Geomerics announced the release of a major upgrade to its award-winning Enlighten software.
Cambridge, UK -- Geomerics announced the release of a major upgrade to its award-winning Enlighten software. In addition to now reaching mobile developers with new iOS and Android runtime support, this release includes major enhancements to the product’s workflow and the addition of static lightmaps. Geomerics, whose Enlighten software just picked up the 2012 Develop Award for Technology Innovation, showed the new functionality in the ARM booth at Siggraph 2012.
Increasingly the games industry is seeing mobile platforms, particularly tablets, become delivery devices for high-end gaming content. To address this change, Geomerics has extended the Enlighten runtime to both iOS and Android, allowing developers to run high-quality, yet lightweight lighting effects such as global illumination and area lights on iOS and Android devices. This functionality was first showcased on the ARM stand at GDC and will feature heavily in ARM’s showing at SIGGRAPH.
Dr. Chris Doran, founder of Geomerics, commented: “Sometimes we have to remind ourselves just how astonishing it is to see global illumination computed in real-time on a tablet or phone – it wasn’t that long ago that people were telling me this was impossible on high-end hardware!”
In addition to mobile support, Enlighten now offers full support for ‘baking’ its output into high-resolution lightmaps while retaining all of the benefits of a fully real-time authoring process. Developers can produce stunning effects that are lighter weight than dynamic effects for use in mobile games. And if developers choose to do so, they can blend static and dynamic effects together. The addition of baking functionality, and support for direct lights including real-time area lights, ensures that Enlighten is now a complete offering for all game developers.
Geomerics has also made improvements to the authoring workflow. The way geometry is handled has been simplified, and some tasks that used to required artist mark-up have been automated. Finally, a new viewport for Autodesk Maya has been added to Enlighten, saving artists the time-consuming hassle of having to import their assets into the game engine to see how their lighting effects will appear in-game.
“Authoring and productivity are massively important to us at Geomerics,” said CEO Gary Lewis. “We have all been working towards the goal of pushing as much of the creation process into the real-time engine, so that content creators are working with the game as it will finally appear. Enlighten is a big part of this story, providing fully dynamic updates to global illumination. Initially, it was only the large studios that could take advantage of this technology, but our work with Maya, and other improvements, now make it easier for all studios to use Enlighten.”
The work Geomerics has put into Enlighten over the last 5 years was recognised at the 2012 Develop Awards in Brighton, England. Enlighten picked up the 2012 Develop Award for Technical Innovation in a ceremony that also saw awards go to Battlefield 3 and Eve Online, titles that feature Enlighten’s technology.
For more information on Enlighten and its latest upgrade, visit: www.geomerics.com.
Source: Geomerics
