Graphine has announced that the UE4 Granite plugin is now being offered as a perpetual seat license. Granite was previously only available on a per-project basis.
Granite SDK is Graphine's real-time 3D texture streaming middleware designed to help 3D artists work with extremely high resolution textures. Granite is capable of using textures with resolutions as high as 256K x 256K, which Graphine said helps make VR experiences, where you can get very close to objects being rendered, nearly photo-realistic. The SDK has the ability to compress these extremely high resolution textures in such a way that they can be used in games without needing tremendous frame buffers. Graphine calls this technique "virtual texturing" and said it is a similar approach to Id Software's megatexturing technology.
Graphine said that with this new license model, it aims to make Granite accessible to every project that can benefit from working with ultra-high resolution textures. Before now, the only way to access the plugin was by licensing a specific project, which is great for producing one-off games, but the seat license will allow studios to keep the license perpetually, and therefore be able to work on unlimited projects.
The seat licenses are available in two variants. Lifetime seat licenses are available starting from $690 per user, but until the end of September the price has been discounted by $100. The lifetime seat will receive updates every six months and will never expire. It also offers the freedom to work on unlimited projects.
An annual license option is also offered, which will be updated once per year. Graphine has not disclosed the price of the annual license but said that this option is meant for shorter term projects, and to offer a solution to keep upfront costs to a minimum. Graphine also offers a trial version that is available upon request to prospective customers who aren't sure if Granite will work for them.
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