ARM’s Geomerics division is launching a new tool to make 3D graphics better in video games through more realistic lighting and shadows.
The Enlighten 3 tool with Forge is the latest version of Geomerics’ technology for illuminating all of the 3D objects in a video game scene using a single light source, such as the sun. The lighting is more realistic because it captures not only direct but indirect light that bounces around a scene and hits a variety of objects, said Chris Porthouse, the vice president of gaming middleware at ARM, in an interview with GamesBeat. It essentially delivers an accurate simulation of how light interacts with materials.
Graham Hazel, the head of development at Geomerics in Cambridge, England, said in an interview that 2015 will be a big year for the division, as Enlighten 3 will be built into Unity Technologies’ Unity 5 game engine when it launches later this year. It is one tool in the larger ecosystem for ARM, which designs low-power microprocessors. But it is important because it helps ARM out at the high end.
“We see this technology scaling going forward,” Hazel said. “Strategically it’s important because companies engage with ARM because of Enlighten. We expect it to be a driver of innovation in gaming.”
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With Geomerics’ tools, developers can take full advantage of the capability of the next-generation game consoles, Hazel said.
Artists can operate much more efficiently with Enlighten 3, Hazel said, as they can move a light around in a scene and immediately see its effect on how the scene will look. Among the new features is dynamic transparency, where you can change the material in a scene to be transparent or not.
“We are focused on cinematic-quality graphics,” Porthouse said. “This gives you incredible visual realism. The great artists use lighting to convey emotions and tell stories.”
Geomerics is premiering a demo dubbed Subway to show off what can be done with Enlighten 3. The Forge component is a new lighting editor with full support for physically based shading. The evaluation version of Forge integrates YEBIS 3 Post Processing from Silicon Studio to allow visualization of final-quality rendering within the Forge tool.
The tool works with games for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC games for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, PS4, PS3, PS Vita, Wii UTM, Android, Android x86, iOS, and Windows RT.
ARM has shipped more than 1 billion graphics chips to date.
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