Toolset

Hive3D features a tightly integrated Development Environment that can run in parallel with the game. It is fully collaborative, allowing artists and developers to modify content in real time, through a p2p or server-based network.

• All editing tools are integrated in the Development Environment
• New tools and extensions can be created through Hive Component plug-ins and scripts
• Third party toolsets are seamlessly integrated in the IDE
• Scene setup and programming through the development environment, without recompilations and reloads of the game
• Dynamic, automatic loading of any type of resource from a content repository
o Images, sounds, meshes, scenes, shaders, scripts, text data can be automatically loaded and updated without reloads
o Repositories can be local or network based. Support for HTTP, FTP repositories

• External References: 3D items can refer to external resources (residing either locally or on the netwok) and can be updated automatically whenever a change occurs.
• Unique, fully collaborative system
o Real-time online collaboration through the Integrated editor
o CVS or SVN based collaboration through external references & resources

• All editing tools are integrated to the Development Environment
o Brush-based terrain editor
o Brush-based item massively cloning tool
o Brush-based grass and vegetation editor
o In-engine Level of Detail creation and optimization
o World-class keyframe animation system with dope-sheet, curves and motion clips.
o Editable, non-linear character animation tools which allow creation of synthetic character motions directly in the engine
o Rail-extrusion tools for dynamic road, path or 3D spline definition

• Optimization through native performance monitoring and analysis tools
• 3D scene I/O:
o Native support for Softimage XSI and the XSI Mod Tool
o Support for Lightwave models and Collada scenes
o Additional formats can be supported through the XSI Mod Tool

• Offline cube map & dome rendering
• Advanced debugging and live profiling
o Monitor tool provides an overview of resource usage and finds potential bottlenecks
o Custom metrics can be inserted into the profiler using the Hive Component SDK

Web and social networks

Hive supports viewing and running 3D games and applications within a browser.

• Web-player plug-in supports all windows-based browsers. Unix and Mac-based platform support to be implemented soon
• Facebook support for building social games out of the box
• Google App Engine support out of the box
• Automatic update system
• Network based content repositories for streaming data (textures, meshes, audio, script etc)
• Automatic content caching

Rendering

Modular, expandable & fully customizable rendering architecture supports both OpenGL and DirectX. Other platforms can be supported through Hive Component plug-ins.

• Render3: state-of the art renderer
o Multithreaded rendering
o High Dynamic Range (HDR) rendering with eye adaptation
o Depth of field, motion blur, heat haze, water reflections, volumetric fog
o Dynamic lighting (directional, omni, spotlight, HDR cube map)
o Dynamic soft shadows with subtractive lighting model for both high visual quality and high performance
o Video textures
o Level of detail
o Skybox of multiple layers and animation
o Dynamic object occlusion
• Extensible and customizable through Hive Component plug-ins
• Background mesh and texture streaming for progressive scene loading
• Artist friendly material system
o Node-based shader authoring
o Automatic shader node creation
o Animate any matarial parameter through script or curve
o Dynamic shader generation for both OpenGL and DirectX
o Ready-made materials include water, cloth, fur, atmosphere and planet

Animation

• State of the art animation system
o Bezier, TCB, Smooth, Linear and Stepped animation curves
o Behavioral animation with dynamic motion blending
o Scripted or predefined character behaviors
o Dynamic loading of character animation sets
o Skeletal animation with unlimited bones per character; up to 4 bones per vertex

• Crowd system

Particles

Advanced particle pipeline allows the creation of complex particle interactions and effects.

• Particle effects and simulation can be extended through plugins and extensions
• Billboard, ribbon, instance particles
• Gravity, bounce, swarm, force fields, align to path particle motion modifiers
• Force fields and other effects can be driven by scene objects
• Particle systems can share particle effects and data
• Particle objects can influence other particle objects
• Particles can generate particles

Physics

Full physics support through PhysX and Bullet libraries. Other libraries can be supported through Hive Component plug-ins.

• Multithreaded physics solver
• Hard body dynamics
• Cloth
• joints
• Rag doll physics that intergrate smoothly with the character animation system

Sound and music

Audio rendering through OpenAL, fmod and XACT libraries. Additional audio libraries can be supported through Hive Component plug-ins.

• 2D sound sources
• 3D positional audio
• Background music
• Global pitch shift for slow motion effects
• Dynamic loading of sound libraries and sound samples
• Background audio streaming and loading for progressive scene loading

Scripting

Application, game and AI programming through Hive Script.

• Parallel, high performance execution of scripts on multicore systems
• Can by used for application/game authoring, entity AI, triggers & events
• Strongly typed C-like syntax, supports JIT compilation or precompiled execution
• Built-in data types include integer, float, vector, matrix, string, containers and hive-specific objects
• Custom data types can be implemented through Hive Component plug-ins
• Flow-control statements (if,for,while loops)
• User-defined functions with overloading
• Send & receive events for script to script communication (even over the network)
• Natively supports state-machine paradigm for game development
• Custom libraries are implemented through Hive Component plug-ins. Out of the box features include:
o 3D Math library
o Scene & gameplay management
o User Interface authoring
o TCP/UDP/HTTP networking
o Agent A.I.
o MySQL connectivity
o Facebook connectivity
o Google App Engine connectivity

• Unified server/client scripting model: A script can seamlessly implement both server-side and client-side functionality
• Scripts can be "attached" to various engine components such as:
o Application logic (UI development, mouse/keyboard management, scene management etc)
o Entity A.I. (Decision making for game characters)
o Triggers & Events (e.g. When a user walks in front of door, the door opens)
o Server/client code

Networking

• Low level TCP/UDP connectivity
• HTTP/FTP data streaming
• HTTP communication for Web application development
• Highly integrated with Hive Script