Autodesk Gameware is a discontinuedmiddlewaresoftware suite[1] developed byAutodesk. The suite contained tools that enable designers to create game lighting, character animation, low level path finding, high-level AI and advanced user interfaces.[2] On July 12, 2017, Autodesk removed Scaleform, Beast, HumanIK, and Navigation from their online store, and announced the ending of support for the products.[3]
The Gameware suite consisted of the following modules:
| Autodesk Beast | |
|---|---|
| Original author(s) | Illuminate Labs |
| Developer(s) | Autodesk |
| Type | Middleware |
| License | Proprietarycommercial software |
| Website | gameware |
Beast is a content pipeline tool used for advancedglobal illumination and dynamic characterrelighting. Beast is developed and sold by Swedish games lighting technology companyIlluminate Labs (acquired byAutodesk in 2010). Beast is used to make light maps, shadow maps and point clouds with advanced global illumination.[6] Beast can precalculate lighting for light maps, shadow maps and point clouds, to bake occlusion or normal maps or to generate light fields for dynamic relighting of characters and objects.
Beast has built-in integration withGamebryo Lightspeed[7][8] and Epic'sUnreal Engine,[9] Evolution and several other in-house game engines. In March 2010,Unity Technologies announced that the next version ofUnity would feature built-in Beast lightmapping and global illumination off the shelf.[10] There is anAPI available for projects working with Beast but not ready for integration. The Beast API is a programming interface designed to make it as easy as possible to create a Beast integration with any game engine.[11]
Beast has been used in games such as:Mario Kart 8,[12]Mirror's Edge,CrimeCraft,Army of Two: The 40th Day,Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe andAlpha Protocol.
The new Beast was presented at GDC 2010 in San Francisco.[13] The new version of Beast features two entirely new modules called DistriBeast and eRnsT. DistriBeast is an extremely fast and easy to use distribution engine for managing render farms. eRnsT is a real-time visualizer that allows artists to explore and control the lighting set-up without having to run a complete bake.[14]
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