Graphics Programmers have a new toy to play with thanks to John Carmack and id software, who have just released the source code to their amazing game engine Doom 3. Unfortunately, some of the best parts are missing.
No game data is contained, as it’s of course still covered under EULA, and the original engine’s shadow rendering trick known as Carmack’s reverse has been replaced for legal reasons.
Presumably, this is due to the issue with the Patent, awarded to Creative Labs. The technique itself isn’t a secret anymore, but will be part of a legal entanglement similar to the old “Marching Cubes” problems of yester-year. Hopefully it’ll all pass soon.
Square Enix, video game publisher behind titles like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, has been demonstrating their new “realtime rendering engine” that they claim will to what they call “quality live action” graphics. The photos and video they’ve shown are truly impressive.
As examined in the screenshots below, Square Enix is trying to get as close to absolute true fidelity as possible with its Direct-X 11 supported platform, known as Luminous.
At the press conference the company displayed source material pictures and their corresponding game maps. The engine allowed engineers to build navigable spaces rendered in real-time, as suggested in the video further down below.
While the environments look amazing, there’s little to no information on what they’ve done for rendering people. Hopefully the Uncanny Valley problems won’t derail their entire project. Look below for a sadly uninspiring piece of video. Uninspiring until you realize it’s actually rendering in-game in real-time.
The folks behind Unigine have an amazing new demonstration video available on YouTube showing their engine rendering an impressive mountain valley scene full of rocks and trees. Showing both beautiful vistas and amazing detail in individual plants, they’re really raising the bar on game graphics.
The CG_GL engine, available here, has got some nice new features like portals (similar to the “Portal” game), bokeh rendering, and PhysX support, to go with all the old features like scattering, particles, volumetric fog, and more. While you may not want to actually use it for a game, it’s a great educational tool on how to implement these effects in your own projects.
CG_GL engine is OpenGL API-based open source engine for creating and managing effects. The newest version of the engine adds features like movable and scalable portals (like in the “Portal” game) working with NVidia PhysX, improved bokeh depth of field, more realistic fog, particles, fake raytrace using cube maps and many improvements. It now works both on Windows and Linux. There is also simple game created using the engine.
Another day, another high-end rendering engine for SketchUp. This time from ‘SB2′, the Render[in] engine is a real-time radiosity engine that comes with a few other bells and whistles.
Render[in] is a fully-integrated, real-time radiosity rendering engine developed for SketchUp Free and Pro. Render[in] is fast, easy to use, and works with all the same SketchUp settings, like geometry, camera, sun, colors, textures, etc. You don’t need to change a thing – just render your project! You can also add your own specific settings like specular reflection, point lights, spotlights, and 3D sky and clouds
They have a trial version available for download in the members area, and the full version retails for $160 USD.
There’s a new 3D Engine on the block, and it’s called ‘SimplyCube’.
Designed specifically to ease the interactions between 3D graphics and simulation of realistic physics behaviors, the SimplyCube enables any software developer to integrate every asset of 3D simulation in his applications.
While still in development, its a combination of engine and toolbox to merge physics and 3D graphics into a single engine. According to their blog, they are currently porting it from the PC to Windows Phone 7, an interesting choice to be sure. They also eventually it will be available on the Web, the XBox 360, and other platforms.
It boasts a great collection of rendering features like volumetric lighting and global illumination, and support for various physics engines including NVidia’s PhysX. Unfortunately, it’s currently unavailable as they prepare for a final release.
The 3D Flash-based gaming engine Alternativa3D is now free for all to use, requiring only a link to Alternativa Company even in commercial projects. In addition, the new version utilizes new Flash3D API’s.
Second, Alternativa works on Alternativa 3D 8 engine based on new Flash player with the next generation 3D API’s. It’s all what is possible to say about it before Adobe MAX. Till new Flash player is in a work-in-progress stage and barely be ready earlier then in a year we offer to use A3D 7. More than likely it’ll be possible to port projects based on the seventh version to A3D 8.
If you want to check it out, you can hit them up at Adobe MAX where they’ll be presenting in area 515B.
They’re mum on what “next generation 3D API’s” means, but I’m pretty sure you can make an educated guess. Afterall, they’ve been adding GPU-acceleration on video playback over the last year.
Update 2:57pm: At request of Alternativa, corrected some language up above.
NeoAxis has just hit v0.9 and added some impressive new features. Probably most popular is the new support for 3dsMax2011 and Maya2011, along with COLLADA mesh format. Those 3 things probably make it compatible with pretty much every single modeling and animation package on the market today. But they didn’t stop there, in addition they’ve added:
Parallel-Split Shadow Map (PSSM) technology has been added.
Full support of point light shadows. Shadows are based on cubemaps now.
Samuel Anjam has created a new 3D Gaming Engine he calls “BlendELF” has part of a student project, and so far the results are pretty impressive. Supporting skeletal animation, LUA, C++ and .NET API’s, some advanced lighting effects and much more, it’s a pretty impressive demonstration that runs on both Windows and Linux.
BlendELF is a game engine written by me, Samuel Anjam, an IT student at the University of Jyväskylä. I am coding the engine as my portfolio project, as a proof of my skills in 3d graphics and game logics/systems coding. I release this engine under the assumption that it could be useful for other people in making prototypes, games and virtual realities.
Several years under development and first demo’ed at GDC, the NeutronE gaming engine brings real-time rendering via DirectX11 and GPU/CPU cooperation. The technology is still fairly young, but their website has several demonstration videos showing what it can do. A short bulleted list looks like:
Real-time Global Illumination
Real-time detail tessellation
Real-time time-of-day change
Compute shader for real-time ocean rendering
Underwater rendering with real-time caustics and fog
Soft Shadows with shadow blending
Volumetric clouds
Real-time SSDO
Real-time GPU/CPU Particle Effects
Volumetric lighting
A pretty impressive list of features, no doubt. Hit their website for all the demos and details.
Graphics Programmers have a new toy to play with thanks to John Carmack and id software, who have just released the source code to their amazing game engine Doom 3. Unfortunately, some of the best parts are missing.
Another day, another high-end rendering engine for SketchUp. This time from ‘SB2′, the Render[in] engine is a real-time radiosity engine that comes with a few other bells and whistles.
There’s a new 3D Engine on the block, and it’s called ‘SimplyCube’.
The 3D Flash-based gaming engine Alternativa3D is now free for all to use, requiring only a link to Alternativa Company even in commercial projects. In addition, the new version utilizes new Flash3D API’s.
Several years under development and first demo’ed at GDC, the 
VizWorld.com 
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