March 3, 2015-- Geomerics, an ARM Company, today announced the release of the gaming industry’s most advanced dynamic lighting solution yet, Enlighten 3 with Forge. Enlighten 3 delivers cinematic-quality dynamic lighting through an accurate real-time simulation of global illumination; or how light is transferred between surfaces in a scene.
“Lighting is the key to artists expressing their creative vision across all forms of high-end graphics, and gaming is no exception to this rule,” said Mark Dickinson, vice president and general manager, media processing group, ARM. “ARM invested in Geomerics to enable gamers to benefit from the enhanced experience that advanced global illumination brings no matter what platform they use. The advances announced today place Enlighten technology at the cutting edge of game lighting quality and computer graphics.”
New features include more accurate indirect lighting, color separated directional output, improved light map baking, and richer material properties. At the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Geomerics will premiere the Subway Demo, designed using Enlighten 3. The Subway Demo will show how Enlighten’s dynamic transparency adds realism and quality to destructible environments and enables new gameplay possibilities for game designers. With the further addition of Forge, a brand new lighting editor with full support for physically based shading, artists can create dynamic real-time lighting for their games with even greater speed and control.
The Forge editor is designed from an artist’s perspective. With a straightforward user interface and intuitive look and feel, Forge enables artists to quickly understand the capabilities of Enlighten and rapidly iterate on high quality real-time lighting. Forge also provides a customizable foundation for integrating Enlighten into any development pipeline thanks to import functionality from Autodesk 3ds Max and Maya, and a modular design. Additionally, the evaluation version of Forge integrates YEBIS 3 Post Processing from Silicon Studio to allow visualization of final-quality rendering within the Forge tool.
“Lighting is the most critical element in producing computer graphics that reflect the realism of the natural world,” said Masaki Kawase, lead software engineer, YEBIS, Silicon Studio. “Post processing is an integral part of this. With the inclusion of YEBIS 3 Post Processing Effects Middleware in Forge, artists will more easily be able to realize their creative vision.”
With advanced, lightweight real-time global illumination technology, and scalability between mobile, console and desktop platforms, Enlighten is the industry benchmark for game lighting. Enlighten is the lighting technology in Unity 5, is available fully integrated into Unreal Engine 3 and 4, and is used by some of the world’s most successful game development studios.
“Unity 5 is the most powerful version of Unity yet, capable of rendering incredible visuals through the combination of physically-based shading and Enlighten’s industry best real-time global illumination technology,” said Joachim Ante, chief technology officer, Unity Technologies. “We’re very happy to have forged a strong long term relationship with Geomerics to ensure Unity’s amazing community of developers has access to Enlighten and all of its benefits.”
Demonstrations of Enlighten 3 with Forge and the Subway Demo are available in ARM Booth 1624 and in the Geomerics Business Suite BS2622 at GDC. Additionally, ARM’s Graham Hazel will showcase Enlighten 3 with Forge as part of his session at GDC entitled, “Making Dreams Come True – Global Illumination Made Easy” on Thursday March 5 at 10 a.m. (PST) in Room 3014, Moscone Center West Hall.
