News
Welcome to the new home of pureLIGHT Technologies, the place to catch up on all the news and information related to our global illumination and visualization products.
January 6, 2010:
Happy New Year to all! Here at pureLIGHT Technologies we are very excited about the future. We have some interesting projects that we can't quite talk about yet. We think we are going to turn the architectural visualization space on it's ear with our new product, but I can't say much beyond that.
We are pleased to announce that we have support for the Unity engine. Currently we are in closed testing, but we should have a public demo available soon.
" alt="Unity Support" border="0" />
The Unity version offers the same features that the Torque and Unreal versions have. The only real difference is that we have written custom shaders and scripts that are used to import pureLIGHT content into Unity automatically. We will be offering the Unity version of pureLIGHT for sale on our site at an introductory price for the first while. Keep an eye out for further updates in the near future.
Happy New Year to all! Here at pureLIGHT Technologies we are very excited about the future. We have some interesting projects that we can't quite talk about yet. We think we are going to turn the architectural visualization space on it's ear with our new product, but I can't say much beyond that.
We are pleased to announce that we have support for the Unity engine. Currently we are in closed testing, but we should have a public demo available soon.
" alt="Unity Support" border="0" />
The Unity version offers the same features that the Torque and Unreal versions have. The only real difference is that we have written custom shaders and scripts that are used to import pureLIGHT content into Unity automatically. We will be offering the Unity version of pureLIGHT for sale on our site at an introductory price for the first while. Keep an eye out for further updates in the near future.
December 10, 2009:
Fresh out of testing at our labs staffed by transdimensional mice is pureLIGHT 1.2, well not really but it sounded cooler that way. Here is a quick rundown of the new features in this version:
Lighting Preview - Our new preview system which is basically a fast and powerful ray trace. It can give you a fairly accurate static picture of what the final lighting will look like in your scene in minutes. Here is a screenshot that was rendered in less than 4 minutes on an Intel quad core.
Enable Mouse Movement - We've greatly improved the ability to move meshes and lights in pureLIGHT. You can enable mouse as shown below. Using your middle mouse button and the CTRL, Shift or ALT keys any object can be moved in one of 3 axis with or without snapping.
Save Screenshot - Not a big feature, but a nice one nonetheless. Self explanatory.
Setting collision meshes for T3D - You can now select visible meshes in pureLIGHT and turn on collision so that when you export your level out of pureLIGHT into Torque 3D the first time you can have some collision already set up.
There have also been more speed improvements along with some bug fixes for importing Collada files from various applications. We have also made progress on a command line version of pureLIGHT that could be used to render on a machine without a min spec video card.
Last, but not least we are pretty excited to see Garage Games releasing a binary version of Torque 3D and to match their holiday spirit we are going to offer a $100.00 discount for pureLIGHT until the new year.
Fresh out of testing at our labs staffed by transdimensional mice is pureLIGHT 1.2, well not really but it sounded cooler that way. Here is a quick rundown of the new features in this version:
Lighting Preview - Our new preview system which is basically a fast and powerful ray trace. It can give you a fairly accurate static picture of what the final lighting will look like in your scene in minutes. Here is a screenshot that was rendered in less than 4 minutes on an Intel quad core.
Enable Mouse Movement - We've greatly improved the ability to move meshes and lights in pureLIGHT. You can enable mouse as shown below. Using your middle mouse button and the CTRL, Shift or ALT keys any object can be moved in one of 3 axis with or without snapping.
Save Screenshot - Not a big feature, but a nice one nonetheless. Self explanatory.
Setting collision meshes for T3D - You can now select visible meshes in pureLIGHT and turn on collision so that when you export your level out of pureLIGHT into Torque 3D the first time you can have some collision already set up.
There have also been more speed improvements along with some bug fixes for importing Collada files from various applications. We have also made progress on a command line version of pureLIGHT that could be used to render on a machine without a min spec video card.
Last, but not least we are pretty excited to see Garage Games releasing a binary version of Torque 3D and to match their holiday spirit we are going to offer a $100.00 discount for pureLIGHT until the new year.
October 26, 2009:
It's great to see that more and more content is being developed with pureLIGHT. Steve Acaster over at Garage Games posted a blog about a level that he has completed in Torque 3D using pureLIGHT. Andrew and Nathaniel have also completed a night version of their Hanging Gardens map called Nightfall. Here are some pictures of that level.
Nightfall was entered into the IGDA Unreal Engine 3 Worldwide Level Design Contest and has won best VCTF level. Now the map will go on to the Grand Finals of the Make Something Unreal contest. Congratulations Andrew and Nathaniel.
We've also been getting a lot of positive feedback about pureLIGHT. Some quotes from happy users over on the Garage Games forums:
Picasso - "pureLIGHT really rocks. It improves the whole vision of the level... pureLIGHT rules :)"
Steve "YorkshireRifles" Acaster - "pureLIGHT is great. Well worth the money."
Haru Ruben - "pureLIGHT's iterative method really has helped me make better images - faster. Doing things in an iterative way helped me to make changes early, and see where problems or creative improvements were possible. Truth is it's actually a lot faster than anything I've tried - truth is you can spend all night rendering your totally awesome lighting solution... but getting to that solution is faster, more fun and I ended up with great results."
In other news we are working on supporting the Unity 3D engine. The support work is just in the preliminary phases, but it's looking good. This will mean at some point in the near future we will have support for Unreal 3, Torque 3D and Unity.
It's great to see that more and more content is being developed with pureLIGHT. Steve Acaster over at Garage Games posted a blog about a level that he has completed in Torque 3D using pureLIGHT. Andrew and Nathaniel have also completed a night version of their Hanging Gardens map called Nightfall. Here are some pictures of that level.
Nightfall was entered into the IGDA Unreal Engine 3 Worldwide Level Design Contest and has won best VCTF level. Now the map will go on to the Grand Finals of the Make Something Unreal contest. Congratulations Andrew and Nathaniel.
We've also been getting a lot of positive feedback about pureLIGHT. Some quotes from happy users over on the Garage Games forums:
Picasso - "pureLIGHT really rocks. It improves the whole vision of the level... pureLIGHT rules :)"
Steve "YorkshireRifles" Acaster - "pureLIGHT is great. Well worth the money."
Haru Ruben - "pureLIGHT's iterative method really has helped me make better images - faster. Doing things in an iterative way helped me to make changes early, and see where problems or creative improvements were possible. Truth is it's actually a lot faster than anything I've tried - truth is you can spend all night rendering your totally awesome lighting solution... but getting to that solution is faster, more fun and I ended up with great results."
In other news we are working on supporting the Unity 3D engine. The support work is just in the preliminary phases, but it's looking good. This will mean at some point in the near future we will have support for Unreal 3, Torque 3D and Unity.
October 21, 2009:
Photo courtesy of Alphadrake.
It's been a while since Fragapalooza, but we wanted to wait until Torque 3D shipped before we made the draw for a license of pureLIGHT and Torque 3D. The lucky winner is Joshua Kupsch who is from Edmonton, but is getting his masters in Landscape Architecture in Leeds in the UK. When we informed Joshua he had won he said, "I really look forward to utilizing pureLIGHT and Torque to elevate my current projects and visualizations!" We are also looking forward to seeing the results of powerful tools in the hands of a creative expert. We'll make sure to poke Joshua down the road and get him to post some pictures of his work.
Photo courtesy of Alphadrake.
October 7, 2009:
Thanks to the Torque 3D team on releasing 1.0. I have been in the industry over 10 years now and gone through my share of development cycles and I know the blood, sweat and tears that goes into a large scale venture and I have a great amount of respect for anyone that comes out on the other end with their sanity intact. That brings us to the reason for my post. We have a bug fix update for pureLIGHT out now. So, as usual grab the build off the Garage Games site and install over top of the previous version. This version was mostly a fix for a VL export issue that some people were running into. Just reload your scene and save the lighting again and your scene will be fixed.
Now for my second reason for posting this blog. We have a new feature we will be rolling out in the near future called Render Preview. This feature will let you grab a snapshot of what the final lighting will look like in your level in minutes. In fact I was able to render the following screenshot at 64 samples on a 2.83GHz quad core in 3 minutes and 43 seconds.
Pretty snazzy isn't it? We are currently testing this new feature and will roll it into out next point release. Don't forget that pureLIGHT is still available at introductory of $350.00 until the end of October. So grab pureLIGHT and raise the quality bar for your Torque 3D project.
Thanks to the Torque 3D team on releasing 1.0. I have been in the industry over 10 years now and gone through my share of development cycles and I know the blood, sweat and tears that goes into a large scale venture and I have a great amount of respect for anyone that comes out on the other end with their sanity intact. That brings us to the reason for my post. We have a bug fix update for pureLIGHT out now. So, as usual grab the build off the Garage Games site and install over top of the previous version. This version was mostly a fix for a VL export issue that some people were running into. Just reload your scene and save the lighting again and your scene will be fixed.
Now for my second reason for posting this blog. We have a new feature we will be rolling out in the near future called Render Preview. This feature will let you grab a snapshot of what the final lighting will look like in your level in minutes. In fact I was able to render the following screenshot at 64 samples on a 2.83GHz quad core in 3 minutes and 43 seconds.
Pretty snazzy isn't it? We are currently testing this new feature and will roll it into out next point release. Don't forget that pureLIGHT is still available at introductory of $350.00 until the end of October. So grab pureLIGHT and raise the quality bar for your Torque 3D project.
August 21, 2009:
pureLIGHT can now be purchased on the Garage Games store. It's been an adventure getting pureLIGHT to market. Working with the Garage Games folks has been great. It's cool to see people that are so passionate about what they do. They truly want to deliver a product that will enable indie developers to realize their vision. We are happy to be part of that mission.
We know that we could have approached things differently by going with a high licensing fee with a handful of clients, but that's not us. We are a small developer ourselves and know that small, passionate, and driven teams can produce incredible results given the right tools. That's why selling pureLIGHT to Torque 3D users was as much a philosophical decision as a financial one.
Speaking of small, passionate teams I'd like to thank ours. Everyone contributed in some way, either directly or by supporting this effort. Thomas, our lead programmer, Andrew, our technical director, Wade, our director of development as well as Andy, Danielle, Jason, Wendy and AJ. A great big thanks to our business team, Don, Kelly and Richard, for believing that a tool we loved to use had value in the larger world and letting us take the reigns to make it happen. I'd also like to that the people that helped with the beta test, especially Andy "hewster" and Matt. And last, but not least Brett, Matt, Pat, Derek, Jacob, Deborah and all the folks at Garage Games that have been excited about pureLIGHT and what could be created with it and did everything they could to help us out.
As a thank you to early adopters we've decide to discount pureLIGHT for the first 30 days. Instead of the normal $500.00 price you can get it for $350.00 for a limited time. So, if you are sitting on the fence contemplating a purchase, don't sit too long ;)
For those not familiar with our product yet make sure to check out our website as well as our demo and tutorial videos on YouTube. Also, you might want to keep an eye out as we have an idea for a very cool contest involving Torque 3D and pureLIGHT that we'll be announcing in the next while. So, get pureLIGHT and "get baked"... lighting that is :)
pureLIGHT can now be purchased on the Garage Games store. It's been an adventure getting pureLIGHT to market. Working with the Garage Games folks has been great. It's cool to see people that are so passionate about what they do. They truly want to deliver a product that will enable indie developers to realize their vision. We are happy to be part of that mission.
We know that we could have approached things differently by going with a high licensing fee with a handful of clients, but that's not us. We are a small developer ourselves and know that small, passionate, and driven teams can produce incredible results given the right tools. That's why selling pureLIGHT to Torque 3D users was as much a philosophical decision as a financial one.
Speaking of small, passionate teams I'd like to thank ours. Everyone contributed in some way, either directly or by supporting this effort. Thomas, our lead programmer, Andrew, our technical director, Wade, our director of development as well as Andy, Danielle, Jason, Wendy and AJ. A great big thanks to our business team, Don, Kelly and Richard, for believing that a tool we loved to use had value in the larger world and letting us take the reigns to make it happen. I'd also like to that the people that helped with the beta test, especially Andy "hewster" and Matt. And last, but not least Brett, Matt, Pat, Derek, Jacob, Deborah and all the folks at Garage Games that have been excited about pureLIGHT and what could be created with it and did everything they could to help us out.
As a thank you to early adopters we've decide to discount pureLIGHT for the first 30 days. Instead of the normal $500.00 price you can get it for $350.00 for a limited time. So, if you are sitting on the fence contemplating a purchase, don't sit too long ;)
For those not familiar with our product yet make sure to check out our website as well as our demo and tutorial videos on YouTube. Also, you might want to keep an eye out as we have an idea for a very cool contest involving Torque 3D and pureLIGHT that we'll be announcing in the next while. So, get pureLIGHT and "get baked"... lighting that is :)
August 4, 2009:
Congratulations to Andrew Czarnietzki and Nathan Rossol! Their map VCTF Hanging Gardens has made it into the finalists for the Make Something Unreal contest in the categories of Best Graphics, Best VCTF Map, and Best Use of Physics! This map is unique in many respects, not the least of which is that the lighting was done in pureLIGHT. The play of light and shadow is a vital part of the maps look and pureLIGHT is what makes this map stand out from the rest. You can see the map on YouTube and download it here.
Congratulations to Andrew Czarnietzki and Nathan Rossol! Their map VCTF Hanging Gardens has made it into the finalists for the Make Something Unreal contest in the categories of Best Graphics, Best VCTF Map, and Best Use of Physics! This map is unique in many respects, not the least of which is that the lighting was done in pureLIGHT. The play of light and shadow is a vital part of the maps look and pureLIGHT is what makes this map stand out from the rest. You can see the map on YouTube and download it here.
July 10, 2009:
Some great beta testers over on the Garage Games site now have beta copies of pureLIGHT in their hands and are already starting to create content. Have a look at the building Andy (aka Hewster) of Wild West created.
Some great beta testers over on the Garage Games site now have beta copies of pureLIGHT in their hands and are already starting to create content. Have a look at the building Andy (aka Hewster) of Wild West created.
June 30, 2009:
We are drawing closer to the first public release of pureLIGHT and we are all pretty excited. We are putting together tutorials to help users understand the workflow of pureLIGHT and how to use its features to the greatest advantage in their projects. We are also looking for a few good beta testers that have are in the Torque 3D beta. Contact if you are interested or have any general questions.
We are drawing closer to the first public release of pureLIGHT and we are all pretty excited. We are putting together tutorials to help users understand the workflow of pureLIGHT and how to use its features to the greatest advantage in their projects. We are also looking for a few good beta testers that have are in the Torque 3D beta. Contact if you are interested or have any general questions.
June 14, 2009:
We now have 4 tutorials posted up on YouTube. They include exporting for pureLIGHT, importing into preLIGHT, basic lighting and basic modules. There will be more to come so keep an eye out
We now have 4 tutorials posted up on YouTube. They include exporting for pureLIGHT, importing into preLIGHT, basic lighting and basic modules. There will be more to come so keep an eye out
June 11, 2009:
We're all pretty excited about letting the public know about our relationship with Garage Games. pureLIGHT is now a partner with the largest developer of engines for the independent developer market. Brett Seyler made a post on his blog. It's exciting times here at pureLIGHT Technologies and the future (pardon the pun) looks bright.
We're all pretty excited about letting the public know about our relationship with Garage Games. pureLIGHT is now a partner with the largest developer of engines for the independent developer market. Brett Seyler made a post on his blog. It's exciting times here at pureLIGHT Technologies and the future (pardon the pun) looks bright.
June 3, 2009:
Here's a new video for your enjoyment. This time we are highlighting the quality of output you can generate with pureLIGHT. Hope you enjoy and don't hesitate to contact us with any questions about using pureLIGHT in your next project.
Here's a new video for your enjoyment. This time we are highlighting the quality of output you can generate with pureLIGHT. Hope you enjoy and don't hesitate to contact us with any questions about using pureLIGHT in your next project.
May 22, 2009
We've just posted an HD video up on YouTube showing a brief overview of pureLIGHT workflow. In the future we will be posting more videos including tutorials as well. Until then please enjoy this video.
We've just posted an HD video up on YouTube showing a brief overview of pureLIGHT workflow. In the future we will be posting more videos including tutorials as well. Until then please enjoy this video.
May 19, 2009: pureLIGHT in the wild
A new Unreal Tournament III map has been released using pureLIGHT technology. The VCTF map called Hanging Gardens was created by Andrew Czarnietzki and Nathaniel Rossol. What sets this map apart from other game environments is the unique visual aesthetic. Hanging Gardens avoids the usual industrial or post-apocalyptic theme so often used in first person shooter maps and instead creates a gleaming, airy world that invokes the spirit of Syd Mead. The look of Hanging Gardens is due in no small part to the lightmaps created with pureLIGHT. So far the response to the one of a kind look has been overwhelmingly positive.
A new Unreal Tournament III map has been released using pureLIGHT technology. The VCTF map called Hanging Gardens was created by Andrew Czarnietzki and Nathaniel Rossol. What sets this map apart from other game environments is the unique visual aesthetic. Hanging Gardens avoids the usual industrial or post-apocalyptic theme so often used in first person shooter maps and instead creates a gleaming, airy world that invokes the spirit of Syd Mead. The look of Hanging Gardens is due in no small part to the lightmaps created with pureLIGHT. So far the response to the one of a kind look has been overwhelmingly positive.
A few people have also created videos of the map including this one posted on YouTube.
Watch it in HD to really see the amazing lighting in the map. Hanging Gardens has been entered into the Make Something Unreal contest and we wish Andrew and Nathaniel the best of luck.
May 14, 2009:
pureLIGHT stands out from other global illumination solutions for many reasons, not the least of which is its innovative workflow. With our technology we have removed the "click and pray" approach to global illumination by providing a WYSIWYG interface that updates the lighting in real time as it bakes. Users can stop the bake at any point, make changes and continue from where they left off. pureLIGHT outputs high quality lightmaps and vertex lighting (with subsurface scattering) that rivals any other lighting solution out there. pureLIGHT is also affordable and scalable for indie developers and whole studios. We'll be posting examples, videos and tutorials on the site soon to show off our technology. If anyone has any questions about our technology or licensing don't hesitate to
pureLIGHT stands out from other global illumination solutions for many reasons, not the least of which is its innovative workflow. With our technology we have removed the "click and pray" approach to global illumination by providing a WYSIWYG interface that updates the lighting in real time as it bakes. Users can stop the bake at any point, make changes and continue from where they left off. pureLIGHT outputs high quality lightmaps and vertex lighting (with subsurface scattering) that rivals any other lighting solution out there. pureLIGHT is also affordable and scalable for indie developers and whole studios. We'll be posting examples, videos and tutorials on the site soon to show off our technology. If anyone has any questions about our technology or licensing don't hesitate to
