Videogame studios are always looking at ways of improving production workflow, helping reduce development time in the process. One way they can do this is with texture streaming middleware Granite by software company Graphine. Today, Graphine has announced the launch of Granite SDK 5.0, its flagship product for high-quality real-time 3D visualisation.
The new Granite SDK 5.0 brings similar video memory optimisation and loading time optimisation as previous versions while improving iteration times for creators, combined with straightforward file versioning and asset distribution during videogame development.
Virtual texturing, the technology behind Granite SDK, has always resulted in larger atlas files at some point in videogame production. Granite SDK has now removed these large files by completely redesigning its file format. You can now stream directly from individual (stacked) texture assets, our compressed GTex files.
“Artist iteration time matters to our partners,” says Aljosha Demeulemeester, Graphine CEO in a statement. “We found a way to keep working with individually compressed assets during production. Although you could already configure Granite to have no impact on the workflow of artists, we now efficiently allow a distributed approach next to the previous centralised file creation with less integration time required. You benefit from all the memory saving and fast loading during production as well.”
Graphine’s runtime and tools also support a new data format: XYZW, four 8 bit independent channels. This new format improves coding quality of the four independent channels whilst allowing developers to pack four channels from four individual textures into one XYZW layer.
James Loe, Technical Director at Wargaming Seattle: “With the latest release of Granite SDK, Graphine have delivered a nearly seamless production workflow that makes our content creation process easier than ever. No other vendor we work with is better at listening to our feedback and delivering effective improvements as quickly as Graphine does, and that means a lot.”
Granite SDK 5.0 is available as a stand-alone SDK that can integrate into any videogame engine and as a plugin for Unreal Engine 4 and Unity. The benefits from Granite SDK 5.0 will be available with the next release of the plugins. For further information on the new SDK head over to Graphine’s blog post. As further updates are released, VRFocus will keep you informed.
via Mint VR