NVIDIA APEX

APEX is a multi-platform, scalable dynamics framework. Rather than providing a low-level API that requires a programmer to use it, APEX creates an environment where artists can create complex high-level dynamic systems without depending on developers. Because APEX is completely artist focused, APEX provides the artist easy to use authoring tools, designed to let the content creator focus on the game, rather than struggle with low-level APIs. Since it is scalable across a wide range of hardware platforms, you can now easily take advantage of the available compute power on a given game plaform, instead of developing for just the lowest end system.

APEX consists of the following components:

The APEX core, which includes the framework, renderer, PhysX SDK, etc APEX modules which provide vertical slices of dynamics content APEX tools which artists can use to create content using the functionality in the individual APEX modules.

APEX Modules will include

• Destruction
• Turbulence (Smoke, Fog, Dust particle effects, etc.)
• Clothing
• Vegetation
• several more in the future

To become a beta tester for APEX, please send email to PhysX-APEX-Beta@nvidia.com.

APEX Modules

APEX Clothing allows the artist to clothe characters with natural, flowing clothing – skirts, pants, shorts, capes, shirts, dresses. It provides for level of detail control, animation blending, partially or fully simulated clothing and constrained clothing movement, and a material library. Scale is applied to number of characters with simulated clothing and the resolution of the clothing mesh. The clothing authoring tool is a plug-in to Maya/Max.
	APEX Destruction allows the game developer to quickly create fully destructible environments. Arbitrary game assets can be converted into destructible assets, e.g. bridges, huts or even full cities. Destruction can be either game play affecting at the complete control of the artist – each fragment of a destroyed wall can be either game play affecting or non-gameplay affecting under the artist’s control. Scale can applied to the number of destructible pieces and the destruction hierarchy.
APEX Turbulence enables high definition smoke and fog interaction, dust devils, sand and snow storms as well as supernatural effects in games to provide a much more dynamic and interactive game experience. It can be used to augment any existing particle techniques with realistic response to moving solid objects and turbulent fluid motion. The simulation quality can be easily scaled up or down based on number of particles and simulation accuracy. The authoring tool allows the artist to change parameters such as fluid viscosity, turbulence and particle mass to create inspiring particle effects based on fluid dynamics.
	APEX Vegetation brings life into trees and forests and allow a user to interact with each individual tree or piece of vegetation. Branches or twigs can be broken, leaves can flutter in the wind. APEX vegetation supports fully deformable trees, fully destructible trees, leaf emitters, level of detail. Scale can applied to number of leaves, number of bones per tree, and number of active trees.