News

June 22, 2011:


It's been a while since we've done an update, both to pureLIGHT and the website. Fortunately that doesn't mean we've been idle. The last six months have been pretty exciting here at pureLIGHT. The bad news is that we still can't talk about a lot of the really cool things that are happening. The good news is that we have an updated version of pureLIGHT for your enjoyment. Here are the changes for pureLIGHT 1.6.5:

preLIGHT

-Fixed the axis's on Z-Up lights imported from Collada
-Default direct/indirect filter radii are now configurable options
-Fixed issues with merging meshes with missing submaterials
-Fixed some minor material import issues from ASE meshes imported from Google Sketchup
-Made some improvements to the LMA unwrapping algorithm, it should produce more efficient unwrappings in some cases now


pureLIGHT

-The live preview lightmaps now have mipmap correction applied to them, preventing some false light bleeds from showing up
-Ability in the ability to render only the lighting on objects
-Fixed some issues resulting from running low on video memory and low on system memory
-Reduced the amount of memory required for baking
-Lightmap updates are delayed slightly to allow them to batch up to prevent the system from becoming unresponsive when baking scenes with lots of small lighting groups
-You can now change the number of lighting threads to be created within pureLIGHT itself, if you don't want to use all of your system resources for a bake
-Fixed some extremely rare cases that could lead to a hot spot texel being generated on the lightmaps
-Splitting a light group with a position offset applied to it now applies that same offset to the split off lights
-You can now move around in lighting preview mode (requires a powerful computer)
-Reconverting a light will now reset its position/direction


Torque

-Fixed scene background color being exported incorrectly
-For scenes with only the indirect lighting baked in, the representedInLightmaps flag is no longer set on lights, so that they cast direct diffuse light on the lightmapped objects
-New lights default to casting shadows now


Unity
-Unity 3.3 is now supported with full updated shader support


The documentation has also been updated to reflect new functionality and interface changes. As always, if there are any questions or concerns or if you just want to make some suggestions or tell us how awesome pureLIGHT is drop us an email at our support address.

December 16, 2010:


pureLIGHT 1.6 has been released. Here are the release notes:

preLIGHT
-Lots of speed optimizations to unwrapping and converting files
-Preliminary support for importing in .dxf, .x, .3ds, and .obj files
-Improved Collada import support greatly
-Fixed some material assignment bugs when combining multiple meshes/materials together
-On maximum lightmap size violation it now searches for a texel size that will satisfy the limit
-Texel size optimization is better at finding an optimal size now

pureLIGHT
-Numerous render speed optimizations
-Light range can now be controlled independently of power
-Put in a mouse movement speed cap
-Added in an option for scaling the transform gizmo size
-Fixed some cases where add light didn't work

Licenees can download the update from the usual URL. Emails will be sent to all liceness except for Torque users. Torque 3D users can log into the Garage Games sites and grab the updated version from their account.

November 15, 2010:

We were saddened by the news that Instant Action has shut down any further development of the Torque Engine. We wish all the folks we've worked with over at Garage Games the best in the future.

We will be continuing to maintain the Torque 3D version of pureLIGHT for the near future to suport our users. To that end, if any users choose to make the transition to Unity or Leadwerks pureLIGHT offers an upgrade to the Full version that supports all 3 engines for $150.

October 13, 2010:

pureLIGHT 1.5.3 is going out today. We are working on some big things behind the scenes and hope to be talking about them soon. Here is the changelog for 1.5.3:

preLIGHT:

-Fixed //'s in front of texture names from Blender from causing problems
-Fixed saving normals in the obj files
-Light colors are now clamped to 0 to 1 range
-Lightmaps are now always exported to channel 1 in Collada files.

pureLIGHT:

-Fixed some situations with SB meshes not blocking light correctly
-Fixed some situations that resulted in corrupted object light texture names being saved out
-Fixed alt-tabbing out of pureLIGHT with the mouse captured not always releasing the mouse
-Fixed the issues with spaces in scene names and command line arguments
-Improved the quality of the LMA/LMX/LMM lightmap filtering
-VL meshes now use the same spatial filtering as LMA/LMA/LMM meshes
-Added in some rendering speed and memory management optimizations
-Fixed some more issues with false positives on the evaluation version

Full and trial versions have been updated to the latest release.

July 29, 2010:

We have some really cool news to post. Not only is pureLIGHT 1.5 hot off the presses, but we are pleased to let everyone know that pureLIGHT now supports the Leadwerks engine. We met with Josh and his team at GDC this year and found that they have the same indie ethic that we do and that pureLIGHT would be an excellent fit with their engine.

Here is the press release sent out by Leadwerks.

Leadwerks Engine 2.4 and pureLIGHT

Leadwerks Engine 2.4 is now available, featuring integration with pureLIGHT lightmapping. Leadwerks deferred dynamic lighting combines with pureLIGHT global illumination lightmaps to deliver the most advanced real-time lighting in the world.

"I'm pleased to be working with pureLIGHT Technologies", said Josh Klint, CEO of Leadwerks. "Their precomputed GI complements our dynamic lighting, and the combination is really incredible. This partnership provides our customers with an additional tool that integrates seamlessly into our pipeline, in a way no other real-time renderer has ever done."

Leadwerks Engine 2.4 also supports dynamic colored shadows for stained glass effects. Particles can cast translucent shadows that combine with solid shadows, and volumetric clouds can now cast real shadows on the ground.

About Leadwerks Software

Headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, Leadwerks Software has delivered affordable tools for making cutting-age games since 2006. Leadwerks Engine provides game developers both large and small with the tools to produce AAA titles with greater flexibility and faster production time.

Below is a cool video of Leadwerks with the bounced lighting option in pureLIGHT combined with Leadwerks dynamic lighting system:



pureLIGHT Leadwerks in now available for sale on the Product page.

May 3, 2010:

We here are pureLIGHT Technologies are proud to announce that we won Best Software Innovation at the 2010 mediaFRESH Awards. Congratulations to the whole team, it's a well deserved reward.

April 19, 2010:

pureLIGHT 1.4 is fresh off the presses folks. A few bug fixes, but the biggest change is the addition of the command line version. This means you can now batch render on a machine that doesn't have a minimum spec video card. This is great for farming off render tasks to a server. Ask and ye shall receive folks. Here is the changelog for 1.4:

preLIGHT:

-Added options for controlling what file formats to export
-Fixed a display issue with the LMM lightmap preview
-Multiple groups of lights are now allowed in an ASE file, they will be converted into a single pureLIGHT light
-Multiple meshes and groups of meshes are now allowed in ASE and Collada files, they will be converted into a single pureLIGHT mesh. Be aware that this can lead to enormous lightmaps being generated. Allows for use of mesh instancing within 3d Max. This is not allowed with LMM meshes.

pureLIGHT:

-Fixed a torque export issue with specular maps
-Fixed the trial version early expiration bug (or at least, one cause of it)
-Added in GPU-less operation
-Added in command-line controls
-Fixed some bugs caused by spaces in the scene file path
-Control-alt-P is a shortcut for lighting preview now
-Added in some rendering speed and memory management optimizations

Full and trial versions have been updated to the latest release.

April 1, 2010:

We just found out that pureLIGHT has been nominated for a mediaFRESH award in the Best Hardware or Software Innovation category. We are honored to even be nominated considering all the exciting tech innovations that are happening in Alberta. Cross your fingers for us folks!

March 3, 2010:

Today we begin our selling pureLIGHT for Unity. It's almost been a year since we first announced Torque 3D support. We've had a few hiccups and some great triumphs since that time. The benefit for Unity users is that they will have a more robust product on first release because of the lessons learned with the Torque 3D version. No worries for Torque 3D users as all the new features and bug fixes are rolled into both versions. Here are the release notes for the last 2 versions of pureLIGHT:

1.3

- Full Unity support added.

- Added suffix support for distortion, normal, shiny and specular materials.

1.2.2

-For directional lights, pressing the R key will re-orientate the light to the camera.

-Added in batch convert LM type to preLIGHT.

-Fixed a number of XSI Collada import issues.

-CTRL+M shortcut changed from merge lighting to enable mouse movement.

-Fixed moving lights between modules.

-Lights can now be renamed inside of pureLIGHT.

-Fixed a number of Unity export/import issues. If you had a scene in which the textures didn't import into Unity correctly, open up the scene in pureLIGHT and close it again, and it will resolve this issue (you will also need to delete the generated pureLIGHT materials in Unity as well for them to be recreated again).

-Make a note in the system requirements that the August 2009 version of DirectX is needed now instead of March 2009.

As you can see there have been some significant changes to improve pureLIGHT and to enhance the workflow. We are offering pureLIGHT Unity at an introductory price of $350.00US and for Torque 3D users you can add the Unity license for $150.00US. To purchase your copy go to our Product page.

Andrew has also updated his blog to show off all the progress he's made with his UDK project. It's looking great and playing even better. Last, but not least make sure to check out our YouTube channel for some new videos we,ve posted.

February 18, 2010:

A cool little announcement for pureLIGHT. Andrew Czarnietzki, the artist for the award winning Hanging Garden VCTF Unreal Tournament 3 map, is working on a UDK project using pureLIGHT as an inspiration. He has posted a blog discussing the on-going development of this indie project.

We have posted a video showing off a very early prototype of the game:



Make sure to check the blog for regular development updates.

February 11, 2010:

Great news! pureLIGHT has been reviewed in the February issue of Game Developer magazine. We are extremely happy with the positive review. It's great to have industry experts validate what we have known for years. pureLIGHT is by far the quickest and best way to get high quality lightmaps for real time applications. Keep an eye out for that issue of Game Developer.

I am also happy to announce we are very close to our pureLIGHT Unity release date. We've been doing testing with beta testers and have had great feedback so far. Found some Collada import issues and implemented some interface changes based on feedback. We are planning to release pureLIGHT Unity before GDC in March.

Speaking of GDC, we won't have a booth at the event, but we may have demos in other people's booths. Even if we don't we'd be more than happy to meet with anyone going to GDC that would like to have a look at our technology. You drop me an email at davec courtesy of this domain.

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.



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.

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.

October 21, 2009:

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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