Graphine released a new version of the Granite texture streaming middleware SDK. Version 3.0 has been redesigned to give artists complete material freedom, and its performance has been streamlined in preparation for use in VR content.
Graphine said that Granite SDK 3.0 is a significant update from version 2.6. Both the layer and caching systems have been redesigned to be more efficient. The company said that that Granite’s layer system was designed to deliver the best possible performance, but it found that a selection of different layer configurations displayed increased memory usage. Graphine said Granite SKD 3.0 has been refined over the last seven months to come up with a solution that it said “ensures great performance and total material freedom while removing any negative impact on system resources.” The company also said that Granite SKD 3.0’s design allows for plenty of future optimizations to increase performance further.
Graphine believes that the feature artists will benefit most from is the total material freedom. The company said that Granite SKD 3.0 “enables the use of different resolution textures per stacked texture, and many different layer configurations per scene” without impacting memory and disk usage or bandwidth. Granite SDK also allows for multiple types of textures to be combined to create a single stacked texture.
Graphine said these optimizations improve performance by reducing CPU and GPU load by as much as 50 percent. The company said this will help pave the way for high quality textures in virtual reality while maintaining the desired 90 frames per second.
The Granite SDK 3.0 update is available now for current license holders. The company allows for free trials if you’d prefer to try before you buy.
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