Welcome to the sixth issue of the Turtle newsletter!

Or perhaps we should say welcome back! We’re glad to see you again and as long as you keep showing up for more, we’ll be happy to dish it out. More of all the stuff that we find scintillating or stimulating or that’s rocking our Illuminate world at this particular time – whether it’s the latest in the gaming or media industry, shark wrestling, Yeti sightings, or anything else that makes a blip on our radars. Naturally, we also include lots of information to help you get the most out of the incredibly cool tool Turtle and other Illuminate products.

So read and enjoy and let us know if you have any input for future issues.
Happy reading!

Turtle 4.1

We are happy to announce the Public Beta version of Turtle 4.1. Turtle 4.1 includes a completely new GI user interface, which enables you to select the primary and secondary GI solver of your choice and then tune them individually.

Check out our brand new Advanced Lighting tutorial at: http://www.illuminatelabs.com/support/tutorial-folder/advanced-lighting/ for some cool tips and tricks.

Turtle 4.1 also introduces a Radiance Cache, speeding up Radiosity Normal Map calculations, giving both faster and better results. In addition, we’ve now included Path Tracing in the global illumination toolbox, making it easier to setup multi bounce global illumination renders, and improved the Image Based Lighting and HDR user interface by unifying the environment control settings.

Turtle 4.1 supports Maya 8, 8.5 and the new Maya 2008.

To get a free trial of Turtle 4.1 go to: http://www.illuminatelabs.com/turtle/trial

Beauty from the Beast at Gamefest

It should by now be no secret that LiquidLight, the power inside Turtle, has now mutated into a new platform-independent GI baking and rendering software called Beast?

Beast is already used in production by EA Digital Illusions (the studio behind the Battlefield series), who has integrated Beast with Unreal Engine for the production of their new title Mirror’s Edge.

We also presented Beast along with DICE at Gamefest, and DICE related how they turned to Illuminate Labs when they found that the standard solutions for baking static light maps with direct lighting would not live up to the look of the concept art. By integrating Beast with Unreal Engine 3, they managed to bake light maps with global illumination without sacrificing the power and ease of use of UnrealEd.

http://www.illuminatelabs.com/press/newsarchive/gamefest-presentation/view

You too can get your hands on a trial version of Beast (if you think you can handle it) by mailing us at sales@illuminatelabs.com. DO check the tech specifications first, however, because this is no easily tamed Beast!

http://www.illuminatelabs.com/support/beast-info

Happenings in the World of Turtle

MADE WITH TURTLE

At Illuminate Labs we are excitedly looking forward to the release of the highly-anticipated new Killzone title from our Dutch friends Guerrilla (SCEE). We are absolutely thrilled about the first demo, which was recently presented at E3. Turtle has been used throughout the whole asset pipeline and the game is really great looking!

Check out the screenshots from Killzone 2 in our gallery: http://www.illuminatelabs.com/gallery/bildertest/

Or watch the Killzone 2 demo: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/21504.html/

TURTLE IN LATEST HARRY POTTER TITLE

EA art director Kelvin Tuite reveals to 3D World readers how his team created the environment for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

“To create the environment for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, we expanded out the details in the blueprints to a grayscale model, to which we added a texture pass for details. An environment pass allowed us to give a specular sheen to ironwork, glass and damp areas. Then, using Turtle, we rendered out a lighting pass, which added lighting and shadow to the previously flat-shaded model.”

EA art director Kelvin Tuite in 3D World 94, September 2007

NVIDIA’S FX COMPOSER 2 RELEASED

In response to requests from NVIDIA, our developers have worked up demo and project files that can be run with NVIDIA’s new version of FX Composer (version 2). These files contain data generated with Turtle and show the possibilities available to game developers to utilize cutting edge effects (such as Polynomial Texture Maps and Spherical Harmonics) with today’s hardware in order to increase both the realism and quality of gaming graphics.

"Today's GPUs can render amazing images for developers who have the know-how and tools,” says Randy Fernando, Developer Tools Product Manager at NVIDIA. “Illuminate Labs' Turtle is a new tool that provides the raw material that today's high-end shading algorithms need, in a clean and approachable package that lives right inside Maya. The output of Turtle is both appropriate for application in game engines and perfect for artist exploration and experimentation in FX Composer 2. We're delighted to include a Turtle-based sample as part of our latest FX Composer release."

We couldn’t have put it any better ourselves.

http://www.nvidia.com

Happenings in the bigger world outside of Turtle

Cool stuff, interesting stuff, educational stuff and other just plain stuff:
(Where our developers are surfing right now)

Knowledge is power: Turtle tutorials, tips and tricks

The Turtle website features a host of really cool tutorials that will help you get the most from your Turtle experience. In addition to being extremely hot looking, they’re also quite useful, explaining in easy terms how to squeeze every last drop from your Turtle. There are tutorials for all the cool features found in Turtle, and many have been updated to reflect the changes found in Turtle 4.1. There is also a brand new Advanced Lighting tutorial that will teach you all about the new GI.

Do and learn at: http://www.illuminatelabs.com/support/tutorial-folder

Spreading the Love

(or stopping it altogether)

If you have a friend (or colleague or someone you’ve just met) that might be interested in Turtle or our newsletter, please feel free to forward their address to us so we can include them in our mailings. And if (for some unknown reason) you choose not to receive the newsletter in the future, click below to unsubscribe.

Unsubscribe