Qt 3D Studio 2.4 Released

We are happy to announce the Qt 3D Studio 2.4 release is now available via the online and offline installers. Here’s a quick summary of the new features and functions in 2.4. For detailed information about the Qt 3D Studio, visit the online documentation page or see the older blog posts.

Changes in the runtime

One of the biggest changes in the 2.4 release is removing the Qt 3D dependency from the Qt 3D Studio runtime and using the architecture we have been using in 1.x releases. The main reason for this change is performance especially in the embedded environments. We have seen quite significant performance differences between the runtimes even after the optimizations done in Qt 3D Studio 2.3 runtime. For details about the performance improvements please see the separate blog post.

The change in 3D runtime does not require any other code changes than changing the import statements (e.g. in QML import QtStudio3D.OpenGL 2.4 instead of import QtStudio3D 2.3) and then recompilation with new Qt 3D Studio 2.4 is enough. Please refer to the Getting Started documentation.

When opening a presentation created with earlier version of the Qt 3D Studio you might also get a notification that “Some custom materials, effects, and behaviors may not work correctly”. This is related to an updated presentation file format which defines also also alpha for the colors i.e. now colors are type vec4 instead of vec3. Saving the presentation with a newer version removes the notification.

Dynamic object creation

Qt 3D Studio C++ API supports now also dynamic object creation. This feature is handy in use cases where you have to create new objects to the scene for example based on e.g. sensor values or the scene contains predetermined amount of certain objects.

Dynamic Elements Example

Dynamic Element Example

Dynamically created objects can be new instances of objects included in the presentation or object geometry can be also created during runtime. Also object materials can be defined dynamically. Please see dynamicelement example from the runtime installation folder.

Vertex Shaders

2.4 version also enables using vertex shaders in the custom materials. Vertex shaders can be used to transform the attributes of vertices i.e. the original objects can be distorted or reshaped in any manner. For more information about creating custom materials please refer to the documentation.

Getting started

Qt 3D Studio 2.4 is available through Qt online installer under the Developer and Designer Tools section. We also provide standalone offline installers which contain all you need to start designing Qt 3D Studio User Interfaces. Online installer also contains pre-build runtime for Qt 5.12 which is needed for developing Qt applications using Qt 3D Studio UI. Qt online installer and offline installers can be obtained from Qt Download page and commercial license holders can find the packages from Qt Account. Binary packages are available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

If you are targeting for embedded systems with running e.g. RTOS you need to build the Qt 3D Studio runtime component for the target operating system. Qt 3D Studio runtime can be found from the git repository. Building instructions can be found from documentation.

 

 


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