Each issue of the Illuminate Labs Newsletter brings you a glimpse of what is going on inside & outside the world of Illuminate Labs. We cover everything from the strange and wonderful sites that our developers frequent to whatever else crosses our collective radars or interests. And naturally, we keep you up to date on the latest product news and happenings in the world of Turtle and Beast and the gaming industry as a whole.
While some may have spent the last few months in hibernation or waiting idly for Santa Claus to come, we at Illuminate Labs have been busier than Santa’s elves, improving our software and developing new functions, updates and improvements. Consider it our belated Christmas gift to all our loyal customers!
As a result, we have a lot more to brag about and report in this issue, and have packed it to the brim with news and other good stuff. So get a cup of coffee (or whiskey or milk or whatever floats your boat), get comfortable, and dive right in!
We hope you enjoy the issue and continue to send us any input you may have for future issues. Happy reading!
The Beast Integrator's Kit is a collection of code samples and documentation that is intended to help you integrate Beast with your in-house game engine. The kit is designed to be updated on an ongoing basis, with new samples and additional documentation added as they become available. Currently, the Kit consists of:
- - An overview of the integration process.
- - An extensive code sample showing how to export FBX-files for use with Beast.
- - A code sample of how to export XML configuration files for use with Beast.
Be sure to let us know what you would like to see in the kit. Are there any specific code examples you need? Any documentation that is missing? Or is there perhaps something we could do to improve the content that is already there? All input is welcome. As always, you can reach us at support@illuminatelabs.com.
Log in and download the Integrator's Kit here.
Our new version of Beast boasts all the stuff that has made Beast so popular, with some key improvements and changes.
Global Illumination
The biggest change is the addition of a new algorithm for Final Gather, which uses a progressive scheme wherein new samples are added based on the contrast difference to neighboring samples. This method is much better at handling both sharp edges in the illumination and artifacts that arise because of geometric discontinuities. Multi-bounce Final Gather performance has also been improved massively. Global Illumination is further improved with the option of exaggerating the effect of occlusion.
UV-packing
We've added cool UV-atlas packing functionality in the new Beast. By looking at individual texels, Beast can pack incredibly tight UV-atlases. Beast can also pack objects that are close in world space into the same texture to optimize resource usage at run-time.
Still not convinced? Then read more on our website or send an email to sales@illuminatelabs.com to set up your own Beast evaluation account.
Emergent has integrated Beast with the award winning Gamebryo development platform.
“I was blown away when I saw the final integration. Beast took a scene that already looked great in Gamebryo and made it unbelievably photo-realistic,” said Katie Morgan, VP of sales and marketing at Emergent. “Companies like Illuminate Labs are exactly who Gamebryo is seeking as partners to evolve the way games are made.”
Integration with Gamebryo was handled by Emergent with support from Illuminate Labs' engineers. Using the global illumination package available in Gamebryo allows you to use Beast directly without the need to write your own integration.
Using Beast with Gamebryo will allow you to:
- - Get full global illumination light maps generated with Beast.
- - Add light baking functionality to Scene Designer with GSA file support.
- - Get tools and runtime support for light maps in Gamebryo applications (available in the global illumination package).
Full source code for the integration is also available, allowing you to create a level of customization that matches your particular needs.
The reptile in question, naturally, is none other than your favorite portable home dweller, our very own Turtle. We’re proud to announce the fifth generation of our renderer plug-in Turtle for Maya, now available as a public Beta, faster, sharper, and shinier than ever. Much work has been done to improve the Global Illumination system. We have a completely new Final Gather algorithm, which is better at handling discontinuities in both lighting and geometry. The handling of light leak problems has also been improved, for both Final Gather and the Path Tracer. New controls for adjusting color balance and attenuation of indirect lighting have been added. Performance is much improved (especially in multi-bounce FG), as well as scaling on multiple CPUs.
The baking system has also received a whole lot of love. We now have a unified workflow for Texture/Vertex Baking and Surface Transfer enabling you to combine baking from high res surfaces with ordinary baking and everything can now be done at both the texture and vertex level. A new adaptive sampling scheme has been implemented for anti-aliasing, as well as a specific system for handling very small or thin triangles in texture bakings. For vertex baking there is also a new sampling method which gives smoother and better results.
In addition, the system for handling Turtle specific attributes and settings has been redesigned. It’s now less noticeable and more memory efficient. The user interface has also been improved to make it easier to find the specific controls that you need to adjust. Support for Maya 2009 is, of course, included in the package.
These are just the highlights of all new features and improvements in Turtle 5.0. The complete list can be found here.
Make sure to check out this new improved Turtle release! It’s available here
U.S ARMY TO USE BEAST LIGHTING SOLUTION FOR AMERICA’S ARMY 3
The U.S. Army has signed a contract with Illuminate Labs for the company to provide the world-leading Beast lighting solution for both the public and government versions of America’s Army 3.
"With America's Army 3, we were challenged to produce highly realistic environments. We needed to incorporate the natural look of shadows created from bounced light in different weather and times-of-day, properly colored environments through materials reflecting manmade light in urban environments, and dynamically shadowed and illuminated character avatars with the same lighting effects for stealth and camouflage purposes." says Michael Bode, executive producer of the America’s Army game and continues "With Beast, everything is transformed into a cohesive lighting scene that is fully integrated into the Unreal Engine 3. The excellent support from Illuminate Labs was a great additional benefit.”
MIRROR’S EDGE, MORTAL KOMBAT VS DC UNIVERSE, AND TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD RELEASED WITH BEAST AND TURTLE
Every great game needs a great GI renderer. Joining the list of successful releases, we are pleased to announce a few new games that have shipped using Illuminate Labs’ technology. Patrick Sirk, Environment Art Director at Crystal Dynamics explains why he chose our products:
“Turtle has become my favorite GI renderer. It combines all the features I liked from Brazil and Mental Ray into one, lightning quick package. We rely on Turtle not only for production light map baking, but for conceptual renders as well. Its speed, ease of use, and quality make it a favorite production tool among my art team.”
Johannes Söderqvist, Art Director, EA Digital Illusions Creative Entertainment in 3D World magazine February 2009, on using Beast with Mirror’s Edge:
”We’ll use it in our future projects. I think it will be the new standard for game lighting.”
Mirror’s Edge, Mortal Kombat, and Tomb Raider Underworld are already in full play here at the office.
WE JUST KEEP GETTING USED - AND WE LIKE IT. (NEW IMAGES IN OUR GALLERY )
If you haven't checked out the new images in our gallery recently, what are you waiting for? We’ve got new stuff from Tomb Raider Underworld (released) as well as from the upcoming America's Army 3, CrimeCraft and WET. And while we’re extremely proud that the images are so cool, we’re even prouder to hear why folks chose to use us to begin with. (And no, we don’t mind others blowing our horn a bit!)
David Lightbown, Senior Artistic Technical Director at A2M Montreal, shares what brought him over to Beast:
"A2M has used Turtle in the past, and we were consistently impressed with the speed as well as the results. When we needed a solution to generate lightmaps in our proprietary level editor, we turned to Beast and haven't looked back. Beast allows us to produce high quality lighting at an incredible rate, which is instrumental in creating the unique visual style that sets WET apart from any other product on the market”
Beast has also found a home over at Vogster Entertainment:
"Utilizing Beast technology for CrimeCraft has allowed Vogster to raise the bar in visual quality for persistent-world online games. “ Matt McEnerny, Executive Producer, Vogster Entertainment.
"CrimeCraft calculates ambient occlusion and soft edged shadows with Beast technology from Illuminate Labs” says Brad Pollard, Studio Art Director, Vogster Entertainment and continues “Beast technology allows our game to mimic radiosity, and bounce lighting seen only in high level rendering solutions."
Our Mothers are proud.
ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL MIGS SESSION
Recently we had the great honor to once again present ourselves and our stuff at a seminar at MIGS in Montreal, Canada. David Larsson, our lead engineer, not only showed the audience why Beast and Turtle have become the leading tools for pre-computed lighting in the games industry, he also made it clear how producing lightmaps with global illumination improves the game realism and simplifies the lighting process.
We would like to thank all of you who came by and took the opportunity to listen to David. A special thanks to David Lightbown, from A2M, for sharing his experiences during this session.
OUR GROWING FAMILY GRABS MORE SPACE
After several additions to our Illuminate Labs Family, we have finally moved into roomier surroundings. We haven’t moved too far, however. We’ve taken over the 8th and 9 th floor of our current building and can now look forward to enjoying the view of the Gothenburg harbor from our new roof terrace this summer!
OUR GROWING FAMILY PART TWO: NEW TEAM BABIES
We would also like to take this opportunity to welcome two small additions to our growing family! Malin Dellgran recently gave birth to a daughter and Jens Olsson became the proud father of his first born son. We know that Malin’s daughter is a beauty, but will Jens's son grow up to become a Beast?
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http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/
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http://www.blogadilla.com/2008/05/11/the-blogadilla-swedish-furniture-name-generator/
Our website features a host of really cool tutorials that will help you get the most from your Turtle experience. In addition to being extremely hot looking, they're also quite useful, explaining in easy terms how to squeeze every last drop from your Turtle. And by the way, Turtle uses the same technology that is found in Beast!
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