Key Advanced Real-Time Features

This section does not pretend to be an exhaustive list of available features in HOOPS Luminate’s advanced real-time rendering module, but it provides a good idea of the core add-ons it brings on top of HOOPS Luminate, speeding-up the development of a high quality real-time (ART) application:

Deferred & forward rendering pipelines

The advanced real-time (ART) module embeds both a deferred and a forward rendering pipeline. Rendering features are less expensive thanks to the intensive usage of the results of deferred rendering passes while the forward rendering pipeline allows the blending of transparent elements in rendered scenes. High performances are reached using this rendering pipeline. As many lights as wished can be rendered at minimal rendering cost.

Physically Based Shading Model

ART renders geometry using a custom physically based shading model. It supports most of Using the Realistic Material, with some specific extra features required for an accurate rendering of vegetation models. Also, a specific effort has been put on the simulation of natural lighting conditions under sun & sky lighting with clouds, including dynamic global illumination calculations.

Complete Real-Time Sun & Sky Model With Atmospheric Scattering

ART features the dynamic lighting & shadowing for the sun, sky and clouds in the model. Atmospheric scattering is fully supported as well as some fancy real-time features such as intra clouds shadows and atmospheric shadows.

Dynamic Global Illumination Solution

ART features a dynamic global illumination solution for natural lights and the ability to bake any HOOPS Luminate light. Lights can be turned on or off and changed in intensity dynamically.

Dynamic Reflection Probes

ART provides a mechanism for the generation of reflection probes. Spherical and box probes with varying glossiness are possible. Probes mix together and have falloffs areas that help blending smoothly between several of them. Reflection probes react to the variations of natural lights.

Unlimited Detail Landscape

Our new module provides a dynamic landscaping model with a data refinement system so that at every frame, the landscape’s detail is below 1 centimeter accuracy. This system can render landscapes that are kilometer wide and even planetary scale wide down to millimeter details.

Extreme Vegetation

ART features a unique combination of graphics algorithms to be able to render massive vegetal environments: millions of trees, grass, bushes can be rendered in real-time by the system. Forests are no more an issue. In addition, the lighting model in ART has been specifically modified to handle vegetation: dual leaves coloring, translucency are part of this model for an increased realism.

HOOPS Luminate Scene Converter

ART delivers a SDK to import existing HOOPS Luminate scenes. These scenes are converted, optimized, have their materials rewrapped, and all tasks needed to render them using ART in an optimized way are available: baking, probes calculations, light management, sky portals handling, meshes restructuring, etc.

Full Cloud and Atmospheric System

ART delivers large scale clouds covers that represent atmospheric conditions over a given planetary surface. These atmospheric conditions turn into layers of clouds that fully interact with the environment surrounding them.

Asset Editor

Graphics resources are defined and assembled into the asset editor. The asset editor is a convenient tool that can be used to produce ready-to-use datasets for using with ART. Define landscapes, vegetation, assemble source models, place them, add scripts, package and export ready-to-use assets for integrating into an existing application.

Custom Anti-Aliasing

Anti-aliasing is an important visual feature, that can be very costly in real-time applications. ART features a custom anti-aliasing algorithm, similar to the RED::FMT_RGBA_AA algorithm used for high-end images production. This algorithm adds full supersampling anti-aliasing quality to the system for a moderate rendering cost.

Scripting and Animation Engine

Add entities to the simulation engine and replay LUA scripts for them to populate your datasets. Animate everything in the world!