From Gaming to Grand Designs: ARM Enlighten Technology Expands Into New Markets

Geomerics, an ARM company, announced today that its Enlighten™ real-time lighting technology, used in major gaming titles such as Star Wars™ Battlefront™, is now being deployed to create virtual show homes for the international property market. It has licensed its technology to Yugen, an Australian company who create architectural visualizations for developers selling properties off plan or for investors who are unable to visit a site. To allow a fully immersive buyer experience, Yugen create 3D virtual models using Unreal® Engine 4 and Enlighten that allow clients to view a property day or night or change any design element in real-time, enabling them to see immediately how each change affects the property’s lighting.

“The biggest challenge in creating life-like 3D visualizations is the time it takes to render out the lighting. The result of changing objects in a scene has historically taken hours to see,” said Jeremy Santi, Director of Yugen. “Enlighten’s real-time feedback allows our environments to become a fully dynamic experience for our clients and significantly reduces the time it takes to produce lighting effects.”

“Enlighten technology will allow Yugen’s customers to experience the feel of a finished property and create full interior designs before any foundations have been laid,” said Chris Porthouse, vice president, gaming middleware, ARM. “It doesn’t matter where they are located in the world, buyers will now be able to see exactly what they are investing in and make subtle changes in real-time until they get exactly what they want. These real-time photorealistic, interactive visualizations can provide huge value for developers, builders and project marketers alike.”

High quality, real-time global illumination – how light interacts with objects in a scene – is critical for digital visualizations. Evermotion, the largest content creator for the architecture visualization space, recently conducted research that illustrates the high demand for this technology in the architectural, engineering and construction sector. In a survey of over 500 customers including architects, architectural visualization artists and designers, it found that over half of respondents saw dynamic global illumination as an important asset for their industry.

“We are seeing increasing demand for architectural visualization scenes made with game technologies. Arch-viz artists value scene interactivity and exploration, while requiring the highest quality photorealistic visuals,” said Pawel Gajlewicz, CEO, Evermotion. “Today, with the latest game engines and dynamic global illumination solutions, the architectural visualization community is getting closer to its final goal – producing outstanding, photorealistic presentations of yet unbuilt spaces.”