Real-time lighting technology expands into new markets

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.

Jeremy Santi, Director, Yugen, commented: “The biggest challenge in creating life-like 3D visualisations is the time it takes to render out the lighting. The result of changing objects in a scene has historically taken hours to see. 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. 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 visualisations can provide huge value for developers, builders and project marketers alike,” stated Chris Porthouse, Vice President, Gaming Middleware, ARM.

High quality, real-time global illumination - how light interacts with objects in a scene - is critical for digital visualisations. Evermotion, the largest content creator for the architecture visualisation 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 visualisation 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 visualisation scenes made with game technologies. Arch-viz artists value scene interactivity and exploration, while requiring the highest quality photorealistic visuals,” added Pawel Gajlewicz, CEO, Evermotion. “Today, with the latest game engines and dynamic global illumination solutions, the architectural visualisation community is getting closer to its final goal - producing outstanding, photorealistic presentations of yet unbuilt spaces.”