What's new in Simplygon 9.1
In this article we'll walking you through the Simplygon 9.1 updates; ranging from easier Simplygon integration work in Unreal Engine 4 with a new standalone Simplygon UE4 plugin to new impostor processor for vegetation optimization to name a few.
Standalone UE4 plugin
In this release we are bringing our new Simplygon Unreal Engine 4 plugin to the public. Since this is a standalone plugin, it will dramatically reduce the amount of time spent on integrating Simplygon into the Unreal engine compared to our previous advanced source code integration. In addition to be easy to integrate, the plugin also offers ability to distribute LOD generation to a distributed build system, such as Incredibuild and FASTBuild or our native lightweight Simplygon Grid distribution system.
Read more about the plugin capabilities in the blog post Introducing our new Unreal Engine Plugin.
New impostor processor
Very detailed environments and objects, such as vegetation or fences, are resource intense objects to render containing large number of polygons and complex scene graphs. One of the most powerful optimization techniques for these types of object are impostors, which is basically a simplified version of the 3D object represented as two-dimensional textured image mapped onto a rectangular card (aka billboards) that gets rendered instead.
In Simplygon 9.1 we are introducing a totally revamped in our opinion best-in class impostor processor producing very high quality results to be used in your game. Read more about how to get started with new impostor processor for two different use cases:
Support for FASTBuild
We have also added support for the open source distributed build system FASTBuild and we are now offering support for three different distribution systems:
- Simplygon Grid: Our native lightweight build system
- Incredibuild: Off-the shelf commercial build system
- FASTBuild: Open source build system
Autodesk 3ds Max integration
We are proud to announce that we are bringing our new Autodesk 3ds Max plugin from preview to public. This new plugin offers significantly faster processings, as high as 10x faster processings for certain type of assets. It also includes an integrated Simplygon UI, removing switching between different UIs to validate results when configuring Simplygon processing settings before to use in Max- and/or Python scripts.
Read more about about the plugin in the Simplygon 3ds Max Plugin documentation.
New integrations in preview: Unity, Blender and Houdini
Our goal is to make Simplygon's powerful optimization techniques available in the most common 3D creator tools and game engines on the market. With Simplygon 9.1 and the new Unity, Blender and Houdini integrations we have taken a huge step bringing Simplygon to a wider 3D games community.
The integrations are still in preview so we'll love to hear your feedback.
New file formats: USD and Alembic
Simplygon 9.1 brings support for two new file formats to the Simplygon API: Alembic and USD.
You can find more about supported file formats and how to use them in Scene Importer & Exporter documentation.