LONDON — Marmalade Technologies (www.madewithmarmalade.com) was at the GDC show in San Francisco, previewing the future of its Marmalade 3D Kit. The company offered a first look at an all-new 3D editor and next-generation graphics architecture.
Marmalade 3D Kit brings together a suite of tools and middleware to simplify the creation of 3D games, allowing users to export models from Maya, 3DS Max or any modeling tool with FBX or Collada support into resources that can be directly used in Marmalade projects.
“Marmalade 3D Kit already offers developers versatile graphics middleware to add models to complex 3D scenes, manipulate cameras, and add lighting and animation,” says Adalberto Bruno, CTO at Marmalade. “We are now extending this power to both higher-level content creation and lower-level rendering, giving artists and developers the opportunity to fully realise their combined creative and technological vision.”
New to Marmalade 3D Kit is an editor, making creation of 3D game levels and other 3D layouts quick and intuitive for both artists and developers alike.
“It’s crucial to be able to visualize and experiment with multiple iterations of 3D content,” continues Bruno. “And allowing artists to be directly included in this process through the use of Marmalade 3D Kit’s editor can be a huge efficiency boost.”
The editor allows users to easily import 3D models and then layout scenes rapidly with the help of familiar and powerful controls. Once a user is happy with their layout, they can simply export them in Marmalade format for direct inclusion into a project.
Also new to Marmalade 3D Kit is the company’s next generation graphics architecture, built to take full advantage of leading industry technologies.
“Marmalade 3D Kit’s next generation graphics architecture continues to extend the flexible, high performance approach that is the hallmark of our technology,” explains Bruno. “Key to this is providing a layered, open architecture with the ability to integrate your code at any level.”
At the lowest level, the solution offers direct access to native rendering APIs with backend support planned for DX11, DX12, OpenGL ES 2.0 to 3.2, Metal and Vulkan and full access to shaders using native backend languages such as HLSL or GLSL.
“On top of this we also provide an abstraction layer allowing you to easily switch native backends,” says Bruno. “This makes it possible to keep platform-specific code limited to shaders while still benefiting from cross-platform rendering code.”
Marmalade 3D Kit is available now as part of the latest Marmalade Platform release with the editor and next generation graphics architecture debuting later this year.