255 targets.
• engine: Fix a hang in JobSystem.
• samples: Fix rendertarget sample app.

gltfio: Add ResourceLoader evict API.
gltfio: Fix ResourceLoader cache bug.
iOS: Disable exceptions to reduce binary size.

filamat / matc: fix sporatic crash.

• Improve bloom/emissive with glTF files.
• Publicly expose Exposure API for gltfio.

• Android: fix "No implementation found" error.
• Android: fix compilation error in UbershaderLoader.
• engine: computeDataSize now returns correct value for USHORT_565.
• Vulkan: various internal improvements.

• engine: Fixed GL errors seen with MSAA on WebGL.
  Warning: this can affect multisampling behavior on devices that do not support OpenGL ES 3.1
• materials: Added new getVertexIndex() API for vertex shaders.
• samples: RenderTarget demo now disables post-processing in offscreen view and creates depth attachment.
• gltfio: Fix, animation jolt when time delta is very small.

Engine

• materials: Added sheenColor and sheenRoughness properties to materials to create cloth/fabric.
• materials: Materials generation using libfilamat is now multi-threaded.
• materials: Modulate emissive by alpha on blended objects.
• API: MaterialBuilder::build() now expects a reference to a JobSystem to multi-thread shaders
  generation. A JobSystem can be obtained with Engine::getJobSystem() when using Filament,
  or created directly otherwise. ( ⚠️ API change)
• engine: Fix, punctual lights get clipped at certain angles.
• engine: Fix memory leak when calling View::setViewport frequently.
• engine: Fix, materials not working on some Qualcomm devices.
• engine: Fix, RenderTarget cleared multiple times.
• Java: Fix JNI bindings for color grading.
• Android: reduced binary size.

Platforms and backends

• Added support for Apple silicon Macs. build.sh can now be used to build on either Apple silicon or
  Intel-based Macs. Pass the -l flag to build universal binaries.
• Metal: honor inverseFrontFaces in RasterState.
• Metal: Fix crash when switching between views with shadowing enabled.
• Metal: Fix crash when calling Texture::setImage() on SAMPLER_2D_ARRAY texture.
• WebGL: Fix samples erroring on Windows with Chrome.
• WebGL: Support highlight for setBloomOptions in JavaScript.
• WebGL: Include TypeScript bindings in releases.

Libraries, tools, and samples

• gltfio: added support for KHR_materials_sheen.
• gltfio: shader optimizations are now disabled by default, unless opting in or using ubershaders.
• gltfio: Fix _maskThreshold not found error.
• gltfio on Java: fix potential memory leak in AssetLoader.destroy().
• gltfio: fix crash during async texture decode.
• gltfio: support animation in dynamically-added instances.
• gltfio: Improve robustness when decoding textures.
• gltfio: Fix animator crash for orphaned nodes.
• gltfio: fix tangents with morphing.
• gltf_viewer: fix very sporadic crash when exiting.
• gltf_viewer: fix crash when rapidly switching between glTF models.
• sampels: Add planar reflection RenderTarget demo.

Examples

New sheen and sheenRoughness material properties:

• Introduce libibl_lite library.
• engine: Fix EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION seen when using headless SwapChains on macOS with OpenGL.
• engine: Add new callback API to SwapChain.
• engine: Fix SwiftShader crash when using an IBL without a reflections texture.
• filamat: Shrink internal Skybox material size.
• filamat: improvements to generated material size.
• filamat: silence spirv-opt warnings in release builds.
• matc: Add fog variant filter.
• matc: Fix crash when building mobile materials.
• math: reduce template bloat for matrices.
• Vulkan: robustness improvements.

• Vulkan: internal robustness improvements
• Metal: Support CVPixelBuffer SwapChains
• Metal: Support copyFrame
• Fix clear behavior with RenderTarget API.
• Fix GetRefractionMode JNI binding
• Additional fixes for Fence bug

• Fix a few Fence-related bugs
• gltfio: add createInstance() to AssetLoader.
• gltfio: fix ASAN issue when consuming invalid animation.
• gltfio: do not segfault on invalid primitives.
• gltfio: add safety checks to getAnimator.
• gltfio: fix segfault when consuming invalid file.
• Vulkan: various internal refactoring and improvements
• mathio: add ostream operator for quaternions.
• Fix color grading not applied when dithering is off.

• Vulkan: improvements to the ReadPixels implementation.
• Vulkan: warn instead of panic for sampler overflow.
• Vulkan: fix leak with headless swap chain.
• PlatformVkLinux now supports all combos of XLIB and XCB.
• Fix TypeScript binding for TextureUsage.

• Added View::setVsmShadowOptions (experimental)
• Add anisotropic shadow map sampling with VSM (experimental)
• matc: fixed bug where some compilation failures still exited with code 0
• Vulkan + Android: fix build break
• Add optional XCB support to PlatformVkLinux
• Fix Vulkan black screen on Windows with NVIDIA hardware

• Added a new Live Wallpaper Android sample
• UiHelper now supports managing a SurfaceHolder
• Fix: an internal texture resource was never destroyed
• Fix: hang on 2-CPU machines
• Fix: Vulkan crash when using shadow cascades
• Linux fixes for headless SwiftShader
• Fix null pointer dereference in FIndirectLight
• Fix Windows build by avoiding nested initializers
• Vulkan: support readPixels and headless swap chains
• VSM improvements

• Add screen space cone tracing (SSCT)
• Improvements to VSM shadow quality
• New ShadowOptions control to render Variance Shadow Maps (VSM) with MSAA (experimental)
• Improvements and fixes to screen-space ambient occlusion
• gltf_viewer: add --headless option
• gltf_viewer: Add new automation UI and functionality

• engine: Added new APIs to enable/disable screen space refraction
• engine: Fix, flip the shading normal when det < 0.
• gltfio: Fix animation by clamping the per-channel interpolant.
• gltfio: add async cancellation API
• gltfio: Fix "uniform not found" errors.
• gltfio: Disable clear coat layer IOR change in glTF files (#3104)
• Vulkan: fix final image barrier used for swap chain.
• matdbg: Various improvements
• JavaScript bindings: fix TextureUsage bitmask.
• cmgen / mipgen: add opt-in for ASTC / ETC support.

• Fixes / improvements for contact shadows, fog, and DOF
• Reduce SSAO creases caused by geometry tessellation
• Fix compilation warnings and issue with Clang 12
• Fix JNI crashes
• Rename .blurScale to .cocScale in DOF options

• Improvements to SSAO quality
• Fix unoptimized shader crashes with certain OpenGL drivers
• Add float versions of math constants to libmath
• filament-utils: fix, CoroutineScope job should be canceled before destroy

Engine (new features ✨ )

• MASKED mode now leaves destination alpha intact (useful for transparent targets).
• MASKED mode now benefit from smoothing in unlit materials.
• Fixed frame graph crash when more than 32 stages were required.
• Temporal Anti-Aliasing (TAA) is now available as a complement to MSAA and FXAA. It can be turned
  on and controlled using View.setTemporalAntiAliasingOptions().
• Added texture getters to Skybox and IndirectLight (C++, Java, JavaScript).
• Added APIs to create 3D textures and 2D texture arrays.
• Internal buffers can now be sized at compile times for applications that render very large
  numbers of objects.
• View.setAmbientOcclusion() is deprecated in favor of View.setAmbientOcclusionOptions
  ( ⚠️ API change).
• Variance Shadow Mapping (VSM) is now available as an alternative to PCF shadows (experimental).
• Fixed translucent views with custom render targets.
• Use "reverse-z" for the depth buffer.
• Added a way to create an Engine asynchronously.
• Highlights are now more stable under depth of field.
• New option to compress highlights before bloom.
• Improvements and fixes to SSAO and DOF.

Libraries and Tools

• Fixed KHR_materials_transmission to use the FADE blending mode.
• Fixed several memory leaks in gltfio and the JavaScript bindings.
• Reduced compiled material sizes by removing unnecessary variants.

Platforms and Backends

• Fixed several platform-specific Vulkan bugs and crashes.
• Switched to C++17.
• Many improvement and fixes in the Vulkan backend.
• Many improvement and fixes in the Metal backend.
• Improved MSAA implementation compatibility on Android devices.

Engine (new features ✨ )

• Color grading now has a quality option which affects the size and bit depth of the 3D LUT. See the documentation of
  ColorGrading for more information.
• Added validation in Texture::setImage().
• Improved quality and performance of the depth of field effect.
• Fixed transform hierarchy memory corruption when a node is set to be parentless.
• Fixed refraction/transmission roughness when specular anti-aliasing is enabled.

Libraries and tools

• Fixed camera aspect ratio when loading a camera from a glTF file.
• gltfio now uses specular anti-aliasing by default.
• gltfio now supports the KHR_materials_transmission extension.
• Compiled materials do not perform unnecessary fp32 operations anymore.

Platforms and Backends

• New CocoaPods sample for iOS.
• Filament for iOS now supports iOS 11.
• Updated the Emscripten SDK to 1.39.19.
• Fixed skinning issue with Emscripten.
• JavaScript APIs for color grading and the vignette effect.
• Added various missing APIs to Java and JavaScript bindings.
• Fixed crashes in some browsers and on some mobile devices caused by
  Google-style line directives in shaders.
• Fixed crash in the Metal backend when more than 16 samplers are bound.

Examples

KHR_materials_transmission test asset as rendered by gltfio:

Engine (new features ✨ )

• View::setToneMapping is deprecated, use View::setColorGrading instead. ( ⚠️ API change).
• Tone mapping is now applied via a LUT.
• New tone mappers: linear, ACES, ACES legacy (default), filmic (tone mapper from previous versions
  of Filament), Reinhard, Uchimura, and display range (to validate scene exposure). The new default
  tone mapper has a much improved behavior in high intensity areas.
• Color grading capabilities per View: white balance (temperature/tint), channel mixer,
  tonal ranges (shadows/mid-tones/highlights), ASC CDL (slope/offset/power), contrast, vibrance,
  saturation, and curves.
• New vignette effect.

Engine Changes

• New depth-of-field (DoF) algorithm, which is more plausible and about an order of magnitude faster
  (about 4ms on Pixel4).
• SSAO now has an optional high(er) quality upsampler.
• Improved MSAA performance on mobile.
• Improved performance of the post-process pass when bloom is disabled on mobile.
• Added support for 3D textures.

Libraries and tools

• gltf_viewer now supports viewing with glTF cameras.
• gltfio now uses high precision for texture coordinates.
• gltfio now supports importing glTF cameras.
• gltfio now supports simple instancing of entire assets.
• gltfio has improved performance and assumes assets are well-formed.
• gltfio now supports name and prefix lookup for entities.
• gltfio now provides Java/JavaScript APIs to access lights.
• glfio now relies on the job system for various expensive tasks.
• ModelViewer now allows resources to be fetched off the UI thread.

Platforms and Backends

• Improved JavaScript API for SurfaceOrientation and Scene.
• Updated JavaScript API around Camera construction / destruction ( ⚠️ API change)
• Add missing JavaScript API for View::setVisibleLayers().
• Fixed incorrect handling of texture swizzling.
• Fixed regression in JavaScript IcoSphere that caused tutorial to fail.
• Fixed private API access on some versions of Android.
• Fixed bug in the Metal backend when SSR and MSAA were turned on.
• Fixed Metal issue with BufferDescriptor and PixelBufferDescriptors not being called on
  the application thread.
• Add support for DoF with Metal backend.
• Many improvements and bug fixes in Metal and Vulkan backends.

Examples

Improved depth-of-field

Depth-of-field off and on:

Vignette and color grading

Tone mapping

Comparison between the old tone mapper (now called "Filmic") and the new default "ACES (legacy)" tone mapper. Now how areas of high intensity (sun in the skybox, emissive red object in the foreground) behave in both cases.

⚠️ This release breaks compiled materials, use matc to recompile.

Engine (new features ✨ )

• Improved Depth of Field effect: bokeh rotates with the aperture diameter, improved CoC calculation, feather blur radius
• Introduced getNormalizedViewportCoord shader API
• MaterialInstance now have optional names
• Added basic SwiftShader support

Engine Changes

• Fixed SwapChain resizing issues in Vulkan
• Added debug option to track Entities
• Fixed Camera entity leaks
• Removed problematic CreateEliminateDeadMembersPass, which broke UBO layout
• Only implement flushAndWait() debugging on android
• Added assert that the engine is not terminated in flushAndWait()
• Added several fixes and improvements around objects lifetime management

Libraries

• gltfio: AssetLoader now loads names for mesh-free nodes
• gltfio: Material names are now preserved in ubershader mode

Platforms and Backends

• JNI constructors are now "package private" unless they take an Engine
• Fixed JNI objects allocation and memory corruption

⚠️ This release breaks compiled materials, use matc to recompile.

Engine (new features ✨ )

• Specular ambient occlusion now offers 3 modes: off, simple (default on desktop) and bent normals. The latter is more accurate but more expensive and requires a bent normal to be specified in the material. If selected and no bent normal is specified, Filament falls back to the simple mode.
• Specular ambient occlusion from bent normals now smoothly disappears as roughness goes from 0.3 to 0.1. Specular ambient occlusion can completely remove specular light which looks bad on glossy metals. Use the simple specular occlusion mode for glossy metals instead.
• beginFrame() now accepts a v-sync timestamp for accurate frame time measurement (used for frame skipping and dynamic resolution). You can pass 0 to get the old behavior ( ⚠️ API change).
• Textures can now be swizzled.
• Added a Depth of Field post-processing effect.

Engine Changes

• Refraction mode and type can now be set by calling MaterialBuilder::refractionMode(). and MaterialBuilder::refractionType() instead of materialRefraction() and materialRefractionType() (️ ⚠️ API change).
• Fixed documentation confusion about focused spot vs spot lights.
• Fixed a race condition in the job system.
• Improved dynamic resolution implementation to be more accurate and target more platforms.
• Fixed several issues related to multi-view support: removed View::setClearColor(), a similar functionality is now handled by Renderer::setClearOptions() and Skybox, the later now can be set to a constant color ( ⚠️ API breakage).
• Fixed spot/point lights rendering bug depending on Viewport position.
• The emissive property of materials is now expressed in nits and the alpha channel contains the exposure weight (at 0.0 the exposure is not applied to the emissive component of a surface, at 1.0 the exposure is applied just like with any regular light) ( ⚠️ API breakage).
• Added new intensityCandela() and setIntensityCandela() API to LightManager for setting a punctual light's intensity in candela.
• Fixed an issue where some ShadowOptions were not being respected when passed to LightManager::Builder.
• Fixed several lighting related bugs when multiple punctual lights are present.
• Fixed an issue with directional shadows when stable is true

Libraries

• gltfio: fixed incorrect cone angles with lights.
• camutils: added a new free flight camera manipulator. Pass the -c flight argument to material_sandbox and gltf_viewer to enable.

Platforms and Backends

• Refraction can now be set on MaterialBuilder from Java.
• Fixed support for 565 bitmaps on Android.
• Metal backend: added support for timer queries.
• Fixed issue where JNI initialization could lead to crashes when using multiple versions.
• Added support for headless swapchains on Windows.

Screenshots

Depth of field

Engine

• gltfio: fixed null pointer exception seen with some Android clients.
• Engine now exposes its JobSystem to C++ clients.
• Expose setCulling() in public RenderableManager API.

⚠️ This release breaks compiled materials, use matc to recompile.

Engine (new features ✨ )

• HDR Bloom as a post-process effect.
• Screen-space refraction.
• Shadow-casting spot lights.
• Bent normal maps and specular occlusion from bent normal maps.
• Screen-space contact shadows.
• Global fog.

glTF Loader (new features ✨ )

• Asynchronous API for resource loading.
• Draco compression.
• Flat-shaded models.

Engine Changes

• Removed depth-prepass related APIs. (⚠ API Change)
• Alpha masked objects are now part of the SSAO pass.
• Fixed bug in Camera::setLensProjection() and added the aspect ratio parameter. (⚠ API Change)
• Improved performance of SSAO.

Libraries

• gltfio: Removed deprecated "Bindings" API. (⚠ API Change)
• gltfio: Reduced the size of the library and added gltfio-lite for Android.
• Android libraries (gltfio and filament-utils) now use dynamic linking.
• Android library filamat-android-full now called filamat-android for consistency.
• filament-utils now offers full and lite flavors. (⚠ API Change)

Materials

• Material instances now allow dynamic depth testing and other rasterization state.
• Unlit materials now apply emissive in the same way as lit materials.
• Added Java bindings for geometry::SurfaceOrientation.

Platforms and Backends

• WebGL: Improved TypeScript annotations.
• WebGL: Simplified callback API for glTF. (⚠ API Change)
• Fixed bug rendering transparent objects with Metal backend.
• Fixed crash on macOS Catalina when rendering with Metal backend.

Screenshots

HDR Bloom

Bent normals and improved specular occlusion

Screen-space refraction

Spot shadows

Global fog

Contact shadows

Android

• Improved memory management for gltfio on Android.
• Added new setMediaOverlay API to UiHelper for controlling surface ordering.
• New filament-utils-android library, available on Maven:

repositories {
    // ...
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    // KTX loading, camera manipulator, gesture detection,
    // model viewer, texture loader and math APIs
    implementation 'com.google.android.filament:filament-utils-android:1.4.5'
}

Engine

• The depth prepass setting in View is now ignored and deprecated.
• Fixed a threading bug with the NOOP backend.
• Fix bug with incorrect world transforms computed in TransformManager.
• Implemented sRGB support for DXT encoded textures.

Libraries

• Introduced filament-utils library with TextureLoader, ModelViewer, and Java bindings for camutils.
• gltfio: fix out-of-bounds bug when glTF has many UV sets.
• gltfio: support external resources on Android.

Android

• Android libraries are now available on Maven Central:

repositories {
    // ...
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    // Filament rendering engine
    implementation 'com.google.android.filament:filament-android:1.4.4'
    // Filamat material builder
    implementation 'com.google.android.filament:filamat-android-full:1.4.4'
    // glTF 2.0 loader
    implementation 'com.google.android.filament:gltfio-android:1.4.4'
}

Engine

• Fix bad instruction exception with macOS Catalina.
• Fixed bad state after removing an IBL from the Scene.
• Fixed incorrect punctual light binning (affected Metal and Vulkan backends).
• Fixed crash when using a Metal headless SwapChain with an Intel integrated GPU.
• Added support for ASTC textures on iOS with Metal backend.

Materials

• Added support for solid and thin layer cubemap refraction.
• Improved high roughness material rendering by default when regenerating environments maps.

Libraries

• Removed <iostream> from math headers.

Tools

• cmgen now places KTX files directly in the specified deployment folder.

Samples

• Added new heightfield sample.

Engine

• Fixed morph shapes not rendering in WebGL.
• Added ETC2 and BC compressed texture support to Metal backend.
• Rendering a SAMPLER_EXTERNAL texture before setting an external image no longer results in GPU errors.
• Fixed a normals issue when skinning without a normal map or anisotropy.
• Fixed an issue where transparent views couldn't be used with post-processing.
• Always use higher quality 3-bands SH for indirect lighting, even on mobile.
• Added support for the Metal backend to bind individual planes of YUV external images.
• Added support for depth buffer when post-processing is turned off.
• Improved performance on GPUs that use tile-based rendering.

Materials

• Fixed an assertion when a parameter array occurs last in a material definition.

Libraries

• gltfio: fixed blackness seen with default material.

Language Bindings

• Added support for the latest version of Emscripten.

Engine

• Cleaned up the validation strategy in Engine (checks for use-after-destroy etc).
• OpenGL: Fixed ES 3.0 support on iOS.
• OpenGL: Added support for KHR_debug in debug builds.

Libraries

• gltfio: Java clients should no longer call Filament#init. ⚠️
• gltfio: Added Java / Kotlin bindings for Animator.
• gltfio: Fixed panic with the Android gltf-bloom demo.

Engine and API

• Added missing API documentation.
• Fixed crash for sandboxed macOS apps using Filament.
• Fixed an issue that limited the camera near plane to ~1mm.
• Added Android sample for Camera Stream.
• Fixed an Xcode assertion when rendering skinned meshes using the Metal backend.
• Added support for Core Animation / Metal frame synchronization with Metal backend.
• Fixed an issue with culling in MaterialInstance.

Tools, Builds, and Infrastructure

• Fix additional compatibility issues with MSVC, including the Vulkan backend.
• matdbg: fixed missing symbol issue when linking against debug builds.
• filamat: fixed crash when using the "lite" version of the library.
• matinfo: Fix a crash with on Windows.
• gltfio: fixed an animation loop bug.
• gltfio: added support for sparse accessors.

Language Bindings and Utilities

• Add JS binding to unary Camera::setExposure.

Engine and API

• API Breakage: Simplified public-facing Fence API.
• Face direction is now reversed when transforms have negative scale.
• Minimum API level on Android is now API 19 instead of API 21.
• Added missing API documentation.
• Improved existing API documentation.
• Added Camera::setExposure(float) to directly control the camera's exposure.

Materials Enhancements

• Added the ability to modify clip space coordinates in the vertex shader.
• Backface culling can now be toggled on material instances.
• Dielectrics now behave properly under a white furnace (energy preserving and conserving).
• Clear coat roughness now remains in the 0..1 (previously remapped to the 0..0.6 range).

Tools, Builds, and Infrastructure

• Filament can now be built with msvc 2019.
• Windows: Fixed linker error in debug builds.
• gltfio: Fixed several limitations with ubershader mode.
• gltfio: Fixed a transforms issue with non-uniform scale.
• matdbg: Web server must now be enabled with an environment variable.
• matdbg: Added support for editing GLSL and MSL code.

Language Bindings and Utilities

• webgl: Fixed an issue with JPEG textures.

Engine

• Added an internal texture cache for render targets.
• Fix bad normal mapping with skinning.
• Added basic #include support in material files.

Tools and Infrastructure

• Improved diagnostic output in matc and matinfo.
• Added a web server for real-time inspection of shader code.

Language Bindings and Utilities

• Java clients can now call getNativeObject().
• Fixed intermittent memory overflow with JavaScript clients.

Backends

• Fixed potential Metal memory leak.

Engine

• IndirectLight can now be queried for dominant direction and color.
• Introduced custom attributes, accessible from the vertex shader.
• Added support for vertex morphing.

Tools and Infrastructure

• Improved cmgen SH with HDR images. ( ⚠️ makes brighter IBL's)
• Unified release labels for Sceneform and npm.

Language Bindings and Utilities

• Added Java / Kotlin bindings for KtxLoader.
• Added JavaScript / Typescript bindings for the new RenderTarget class.
• Added base path to glTF loadResources method for JavaScript.

Backends

• Added support for iOS CVPixelBuffer external images with the OpenGL backend.

Our npm package was last updated in April. Some of the changes since then:

⚠️ this version breaks compiled materials, use matc to recompile
⚠️ this version breaks IBL cubemaps, use cmgen to recreate them

Enhancements

Engine

• Added support for RGB_11_11_10
• Removed support for RGBM ( ⚠️ source compatibility breakage)
• IBL cubemap can now be of any size
• Texture::generatePrefilterMipmap can be used for runtime generation of a reflection cubemap
• Introduced RenderTarget API that allows View to reference an offscreen render target.
• Added Screen Space Ambient Occlusion support (SAO)
• Implemented hard fences for the Metal backend, enabling dynamic resolution support.
• Stable mode for shadows
• Improve shadows depth resolution for large scenes
• Add support for polygon offset in shadow map parameters
• Bake the constant bias into the shadow-map
• Better clamping for dot(N, V) (#1106)
• Decouple tone-mapping, FXAA, MSAA and dynamic resolution
• MSAA is now disabled when post-processing is disabled

Materials

• Added specular ambient occlusion to compute a new AO term applied to specular reflections
  (see specularAmbientOcclusion property in materials)
• Added multi-bounce ambient occlusion to brighten AO and preserve local color
  (see multiBounceAmbientOcclusion property in materials)
• Micro-shadowing is now applied to material ambient occlusion
• Use a smaller 64x64 DFG LUT on mobile to reduce binary size
• The material property curvatureToRoughness has been replaced with specularAntiAliasing.
  This new specular anti-aliasing solution offers more control via two new properties:
  specularAntiAliasingVariance and specularAntiAliasingThreshold. They can also be set on
  material instances if needed
• New blending modes: multiply and screen
• Add postLightingColor property to materials (#1057)
• Add new shading model to Filament for specularGlossiness. (#1083)
• Allow dynamic two-sided lighting and materialThreshold

Language Bindings

• Added getMaterialInstanceAt to the Java version of RenderableManager.
• Fix JNI bindings for setting values in parameter arrays.
• Added JNI bindings for the gltfio library.
• JavaScript MaterialInstance now supports vec4 colors.

Samples

• Added lucy_bloom desktop C++ sample to demonstrate the new RenderTarget API.
• Added gltf_bloom Android Kotlin sample to show gltfio and the RenderTarget API.

Tools, Libraries and Infrastructure

• Created a RELEASE_NOTES.md file, to be updated with significant PRs.
• Fix support for parameter arrays in .mat files.
• Added a distance field generator to libimage.
• Further reduced filamat binary size by removing reliance on stdlib.
• Added a new, smaller, version of the filamat library, filamat_lite. Material optimization and
  compiling for non-OpenGL backends have been removed in favor of a smaller binary size.
• Improved SurfaceOrientation robustness.

Bug fixes

• Fix FBO leak when using MSAA in some cases
• Honor clear color, fixes #1125
• Better frustum/box intersection, make code more robust
• Fix the calculation of the shadow constant bias
• Fix LISPSM warping frustum computation
• Actually set the IBL rotation from the builder
• Don't flip the normals (#1060)
• Fix min/max calls in Box::unionSelf (#984)
• Fixed an issue when sorting blended objects with different blending modes

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.9.

List of relevant changes since sceneform-1.9pr3:

⚠️ this version breaks compiled materials, use matc to recompile
⚠️ this version breaks IBL cubemaps, use cmgen to recreate them

Enhancements

Engine

• Added gltf_bloom Android sample to show gltfio and the RenderTarget API.
• Added getMaterialInstanceAt to the Java version of RenderableManager.
• Fix JNI bindings for setting values in parameter arrays.
• Added JNI bindings for the gltfio library.
• Added support for RGB_11_11_10
• Removed support for RGBM ( ⚠️ source compatibility breakage)
• IBL cubemap can now be of any size
• Texture::generatePrefilterMipmap can be used for runtime generation of a reflection cubemap

Tools

• Fix support for parameter arrays in .mat files.

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.9.

List of relevant changes since sceneform-1.9pr2:

Enhancements

Engine

• Introduced RenderTarget API that allows View to reference an offscreen render target.
• Added lucy_bloom sample to demonstrate the new RenderTarget API.
• Added Screen Space Ambient Occlusion support (SAO)
• New blending modes: multiply and screen
• Fixed an issue when sorting blended objects with different blending modes
• The material property curvatureToRoughness has been replaced with specularAntiAliasing.
  This new specular anti-aliasing solution offers more control via two new properties:
  specularAntiAliasingVariance and specularAntiAliasingThreshold. They can also be set on
  material instances if needed
• Added specular ambient occlusion to compute a new AO term applied to specular reflections
  (see specularAmbientOcclusion property in materials)
• Added multi-bounce ambient occlusion to brighten AO and preserve local color
  (see multiBounceAmbientOcclusion property in materials)
• Micro-shadowing is now applied to material ambient occlusion
• Use a smaller 64x64 DFG LUT on mobile to reduce binary size
• JavaScript MaterialInstance now supports vec4 colors.
• Implemented hard fences for the Metal backend, enabling dynamic resolution support.
• Created a RELEASE_NOTES.md file, to be updated with significant PRs.

Tools

• Improved robustness in the tangents utility for meshes that have tangents and normals.
• Added a distance field generator to libimage.
• Further reduced filamat binary size by removing reliance on stdlib.
• Added a new, smaller, version of the filamat library, filamat_lite. Material optimization and
  compiling for non-OpenGL backends have been removed in favor of a smaller binary size.
• Improved SurfaceOrientation robustness when using UVs to generate tangents.

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.9.

List of relevant changes since sceneform-1.9pr1:

⚠️ This version breaks older Materials

Enhancements

Engine

• Add postLightingColor property to materials (#1057)
• Add new shading model to Filament for specularGlossiness. (#1083)
• Allow dynamic doubleSided and materialThreshold
• Stable mode for shadows
• Improve shadows depth resolution for large scenes
• Add support for polygon offset in shadow map parameters
• Bake the constant bias into the shadow-map
• Better clamping for dot(N, V) (#1106)
• Decouple tone-mapping, FXAA, MSAA and dynamic resolution
• MSAA is now disabled when post-processing is disabled

Compatibility

• Use ASharedMemory on Android when available
• Don't call EGL during static initialization
• Workaround a UBO/glFlush interaction on some GPUs

Documentation

• Add Filamat documentation (#1103)

Tools

Refactoring

• Separate src/driver into its own library, libbackend
• Rename namespace filament::driver -> filament::backend
• Make all subclasses of Platform private, except OpenGLPlatform

libmath

• Conversion between vec and vec are now implicit
• Added vec{2|3|4}
• Remove vector comparison operators

Bug fixes

• Fix FBO leak when using MSAA in some cases
• Honor clear color, fixes #1125
• Better frustum/box intersection, make code more robust
• Fix the calculation of the shadow constant bias
• Fix LISPSM warping frustum computation
• Actually set the IBL rotation from the builder
• Don't flip the normals (#1060 -)
• Fix min/max calls in Box::unionSelf (#984)

This release is motivated by a need to update npm, which was last updated in December 2018 with
v1.1.0. Some of the changes since then:

Features

Materials

• Added getWorldFromClipMatrix() API
• Added flipUV property to enable/disable UV Y coordinate flipping
• Added curvatureToRoughness property for specular anti-aliasing
• Added limitOverInterpolation property for specular anti-aliasing
• Use getUserTime() to get the current time in seconds. See Renderer::resetUserTime() for more information

Tools

• New glslminifier tool to reduce the size of built-in GLSL shaders
• matc features are now part of libfilamat to generate materials at runtime
• resgen tool to embed data in binaries (pre-compiled materials, etc.)

Engine

• VertexBuffer builder normalized() method now accepts a boolean
• View::setFrontFaceWindingInverted can be used to change the winding order of front faces. This is useful for mirrored rendering (reflections, etc.)
• Added View::setRenderQuality API. It currently allows the use of an R11G11B10F HDR color buffer instead of RGB[A]16F
• Added the ability to set the polygon offset on a material instance
• Added API to compute tangent frame from vertex data (in VertexBuffer)

Samples

• snorm16 UVs if UVs are in the range -1..1
• New webpack/TypeScript demos
• Added gltf_viewer sample

Enhancements

Engine

• Exposed tangent utility to Java/Kotlin
• Allow mutation of non-direct buffers in Java/JNI
• FrameGraph is now enabled internally
• Improved render target management
• Added addEntities to Scene
• Windows debug libraries are now part of the distribution
• Add new queries to TransformManager and Scene
• Mipmaps are now generated using the GPU for both Vulkan and OpenGL
• Improved job system performance, especially under contention
• Removed obsolete documentation about static lights
• Improved skinning memory usage
• Improved job system performance
• Set CPU affinity on job system threads on Android to avoid core hopping/cache thrashing
• Froxelization now runs during the shadow pass for improved parallelism
• Lights culling is now parallelized with renderables culling
• Various performance and code size optimizations
• Use compile-time hashing in StaticString
• The JavaScript API now supports compressed textures
• Disabled depth prepass in the WebGL builds

Web

• Added more JavaScript bindings
• Added more TypeScript annotations

Android

• Upgraded samples to Android Studio 3.3 and Kotlin 1.3.10
• Improved rendering to TextureView
• API level requirement on Android was lowered from 24 to 21
• Reduced the size of the release AAR by ~150 KiB
• UiHelper can now create transparent render targets
• Added a transparent render target demo

Vulkan

• Added support for RGB textures

Rendering

• Replace Cloth DFG approximation with DFG LUT
• Add clearCoatIorChange property to materials
• Continued to improve Metal support
• Always recenter the world origin to the camera position (improves precision)
• Enable the FrameGraph for post-processing
• Add an option to turn dithering on/off
• Implemented blit in Vulkan
• Simplified command buffer management in Vulkan
• Progress on Metal backend

Tools

• Introduce MATERIAL_VERSION (this breaks older Materials)
• Cleaned-up and simplified filabridge and filaflat
• New gltfio library to more easily support gltf
• API change: rename matrix factory functions
• New ibl library split from cmgen
• The filamat library is now available as a library to generate materials at runtime
• Improved linear to sRGB conversion functions
• Improved skygen rendering
• Added 4 channel versions of image operations
• Filamesh now generates dummy UV sets when necessary

Build

• Android standalone toolchains are not longer necessary
• Linux CI builds are now compiled with clang 7.0 instead of clang 5.0

Materials

• Shader optimizations are now on by default
• Shader optimizations can now be applied to materials that use external textures
• Use smol-v to compress SPIR-V shaders

Bug fixes

Engine

• Fixed a bug preventing material parameters to be set on default MaterialInstance
• Fixed a double free in RenderableManager::Builder (#871)
• Fixed math::slerp again
• Fixed NaNs in math::slerp
• Fixed out-of-bounds access
• Fixed compilation issues with some compilers
• Destroy engine's default material on shutdown
• Fixed incorrect order of arguments in glBlendFuncSeparate
• Fixed VAO state management bug
• Fixed overflow issue when exactly 256 bones were declared in a renderable
• Fixed potential crash when copying a texture stream
• FADE materials are now properly sorted with TRANSPARENT materials

Rendering

• Fixed FXAA offset by half a pixel
• Fixed generateMipmap implementation to properly honor base/max level
• Fixed OpenGL error with incorrect UBO size in GPU skinning
• Fixed iOS specific OpenGL issues
• Fixed normals/tangents skinning when a transform is set
• Fixed black spots that would sometimes show up with FXAA enabled
• Fixed depth prepass rendering bug on NVIDIA hardware

Tools

• Fixed memory leak in libimage
• Fixed baseColorFactor support when loading glTF files
• Fixed minor issues in glTF to filamesh conversions

Android

• Fixed skybox loader to accept dimensions greater than 256x256
• Fixed filamesh loader to correctly interpret optimized UVs

Vulkan

• Fixed mipmapping of 2D textures
• Fixed validation warning
• Fixed texture anisotropy in the Vulkan backend
• Depth offset and face culling now work

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.9.

List of changes since sceneform-1.7pr6:

⚠️ This version breaks older Materials

Enhancements

Engine

• Add new queries to TransformManager and Scene

Rendering

• Replace Cloth DFG approximation with DFG LUT
• Add clearCoatIorChange property to materials
• Continued to improve Metal support
• Always recenter the world origin to the camera position (improves precision)
• Enable the FrameGraph for post-processing
• Add an option to turn dithering on/off

Tools

• Introduce MATERIAL_VERSION (this breaks older Materials)
• Cleaned-up and simplified filabridge and filaflat
• New gltfio library to more easily support gltf
• API change: rename matrix factory functions
• New ibl library split from cmgen

Build

• Android standalone toolchains are not longer necessary

Bug fixes

Engine

• Fixed a bug preventing material parameters to be set on default MaterialInstance
• Fixed a double free in RenderableManager::Builder (#871)
• Fixed math::slerp again

Rendering

• Fixed FXAA offset by half a pixel

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.7.

List of changes since sceneform-1.7pr5:

Enhancements

Engine

• Exposed tangent utility to Java/Kotlin
• Allow mutation of non-direct buffers in Java/JNI
• FrameGraph is now enabled internally
• Improved render target management
• Added addEntities to Scene
• Windows debug libraries are now part of the distribution

Rendering

• Implemented blit in Vulkan
• Simplified command buffer management in Vulkan
• Progress on Metal backend

Tools

• The filamat library is now available as a library to generate materials at runtime

Bug fixes

Engine

• Fixed NaNs in math::slerp
• Fixed out-of-bounds access

Rendering

• Fixed generateMipmap implementation to properly honor base/max level
• Fixed OpenGL error with incorrect UBO size in GPU skinning
• Fixed iOS specific OpenGL issues

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.7. This release is a small update of sceneform-1.7pr4 to fix compilation errors on some compilers.

List of changes since sceneform-1.7pr4:

Enhancements

Engine

• Mipmaps are now generated using the GPU for both Vulkan and OpenGL

Bug fixes

Engine

• Fixed compilation issues with some compilers

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.7. This release supersedes sceneform-1.7pr3 which contained a deadlock that occurred on some Android devices.

Special thanks to @shartte, @Damianno19 and @gstanlo for their contributions.

List of changes since sceneform-1.7pr2:

Features

Engine

• VertexBuffer builder normalized() method now accepts a boolean

Materials

• Added getWorldFromClipMatrix() API
• Added flipUV property to enable/disable UV Y coordinate flipping
• Added curvatureToRoughness property for specular anti-aliasing
• Added limitOverInterpolation property for specular anti-aliasing

Tools

• New glslminifier tool to reduce the size of built-in GLSL shaders

Enhancements

Engine

• Improved job system performance, especially under contention
• Removed obsolete documentation about static lights

Tools

• Improved linear to sRGB conversion functions
• Improved skygen rendering
• Added 4 channel versions of image operations
• Filamesh now generates dummy UV sets when necessary

Web

• Added more JavaScript bindings
• Added more TypeScript annotations

Android

• Upgraded samples to Android Studio 3.3 and Kotlin 1.3.10
• Improved rendering to TextureView

Vulkan

• Added support for RGB textures

Bug fixes

Engine

• Destroy engine's default material on shutdown
• Fixed incorrect order of arguments in glBlendFuncSeparate
• Fixed VAO state management bug

Rendering

• Fixed normals/tangents skinning when a transform is set
• Fixed black spots that would sometimes show up with FXAA enabled
• Fixed depth prepass rendering bug on NVIDIA hardware

Tools

• Fixed memory leak in libimage
• Fixed baseColorFactor support when loading glTF files
• Fixed minor issues in glTF to filamesh conversions

Android

• Fixed skybox loader to accept dimensions greater than 256x256
• Fixed filamesh loader to correctly interpret optimized UVs

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.7.

Special thanks to @shartte, @Damianno19 and @gstanlo for their contributions.

List of changes since sceneform-1.7pr2:

Features

Engine

• VertexBuffer builder normalized() method now accepts a boolean

Materials

• Added getWorldFromClipMatrix() API
• Added flipUV property to enable/disable UV Y coordinate flipping
• Added curvatureToRoughness property for specular anti-aliasing
• Added limitOverInterpolation property for specular anti-aliasing

Tools

• New glslminifier tool to reduce the size of built-in GLSL shaders

Enhancements

Engine

• Improved job system performance, especially under contention
• Removed obsolete documentation about static lights

Tools

• Improved linear to sRGB conversion functions
• Improved skygen rendering
• Added 4 channel versions of image operations
• Filamesh now generates dummy UV sets when necessary

Web

• Added more JavaScript bindings
• Added more TypeScript annotations

Android

• Upgraded samples to Android Studio 3.3 and Kotlin 1.3.10
• Improved rendering to TextureView

Vulkan

• Added support for RGB textures

Bug fixes

Engine

• Destroy engine's default material on shutdown
• Fixed incorrect order of arguments in glBlendFuncSeparate
• Fixed VAO state management bug

Rendering

• Fixed normals/tangents skinning when a transform is set
• Fixed black spots that would sometimes show up with FXAA enabled
• Fixed depth prepass rendering bug on NVIDIA hardware

Tools

• Fixed memory leak in libimage
• Fixed baseColorFactor support when loading glTF files
• Fixed minor issues in glTF to filamesh conversions

Android

• Fixed skybox loader to accept dimensions greater than 256x256
• Fixed filamesh loader to correctly interpret optimized UVs

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.7.

List of changes since sceneform-1.7pr1:

Features

Engine

• View::setFrontFaceWindingInverted can be used to change the winding order of front faces. This is useful for mirrored rendering (reflections, etc.)
• Added View::setRenderQuality API. It currently allows the use of an R11G11B10F HDR color buffer instead of RGB[A]16F
• Added the ability to set the polygon offset on a material instance
• Added API to compute tangent frame from vertex data (in VertexBuffer)

Materials

• Use getUserTime() to get the current time in seconds. See Renderer::resetUserTime() for more information

Tools

• matc features are now part of libfilamat to generate materials at runtime
• resgen tool to embed data in binaries (pre-compiled materials, etc.)

Samples

• Samples: snorm16 UVs if UVs are in the range -1..1
• Samples: New webpack/TypeScript demos
• Samples: Added gltf_viewer sample

Enhancements

Engine

• Improved skinning memory usage
• Improved job system performance
• Set CPU affinity on job system threads on Android to avoid core hopping/cache thrashing
• Froxelization now runs during the shadow pass for improved parallelism
• Lights culling is now parallelized with renderables culling
• Various performance and code size optimizations
• Use compile-time hashing in StaticString

Materials

• Shader optimizations are now on by default
• Shader optimizations can now be applied to materials that use external textures
• Use smol-v to compress SPIR-V shaders

Android

• Android: API level requirement on Android was lowered from 24 to 21
• Android: Reduced the size of the release AAR by ~150 KiB
• Android: UiHelper can now create transparent render targets
• Android: Added a transparent render target demo

Web

• The JavaScript API now supports compressed textures
• Disabled depth prepass in the WebGL builds

Distribution

• Linux CI builds are now compiled with clang 7.0 instead of clang 5.0

Bug fixes

Engine

• Fixed overflow issue when exactly 256 bones were declared in a renderable
• Fixed potential crash when copying a texture stream
• FADE materials are now properly sorted with TRANSPARENT materials

Vulkan

• Fixed mipmapping of 2D textures
• Fixed validation warning
• Fixed texture anisotropy in the Vulkan backend
• Depth offset and face culling now work

Summary of changes since v1.0.0:

Features

• Web: added support for TypeScript, import, and JPEG textures
• C++ clients can now read KTX textures using the image library
• matc features are now part of libfilamat to generate materials at runtime
• Added the ability to set the polygon offset on a material instance
• Added API to compute tangent frame from vertex data (in VertexBuffer)
• Added View::setRenderQuality API

Enhancements

• Added NOOP backend to allow headless regression testing
• Added compression to filamesh via meshoptimizer
• Added snorm16 quantization for UV's in filamesh
• Use smol-v to compress SPIR-V shaders in materials
• Many Code size and performance optimizations
• The JavaScript API now supports compressed textures
• Disabled depth prepass in the WebGL builds
• Added gltf_viewer sample
• Introduced resgen tool to embed data in binaries (pre-compiled materials, etc.)

Bug fixes

• Synchronization fixes: switched to utils::Mutex, fixed sporadic test failures
• cmgen / mipgen: fixed format in KTX header
• Fixed texture anisotropy in the Vulkan backend
• Depth offset and face culling now work in the Vulkan backend
• Fixed the documentation
• FADE materials are now properly sorted with TRANSPARENT materials

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.7.

List of changes since v1.0.0:

Features

• Added the ability to set the polygon offset on a material instance
• matc features are now part of libfilamat to generate materials at runtime
• Added API to compute tangent frame from vertex data (in VertexBuffer)
• Added View::setRenderQuality API. It currently allows the use of an R11G11B10F HDR color buffer instead of RGB[A]16F

Enhancements

• Use smol-v to compress SPIR-V shaders in materials
• Many Code size and performance optimizations
• The JavaScript API now supports compressed textures
• Disabled depth prepass in the WebGL builds
• Added gltf_viewer sample
• Introduced resgen tool to embed data in binaries (pre-compiled materials, etc.)

Bug fixes

• Fixed texture anisotropy in the Vulkan backend
• Depth offset and face culling now work in the Vulkan backend
• Fixed the documentation
• FADE materials are now properly sorted with TRANSPARENT materials

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.6.

Bug fixes

• Many threading issues related to the JobSystem

This is our first release using a new version scheme.

Features

• Introduced iOS build
• Added tutorials / demos for JavaScript API
• Overhauled uniform buffer management

Enhancements

• Updated Android samples to Kotlin 1.3
• Consolidated WebGL code into root-level web folder
• Added KTX and PNG support to JavaScript API
• Added support for ANDROID_get_frame_timestamps

Bug fixes

• Fixed issues with job system
• Fixed buffer lifetime bug with JS API
• Fixed FXAA alignment issue that caused unwanted borders
• Fixed normals issue with JavaScript IcoSphere

This release of Filament is a check point release towards Sceneform 1.6.

Features

• Added a proper JavaScript API
• Added new TextureHelper in the Java API to upload Android Bitmap objects easily, without an extra copy
• Added Stream::getTimestamp() to query the update timestamp of a stream texture
• Added buffer usage hints to the driver interface
• Added new Android sample project to demonstrate how to texture meshes
• Added new filameshio library to read files generated by filamesh

Enhancements

• Improved Java APIs when used from Kotlin
• Updated release archives instructions to detail how to link against prebuilt libraries

Bug fixes

• Fixed tangent frame computation on mobile when a scale is present
• Fixed a shader typo that caused GPU skinning to fail
• Fixed normals transformations when skinning with non-uniform scales
• Fixed an INVALID_OPERATION bug in the OpenGL backend

This release of Filament matches the initial open sourcing of the project on GitHub. It represents the status of Filament as of August 3rd 2018.