What’s New in Galacean Engine 1.2? Explore the Latest 2D/3D Features, Editor, and ShaderLab

Galacean has released a major milestone that adds numerous engine features and a companion web editor, improving the development experience for 2D and 3D interactive projects. The editor is available for internal testing at galacean.antgroup.com.

Key Updates

Scene: New asset files, multi‑scene rendering, and environment‑light baking.

Texture: Support for KTX2 GPU texture compression and a dynamic mode that boosts video playback performance.

Effects: GPU particle renderer added to close the effects gap.

Shader: Introduction of the ShaderLab language for easier custom shader authoring.

Editor: Panel management feature for a cleaner, more flexible UI layout.

Scene Enhancements

New Scene Assets

Users can create, delete, and export scene assets just like other assets, enabling multiple scenes to share assets within a single project and improving editing efficiency.

Environment Light Baking

The baking workflow has been redesigned: the editor now bakes lighting based on the scene and includes built‑in atmospheric scattering as background and ambient light. Users can select skybox, atmospheric scattering, solid color, or HDR texture as the source, and adjust rotation, exposure, and resolution.

Multi‑Scene Rendering

The

SceneManager

now supports simultaneous rendering of multiple scenes via

addScene

and

removeScene

. The

scenes

property holds the current render queue, and physics can be controlled per scene through the

physics

property.

Texture Improvements

KTX2 Compression

KTX2 compression (glTF KHR_texture_basisu) reduces texture memory usage by about 80%. Enabling the KTX2 option in the editor’s build settings activates it.

Dynamic Mode for Video

Dynamic mode improves performance for frequently changing textures, such as video playback, offering up to a 5× FPS increase on some devices.

Particle System

The GPU particle renderer has been rewritten, adding more initialization parameters and lifecycle controls, making it more artist‑friendly.

The editor does not yet support particle editing; this will arrive in a future minor version after 1.1.

ShaderLab Language

ShaderLab allows developers to define vertex and fragment shaders, rendering pipelines, and render states within a single file, simplifying custom shader creation.

A VSCode extension for ShaderLab with syntax highlighting and linting is under development.

ShaderLab syntax example:

<code>Shader "ShaderName" {
  // uniform declarations
  mat4 renderer_ModelMat;
  ...
  SubShader "SubShaderName" {
    Pass "PassName" {
      BlendState blendState {
        SourceColorBlendFactor = BlendFactor.SourceAlpha;
        ...
      }
      BlendState = blendState;
      RenderQueueType = RenderQueueType.Transparent;
      VertexShader = vert;
      FragmentShader = frag;
      v2f vert(a2v input) { ... }
      void frag(v2f input) { ... }
    }
  }
}
</code>

Editor Panel Management

The new panel manager lets users drag, resize, and rearrange editor panels (node tree, asset, inspector) to suit their workflow.

Script Parameter Configuration

Script parameters can now be exposed in the editor UI, allowing non‑programmers to tweak properties at runtime without modifying code.

<code>import { Script } from '@galacean/engine';
import { inspectProperty } from "@galacean/editor-decorators";
export default class extends Coin {
  @inspectProperty('Number', { value: 1, min: 0, max: 10, dragStep: 1 })
  private rotate = 1;
  onUpdate(deltaTime: number) {
    this.entity.transform.rotate(0, this.rotate, 0);
  }
}
</code>

Camera Depth Texture

The camera now provides a depth texture accessible via the

camera_DepthTexture

shader variable, enabling soft particles, water edge transitions, and simple post‑processing effects.

glTF Parallel Parsing

The glTF loading pipeline has been refactored to parse resources in parallel, dramatically reducing load times. Extension registration now uses a decorator:

registerGLTFParse(GLTFParserType.*** )

.

Sprite Frame Animation

Animation curves now support reference types, allowing assets such as sprites or materials to be key‑framed for frame‑by‑frame animation.

Mesh Low‑Level Creation

ModelMesh now supports low‑level data creation via

setVertexElements

and

setVertexBufferBinding

, offering greater flexibility and performance.

SkinnedMeshRenderer Bones

The

SkinnedMeshRenderer

exposes its

Bones

property for custom bone manipulation, and the previous

rootBone

initialization issue has been fixed.

Other Small Updates

Asset panel supports batch drag‑and‑drop.

View module allows clicking icons to select entities and adds 2D element selection boxes.

glTF mesh generation now includes tangents.

Option to remove built‑in punctual lights from glTF models.

Camera shader variables

camera_Forward

and

camera_Up

added.

Component deep‑clone decorator

deepClone

supports recursive cloning.

Math library now includes a

Rand

pseudo‑random generator.

GraphicsResource

gains an

isContentLost

flag.

ResourceManager

adds

findResourcesByType

method.

Example Updates

Case

Thumbnail

Case

Thumbnail

Multi‑Scene

Video Benchmark

Particle – Fire

Particle – Dream

ShaderLab

Camera Depth Texture

CPU Selection

GPU Selection

Sprite Animation

Preview

The upcoming 1.2 milestone will open the editor to public beta and launch the XR system.

Contact

Galacean open‑source community groups are available on DingTalk (ID: 31065609) and WeChat (contact: zengxinxin2010, note "galacean 加群").

Official links: galacean.antgroup.com , Engine source: github.com/galacean/engine , Toolkit source: github.com/galacean/engine-toolkit .