1. http://minko.io
@Minko3D
Meetup iOS Developers
Creating cross-platform 3D apps with Minko.
Jean-Marc Le Roux
CEO and co-founder of Aerys
Creator of Minko (http://minko.io)
@promethe42
jeanmarc@aerys.in

2. by

3. 3D. Everywhere.
Deliver engaging, interactive and rich 3D content and applications on
desktops, mobiles and the web.

4. Minko Enterprise
Cloud. Light. Mobile.
 It’s like Dropbox for 3D files
 Visualize, share, annotate, collaborate…
 On mobiles, tablets, the web and desktops
 Exclusive 3D streaming algorithms
 Load and display 3D files up to 200 times faster
“We chose Minko because its exclusive compression algorithms help
us distributing cutting edge 3D content on mobiles and the web.”
Gaël Seydoux, Chief of the NBO lab at

5. Minko Studio
Design. Integrate. Live.
 Compatible with all major 3D CAO/design tools
 77+ supported file formats
 What You See Is What You Get





Physics
Animations
Lights
Materials
....
…

6. Minko Engine
Mobile. Web. Native.
 Develop once, deploy everywhere
 The power of native, the reach of the
web
“We chose Minko to be the 3D engine in one of our new Flash-based games
because we think it’s a highly professional […] solution in terms
of development ecosystem and high performance.”
André Weissflog, Head of Development at
 Open source, with enterprise-class
support
Skyrama 2 by BigPoint

7. International Gaming References

8. New Game Released: IronForce
 Published by EA/Chillingo
 http://www.chillingo.com/games/iron-force/
 Tank MMORPG
 Already available on iOS
 Available soon on Android

9. New Game Released: IronForce

10. Minko VS Unity - Architecture
Application
Application
Unity
Minko
Mono VM
Javascript VM
Core Library
Native Plugins
OS
Lua VM
Javascript VM (WIP)
Core Framework & Plugins
OS

11. Minko VS Unity – Open Source
Application
Application
Unity
Minko
Mono VM
Javascript VM
Core Library
Native Plugins
OS
Lua VM
Javascript VM (WIP)
Core Framework & Plugins
OS

12. Supported Platforms
Platforms
Unity
Minko
Windows
YES
YES
WinRT / Windows 8 UI / Windows Store
YES
YES
OS X
YES
YES
Linux Desktop (Ubuntu, SteamOS, TVs…)
YES
YES
Linux Server
NO
YES
HTML5
NO
YES
iOS
YES
YES
Android
YES
YES
Flash Player
NO
WIP
Windows Phone
YES
WIP (WP 8.1)

13. Minko coming to Windows Phone!
 Windows Phone 8.1 only

But all existing Windows
Phones should be supported!

Games have a big success
on the Windows Store.
Windows Store, Downloads per category – Worldwide, Jan. 2014

14. 2D/3D file formats
 50+ 3D file formats
– 3DS, BLEND (Blender 3D), DAE/Collada, FBX, IFC-STEP , ASE, DXF, HMP, MD2, MD3 , MD5,
MDC, MDL, NFF, PLY, STL, X, OBJ, SMD, LWO, LXO, LWS, TER, AC3D , MS3D , COB, Q3BSP,
XGL, CSM, BVH, B3D, NDO, Ogre XML, Q3D
 20+ 2D file formats
– JPEG, PNG, TIF, TGA, RAW, PSD…
 Optimized Minko dedicated formats
– Scene, material, texture, geometry…
– Open source (de)serializer
– Extensions (Physics 3D compression, 3D streaming…)

15. C++ 2011
 Standard, fast, well documented and supported by a vast community
 Already fully supported by all major compilers (VS, GCC, LLVM…)
 New additions make it closer to what we’re used to with AS3/Javascript
– Closures/lambda functions
– Type inference (instead of dynamic typing)
– Shared pointers

16. C++11 Example – Closures
// callback is removed when mouseWheel is set to nullptr

17. C++11 Example – Shared pointers

18. Components – Ex: Directional Light
 The Transform component is not mandatory
– Scene nodes do not necessarily have a 3D transform: lighter and more customizable
– Yet our directional light is pointless without a configurable direction…

19. Components – Ex: Camera
 Our camera has 3 components:
– Transform will make our Camera position/orientation customizable
– PerspectiveCamera will provide actual camera related data to the rendering
API
– Renderer will do the actual DrawCall storage/frame rendering

20. Emscripten https://github.com/kripken/emscripten
 Open source project driven by Mozilla
– Based on LLVM, which is supported by Google, Apple, Intel and many more
 Cross-compile C++ code to Javascript code
– Binds OpenGL to WebGL
– Provide virtual file system
– C++  Javascript bindings
 Code optimizations
– Closure compiler
– asm.js (2x performances of native code!)
 Code compression using LZMA

21. Premake http://industriousone.com/premake
 Cross-platform build system
– Windows, Mac and Linux
– Reference in the video game industry
– Well documented
 Compatible with most IDEs/tools
– gmake
– Visual Studio
– XCode

Easy to extend and customize
– Based on LUA script configuration files
– Adding support for emscripten was easy

22. HTML5 UI (WIP)
 Portable
HTML5 UI overlay
– Chromium on desktop
– WebView on mobiles
– DOMElement on the web
 Responsive UI design
 Leverage existing HTML5 tools and
frameworks
 Video
3D backbuffer

23. Parallelization
 Workers
 Threads (except for HTML5)
 Coroutines (Lua)

24. SCRIPTING

25. Core Framework Language
 Fast
 Rich & expressive
 Optimized for each target
C, C++, Java, C#...
VS
Javascript, Python, AS3…
Scripting Language
 Simple
 Interpreted
 Dynamic

26. We chose… Lua!
 Fits all the requirements of a scripting language
 Vastly used by the video game industry (World of Warcraft, Fable II & III, Neverwinter
Nights, …)
– Complete list of games scripted with Lua
 Very (very) fast
– LuaJIT is comparable to Javascript V8, if not faster
 Designed to be embedded
 Designed to script games
– Simple but very efficient syntax
– Minimalistic set of features but very extensible
– Coroutines!

27. C++  Lua? LuaGlue!
 C++/Lua bindings
 Open source project
– https://github.com/Tomasu/LuaGlue
– We contribute as much as possible
 Leverage C++11
– Optimize as compile time as much as possible
– Simple binding interface
 Used to bind 90% of Minko’s C++ API
– Write 100% of your app in Lua

28. Coroutines
 A function can suspend its execution…
– coroutine.yield()
 … and then resume « sometime later »
– coroutine.resume()
 Gives the illusion of parallelism
– Yet no complicated threading stuff
– Fully cross-platform
 Allow the creation of non-blocking (heavy) functions
 Can (always?) be used in place of events/callbacks

29. Coroutines
function myScript()
doSomething()
while isIdle do
say(‘hello how are you?’)
wait(seconds(3))
end
while not isIdle do
wait(keyboard.anyKeyDown)
handleKeyboard()
end
end

31. Event driven
Coroutine driven
 Action => reaction
 Breaks the code in multiple handlers
 Messy execution flow
 Messy scopes
 Wait for « something » to
happen
 Non-blocking
 Simple execution flow
 Meaningful and readable

32. You choose!
 C++
– Performances
– Rich and powerful language
 Lua
– Simple and efficient
– Fast iteration times
 Mix both in any project on any target

33. Is it really ready?
SoccerPun.ch comming to HTML5 and native iOS/Android!

34. About SoccerPun.ch
 Lots of important game-related features
–
–
–
–
–
–
3D graphics
Physics
Animations
AI
Gamepad
…
 Developped in 2 days using Minko 2 and
AS3
– Entirely re-developped in C++/Lua
 Should be one of the most advanced
WebGL game so far
– Then we can juge whether HTLM5 is ready or
not for games

35. Conclusion
 Open source
– More than 15 OS projects used
– 1 million lines of code
 Public beta coming in March
–
–
–
–
New website
50+ tutorials
10+ example projects
800 000 lines of code

36. THANK YOU!

37. Aerys US
Institut Mines-Télécom Silicon Valley
NASA Research Park
Moffett Field
CA 94035 Mountain View
USA
Aerys Europe
Jean-Marc Le Roux
CEO
Warren Seine
CTO
Ymane Amrane
Sales Manager
jeanmarc@aerys.in
+336 20 56 45 78
warren@aerys.in
+336 79 51 64 66
ymane@aerys.in
+339 72 28 55 83
15 rue Jean-Baptiste Berlier
Hall B
75013 Paris
France
Customer service
+33 805 690 489
Monday to Friday, from 9:00 to 17:00 UTC
hello@aerys.in
http://aerys.in

38. http://minko.io