Autodesk Ships Beast Lighting Middleware

Author: by Staff

The Autodesk Beast lighting middleware shipped last week, the first release of the product under Autodesk since the company acquired Beast creator Illuminate Labs in July this year. Autodesk Beast allows for light bouncing, color bleeding, soft shadows and other lighting-related effects in games. The company said that Beast streamlines the lighting process in game development with the LiquidLight Global Illumination Engine, real-time lighting visualizer eRnsT and the DistriBeast distribution engine used to quickly distribute renders on multiple machines. Other key features of Autodesk Beast include precomputed global illumination, the ability to adjust overall scene lighting without bounce lights or ambient fills and an API that allows users to more easily integrate Beast into a game engine. Beast has already been used in games, including Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, Mirror's Edge, EVE Online, Army of Two and other titles. In addition to owning major graphics suites 3ds Max, Maya, and Softimage, Autodesk's portfolio includes game tools like HumanIK character animation middleware and Kynapse AI middleware.