We are excited to announce the release of JMonkeyEngine 3.8.0-stable.

This new version adds many new features and bug fixes, but most notably, this version features upgrades to the engine's PBR shaders and also introduces a new API to support the creation of custom Render Pipelines.

The changes to the PBR shader have come with some minor improvements to the rendering quality, but the bulk of the changes were primarily related to cleaning up the codebase. The PBR shaders have been heavily refactored so that the engine's stock PBR shader (and any user created forks) and stock PBR Terrain shaders utilize a new modular GLSL library, which has drastically reduced the amount of redundant shader code and has ultimately made JME's shaders easier to fork and maintain.

We've also added a new API for creating custom render pipelines, giving JME devs more control and making it easier than ever before to fine tune the rendering pipeline to match your project's specific needs. Check out this Article About Custom Render Pipelines for a more in depth look into this new addition.

Here are the Full Release Notes for 3.8.0-stable if you are interested in seeing everything that has changed.

With 3.8 all finished up, development for 3.9.0 has begun and is already being discussed in the Engine Development category on JmonkeyEngineHub.

Thank you for your financial contribution(s) to the JMonkeyEngine project!