We’re pleased to announce that a new version of PolyVox is released today. This release brings a number of improvements to both the library itself and also to our development process. Looking at the library first, the main changes include:

Enhanced control over the surface extractors, which allows them to execute on more voxel types (including primitive types) and also provides more control over the way in which triangles are generated during the extraction process.

Much improved documentation, including an expanded manual and API docs. These are still work-in-progress and will be developed further in future releases.

Some restructuring of code, particularly the unclassing of raycasting and ambient occlusion functionality. Again this is something we expect to see more of in the future.

Lots of warnings and fixes to the unit tests. We use CDash for monitoring the quality of our software and it’s all green for the first time that I can remember.

Additionally, there have been a number of improvements to the build system and development process which were largely spearheaded by Matt. These include:

A switch to Git flow for our development process, in order to keep the Git repository in a more stable state and to facilitate collaboration. As a result this is our first release with a proper version number.

Improvements to the CMake build system to better detect which optional dependencies are available and to configure the build appropriately.

A bash script to automate the process of performing a release.

The use of CMake folders to improve navigation in the Visual Studio solution.

Instructions and links for downloading the latest release can be found on the download page. You should also checkout the changelog for more details on the new features, and do come by the forums if you have any questions or problems with this latest release.

Enjoy!