ARM shows off Geomerics integration at GDC 2015
March 2015 – In an event the first night of GDC, ARM was showing off the release and integration of the Enlighten3 engine from Geomerics into the Unity and Unreal Engines for game development. Geomerics was acquired by ARM in 2013 and has been undergoing an “inside the tool” optimization for power and GPU/CPU use on the mobile platforms to provide the console like performance. The Geomerics engine has been used for years as one of the premier lighting engines for AAA titles on the PS3/PS4, Xbox 360/Xbox One, PC, cloud based and mobile games. As a development element in game design, the advanced, lightweight real-time global illumination technology of the Enlighten tool provides the necessary scalability between mobile, console and desktop platforms.
The press event focused on the new Forge dashboard which has a integration panel in the two major gaming workflows Unity 5 and Unreal 4, as well as tools for custom flows such as 3DMax and Maya from Autodesk. The Forge dashboard is an “artist” targeted control panel that allows the operator to focus on the image they are planning, and manages the full physics models for render & reflection, surface characteristics and a full materials library with models, in the background. In the current release Forge integrates the YEBIS 3 Post Processing from Silicon Studio to allow visualization of final-quality rendering within the Forge tool.
Forge Screenshot in Enighten 3
The new version of the tool supports full dynamic lighting with real time model responses. This allows the designer to create an environment – such as a building with windows – and then shift the sun location on the horizon and in the sky and have it update the image, in real time including reflections and positional indirect lighting that occurs. This now includes metallic, glass, wood, rocks, and fur objects to be internal dynamic light sources in to the image. The tool also support advanced reflection through multicolor light and layers. An example of the image lighting possible from a multi- color and multi-light point image with a dynamic movement object (subway train behind the green glass screen) follows.
Enlighten3 Dynamic Lighting Demo – Subway
The product is available in Q1 ’15 for the Unity, Unreal and Autodesk platforms.
