Games using Illuminate Labs lighting tool

[bostonben]

Was just browsing through the latest EDGE, and saw a KZ screenshot advertising the Illuminate Labs set of lighting tools (also used in Tomb Raider, Mirrors Edge, Gran Turismo, Heavenly Sword and others).

Considering GG's experience and technical know-how, this is a great endorsement for using 3rd party tools and tech. Hopefully more companies will embrace a unified tool base and we'll see more games competing on a level playing field.

 

[patsu]

More importantly, whatever experiences that were learned and shared in KZ2 will benefit other developers too.

I was told the KZ2 project uses a lot of third party tools. It probably doesn't make sense to try to do everything in-house.

 

[bostonben]

More importantly, whatever experiences that were learned and shared in KZ2 will benefit other developers too.

Yep. And as illuminate labs' tools are multi-platform, we should see games on all systems benefitting.

 

[patsu]

Yes, it's always about "how" things are put together (usually customization), rather than "what" is being used. That's why different developers still make a difference regardless of platform.

 

[DrJay24]

Yep. And as illuminate labs' tools are multi-platform, we should see games on all systems benefitting.

I don't think any major part of their engine is multi-platform, I think most benefits will be in for first/second party partners with tool/optimizations specific to the PS3.

 

[Turok]

What do said lighting tools help with? Pre-baked global illumination?

 

[AlNom]

What do said lighting tools help with? Pre-baked global illumination?

More information here: http://www.illuminatelabs.com/products/beast

 

[_phil_]

TURTLE is for baking stuff ( normal map ,AO,static lighting,custom shaders such PTMs ) or resampling textures or rendering them in another UVset.Mainly the stuff maya can't do properly.A super surface extraction tool plugged in maya.

It's far removed from a runtime lighting engine solution as the title of the topic would lead to believe

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Indeed, I'll make a change to reflect the true nature of the thread. At which point, I'm not sure how the discussion should pan out...?

 

[_phil_]

Even 'lighting tool" isn't acurate.We're a TURTLE licensee too, and we use it mainly for surface extraction.That should be the case for most developers with a realtime lighing engine.

 

[Terarrim]

Would turtle have any effect good/bad regarding deferred rendering or would it not matter which way rendering is done?

Also I thought that the illuminate labs was a global lighting engine in the main (from what I read from their website admitidly some years ago).

 

[scificube]

Would turtle have any effect good/bad regarding deferred rendering or would it not matter which way rendering is done?

Also I thought that the illuminate labs was a global lighting engine in the main (from what I read from their website admitidly some years ago).

Answered.

... It's far removed from a runtime lighting engine solution as the title of the topic would lead to believe

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Yeah, some studios actually produce high-res assets throughout the entire pipeline (similar to stuff in pre-rendered CG) and never paint any textures by hand for the ingame low-res versions, just bake the stuff from the high-res model.