BETA | MIDDLEWARE // GRAPHICS AND RENDERING Make your game shine
With new consoles, smartphones and tablet devices getting ever-more powerful with each passing year, creating visually stunning vistas and eye-pleasing visuals is becoming increasingly important. To help dazzle your players, Craig Chapple has put together a handy guide of 12 games development tools for all your graphics and rendering needs
YEBIS 2 Company: Silicon Studio Platform: Android, iOS, Linux, PS3, PS4, Vita, Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One
www.siliconstudio.co.jp/middleware/yebis
YEBIS 2 IS a post-processing effects tool built by Japanese firm Silicon Studio.
The tech features customisable glare effects, including a high dynamic range rendering pipeline in which developers can adjust visuals in real-time. Other features include depth of field effects, motion blur, post-processing, anti-aliasing and an architecture that supports DirectX 11. The tool can be used for games on PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, iOS, Android and PC.
UMBRA 3 Company: Umbra Software Platform: iOS, Linux, PS3, PS4, Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One
www.umbrasoftware.com
UMBRA 3 IS a visibility solution used for occlusion culling. The tool features automatic occluder generation and is designed to improve rendering performance and help with the creation of highly detailed game environments.
The tech only renders objects visible to the player, helping improve framerate and the aforementioned extra detail. To date the tool has been used by developers including CD Projekt, Bungie, Remedy and Guerrilla Games.
SPEEDTREE Company: SpeedTree Platform: Mac, PS3, PS4, Vita, Windows Xbox 360, Xbox One
www.speedtree.com
SPEEDTREE IS A vegetation modelling and rendering middleware. The tool can be used to create trees and plants and allows developers to control performance aspects including polygon counts, LOD transitions and fill rate. Developers also have access to the SpeedTree Modeller, a compiler that automatically generates distant billboards and stitches texture maps together into a shared atlas, and users even have access to the full source code with the SDK.
MODO 801 Company: The Foundry Platform: Linux, Mac, Windows
www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/modo
THE LATEST ITERATION of 3D content creation software Modo, 801 is built for 3D modelling, animation, sculpting, effects and rendering. New features include node-based texturing with built-in presets, enhanced dynamics for large scene handling and destruction, improved scattering tools for scene layout and environment creation and new baking and modelling tools. Other additions include Nodal Shading for complex shader building and a rewritten referencing workflow for large scene management.
48 | JUNE 2014
ENLIGHTEN Company: Geomerics Platform: Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One
www.geomerics.com
ENLIGHTEN IS A popular dynamic game lighting tool used in games such as Battlefield 4, The Bureau: XCom Declassified and Quantum Conundrum. Built by Geomerics, developers can use the middleware to animate lights, emissive material properties and control environment lighting in real-time through a set of controls and sliders. Unity recently announced the global illumination tech would be integrated into Unity 5.
BEAST Company: Autodesk Platform: PS3, PS4, Wii, Windows, Xbox 360, Xbox One
gameware.autodesk.com/beast
AUTODESK’S BEAST MIDDLEWARE provides a set of tools for creating realistic lighting. Developers can simulate natural and physically correct lighting effects, colour bounce, soft shadows and high dynamic range lighting.
The tool allows artists to make changes to the geometry, lighting and baking properties of game levels, while the Beast API enables devs to integrate live scene authoring into custom game level editors.
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