BUILD | POST-PROCESSING // YEBIS 2
Main: Pixar has recently started using Yebis 2, integrating the middleware into its rendering pipeline to add post-processing effects faster
Below: The Silicon Studio team (left to right) – engineer manager Colin Magne, executive director Fumiko Kato, CEO Takehiko Terada and engineer Steven Tsang, all gathered around their favourite magazine
“Post-processing is very important to the final emotion of the picture, which is usually set and defined by the art director of the game or production. Yebis has such high quality and fine-tuning that almost anything the art director wants to achieve is possible. “We have seen many relatively low-end customers including Yebis in their engine and giving their tech a whole new look that’s very organic and realistic. And it doesn’t even have to be realistic: Yebis can help with rendering based around non-realistic games, and it always offers a high emotional picture level. That’s something I personally never see in other middleware.” Engineer Steven Tsang adds: “There are more than ten years of research behind Yebis – and our customers recognise that. One of the responses we often get is how fast it is. It’s scalable because you can set the balance between quality and performance yourself if you want. Most of the developers that evaluate Yebis are very impressed with the performance that we can deliver.”
SILICON’S SHOWCASE
You’ve almost certainly seen Yebis at work, although you might not know it. The middleware is used in a wide variety of games, from the next-gen Dragon Ball title unveiled at E3 to Square Enix’s upcoming RPG epic Final Fantasy XV, as well as Agni’s Philosophy, the real-time demo of Square Enix’s new engine – and the Japanese
publisher has since said it could not
have achieved the look of this demo
without Silicon Studio’s tools. The Final
Fantasy firm is just one of Yebis’
38 | JULY 2014
Eastern admirers, with Bandai Namco and Koei also using the technology in their games. But while this is high praise for Silicon Studio, the Japanese company’s ambitions stretch beyond its home market.
“Yebis is very successful in Japan because it is such a unique and special middleware,” executive director Fumiko Kato tells Develop. “But we need to expand our global business and that’s been our focus since launching Yebis 2 last year.“
Pixar’s use of Yebis speaks to the quality
and how serious we are about simulating camera physics. Colin Magne, Silicon Studio
Silicon Studio has made great headway in this, with the renowned Pixar picking up Yebis to enhance its world-conquering family flicks. “They have Yebis integrated into their rendering pipeline,” Tsang says. “It makes their iterative process much quicker because Yebis runs in real-time, as opposed to having to export things and
applying post- processing as a separate step.”
Engineer manager Colin Magne adds: “Yebis is very important for the final image expression. At Pixar, they really play with camera settings, particularly in areas where Yebis has its strengths like depth of field. “This is something that is traditionally very expensive in terms of computer power. Pixar couldn’t do that in real-time until they decided to use Yebis. It saves a lot of effort for their camera set-up at pre-production and pre-rendering time, when they first set the movie layout. “The fact that Pixar uses it speaks to the quality of Yebis 2 and how serious we are about simulating camera lens physics. Pixar is happy because even the depth of field radius is similar to what it should be in the real world, so it’s fitting with the offline renderer they use for the final picture. “It’s something people don’t usually think about in games, but we covered it so the final picture is realistic and even more importantly, natural looking.”
EASY INTEGRATION Part of the reason many studios utilise Yebis is that Silicon Studio has engineered the toolset to fit seamlessly into almost any pipeline already in use. “It’s actually pretty easy,” assures Magne.
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