MIDDLEWARE // GRAPHICS AND RENDERING | BETA
OGRE3D Company: OGRE team Platform: Linux, Mac, Windows
www.ogre3d.org
OGRE 3D (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is an open source, scene-oriented 3D graphics engine written in C++. Specifically designed as a graphics solution (though it includes opportunities for other features), OGRE is designed to minimise the effort required to render 3D scenes.
The technology automatically deals with common requirements such as render state management, spatial culling and dealing with transparency, as well as features such as multiple shadow rendering techniques, a compositor system designed for full-screen for post-processing effects to be defined easily, and particle systems that include extensible emitters, affectors and renderers.
SUBSTANCE DESIGNER 4 Company: Allegorithmic Platform: Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, PS4, Windows, Xbox One
www.allegorithmic.com
SUBSTANCE DESIGNER 4 is the latest iteration of Allegorithmic’s texture creation tool. New features in the update include GPU-accelerated baking, a contemporary noise generator and hundreds of revised editing tools and filters.
The new version allows developers to create maps for physical-based rendering shaders, and virtualise materials directly in the 3D view with the PBR shader, as well as import their own. It also lets developers automatically extract information from the mesh, such as vector graphics UV Atlas, ambient occlusion, curvature and a high-poly / low-poly tangent space normal map. The texturing tool has native support for Unity, UE4, 3ds Max, Maya, Modo and Fuse.
IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES’ POWERVR Ray Tracing tech is used by developers in rendering to help accurately simulate the transition of light. The tools can be used to support pre-baked lighting in the form of light maps or light probes by enabling light maps to be baked in near real-time. This implementation of the technology will be integrated into Unity 5, which will be shipped later this year. According to Imagination, this will be the first development platform to ship with in-editor, real-time light map previews based on PowerVR Ray Tracing. It is also possible to create a hybrid rendering system where an incremental scanline algorithm is used for visibility determination but ray tracing can be added to implement specific effects.
POWER VR RAY TRACING Company: Imagination Technologies Platform: Android, iOS, Linux, Windows
www.imgtec.com/powervr/raytracing.asp
TORQUE 3D Company: GarageGames Platform: Windows, Mac
www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d
TORQUE 3D IS one of an increasing number of open source game engines that houses its own lighting and rendering tools, among a number of other features.
The built-in rendering system includes per-pixel dynamic lighting, normal and parallax occlusion mapping, reflections, screen space ambient occlusion, a scattersky system for displaying the sun, stars and sky, extensible shaders in GLSL and HLSL, as well as a number of post-processing effects such as depth of field, light rays, lens flare and blurring. Other features include deferred lighting, vertex and primitive buffers, state blocks and shader buffers. The rendering features are compatible with Windows and Mac OS X.
FABRIC ENGINE Company: Fabric Software Platform: Platform-agnostic
www.fabricengine.com
THE FABRIC ENGINE is a development framework built on a multi-threading core to help make it easier for developers to create high-performance and portable tools to integrate with existing applications, as well as run on their own or within a game engine.
The tech houses the Fabric RTR, which provides a framework to help enable the rapid development of advanced rendering techniques. Included rendering techniques which can be extended include deferred shading, motion blur and depth of field, shadows and soft shadows, GPU skinning and HDR lighting. Because of the Fabric Core, the RTR also requires no pre-compiled binaries or C++, and can be modified at all stages.
3DSMAX Company: Autodesk Platform: Platform-agnostic
www.autodesk.com
AUTODESK’S 3DS MAX software offers a modelling, animation, simulation and rendering solution for games and other entertainment sectors such as film. The tool features ActiveShade rendering, enabling developers to iterate faster with interactive rendering, accelerated viewport performance, a render pass system to segment scenes for downstream compositing, and other integrated rendering options such as the inclusion of Nvidia’s iray rendering tech. Game developers can also harness the compositing editor to write together composites in Slate, as well as use a host of other tools to improve modelling, texturing, animation, dynamics and effects.
JUNE 2014 | 49
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