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Lys 1.0.1 Released!

interpolator
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metalliandy interpolator
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Hi everyone!

After a long public beta we have finally arrived and the wait is over! Lys 1.0 has been released!

We would like to truly thank everyone for all their hard work & dedication in helping us make Lys the best that it can be.
Going forward our journey will continue to update and improve Lys, so please feel free to keep offering us your suggestions & giving us your valuable feedback. We couldn’t have done this without you! 3

You can now view pricing & purchase Lys HERE

The Lys Open Beta will be deactivated on March 1st but for those who wish to continue evaluation, we also have a demo version that is available for people to test system compatibility and other such workflow considerations.


Thanks again for all the support everyone!
Enjoy!

Kind regards,
The KnaldTech team.



What is Lys?
Lys is an ultra-fast GPU powered solution that sets the standard for generating Radiance, Irradiance and Specular textures from panoramic, Sphere or 2d cube map cross source textures for use with HDR Image Based Lighting.

With the ability to convert, manipulate and tweak your source images in real-time, generate Radiance, Irradiance and Specular textures on the fly and choose between Cosine weighted, GGX and Gaussian specular terms with fully automated BRDF convolved MIP maps with user configurable varying Specular Power or Roughness, Lys can help give you the tools and functionality that you need to ensure that your project’s HDR Image based lighting pipeline is the best that it can be.

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Real-time cross conversion between panoramic, Sphere and cube maps
Converting between panoramic (longitude/latitude), sphere (image probes) and cube maps while preserving original image quality is a breeze. Simply import any of the aforementioned images and Lys will automatically convert between the source layout to the remaining layouts instantly by analytically evaluating the per pixel coverage in order to maximize the quality performance of the texture filtering process.

Due to the nature of specular convolution and the awkwardness of 3d cube maps it is extremely difficult and often impossible to accurately generate or manipulate these images within 2d image editors without introducing errors into your pipeline. With the addition of Lys it is now possible to seamlessly convert your content back and forth into an editable layout, such as a panorama (longitude/latitude), make your changes and then reimport back into Lys for processing.

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Real-time axis rotation and Cube map face position debugging
Lys gives you the flexibility to rotate in the XY and Z axes independently while retaining the integrity of the conversion between all layouts.

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Cosine weighted, GGX and Gaussian specular terms

Our best in class Specular convolution has full support for Cosine weighted, GGX and Gaussian specular terms so you can be sure that everything conforms to current physically based industry standards, allowing you to integrate it into your workflow seamlessly with the full confidence that you are getting the absolute best quality possible for your project’s needs.
Never before has specular convolution been so fast or easy to use!


BRDF convolved MIP maps with user configurable varying specular power/roughness

Lys has fully automated BRDF convolved MIP maps with user configurable varying Specular Power or Roughness to achieve HDR image based lighting in real-time graphics.
Upon generation of the specular texture Lys automatically calculates the correct specular/roughness level for each MIP individually, based on a choice of power drops, without any ugly seams as you go down the MIP chain.


Physically based Roughness & Specular power

Roughness and Specular Power are both fully supported and instantly cross convertible within Lys at the push of a button. Simply select your preferred standard and you are good to go!


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Instant Irradiance generation with spherical harmonic coefficients export

In tandem with the ultra-fast specular convolution Lys instantly generates Irradiance for you chosen image and even supports export for spherical harmonic coefficients triplets in text based or floating point .tiff flavours.

Spherical harmonic coefficients present an extremely low cost method of generating noiseless, high quality Irradiance by effectively reducing the footprint to a single 9×1 floating point texture map and helping you to keep memory free for other content, while simultaneously helping to ensure that the quality demands of current generation content are met.

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Physically based procedural sky generation

With full real-time control over camera altitude, Azimuth angle, Zenith angle and luminance within Clear Sky you can generate realistic vistas with a very small amount of time and effort.

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Direct3D 11 texture block compression on DirectX 11+ GPUs
Lys is ready to export your content at the highest possible quality for the lowest possible memory footprint with full support for BC6H and BC7 Direct3D 11 texture block compression on DirectX 11+ GPUs.


Being the first ever compressed format to fully support high dynamic range source data on the GPU, BC6H is now the format to use for HDR content within in the current generation of content.
Especially useful for HDR probes, BC6H handles gradients extremely well and has an outstanding compression ratio of 8-1 (12.5%).


BC7 is the first ever compressed format to accurately represent 8 bit (per channel) images with very marginal loss. Both gradients and discontinuities are handled excellently and when coupled with a compression ratio of 4-1 (25%) BC7 is the perfect solution for authoring high quality art.

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BC6H vs DXT1


User configurable Export


With unprecedented user control over export in Lys it’s possible to automatically calculate and populate the optimum export resolution of Radiance, Irradiance and Specular based of the size of the imported image, or if you so choose, you can individually configure the dimensions yourself for all layout types including per face size for cube maps!

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Best in class high precision work flow

All calculations & processing are performed in single precision floating point (float32).


Pixel perfect 8, 16 and 32bit support


Our robust 8, 16 and 32bit file I/O and image processing pipeline preserves your high precision data.

All calculations & processing within Lys are performed in single precision floating point (float32). We have painstakingly ensured that with our robust I/O pipeline, with full 8, 16 and 32bit (integer and float) support, you will never suffer from precision drop due to lazy or poor coding and can focus on creating great art!
You can be sure that your data is in good hands with Lys!

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All HDRI photo based source images shown in the above were kindly provided by Marmoset.

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Feedback and Support
We strive to make Lys the best that it can be, so please feel free to keep offering us your suggestions & giving us your valuable feedback on things such as bug reports and anything else that you feel could be improved within Lys.
You can also email us at support@knaldtech.com with any questions that you may have.

Artwork
We love seeing art that has Lys has helped create so please feel free to post your work in this thread so we can view it in all of its glory.

Social Media
Knald Technologies is now on Facebook, Twitter & Google+! Like us on Facebook Here, add us on Twitter Here & +1 us on Google+ Here.

Replies

  • Lamont
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    Lamont polycounter lvl 15
    That does look tasty. I will give it a run in a week or so :)
  • lukors
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    lukors polycounter lvl 9
    I don't seem to be able to export irradiance from Lys. I made a video to show what I'm doing in case I'm making some mistake.
    https://youtu.be/I3AFVd_OreQ

    Windows 8
    GTX 780M

    Let me know if you need any further information.
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    lukors wrote: »
    I don't seem to be able to export irradiance from Lys. I made a video to show what I'm doing in case I'm making some mistake.
    https://youtu.be/I3AFVd_OreQ

    Windows 8
    GTX 780M

    Let me know if you need any further information.

    Hi,

    I'm having trouble reproducing that issue here. It would be really helpful if you could answer a couple of questions.

    Is it only Irradiance that wont save to that directory (do radiance and spec save ok)?
    Is it possible to save to another location, such as your documents folder or something other than the root?
    Are all your permissions set correctly for saving to D:?
    Which driver are you running currently?
    Can you try running Lys as administrator and see if that changes anything please?

    Please let me know how you get on.

    Cheers
  • lukors
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    lukors polycounter lvl 9
    I found a way I could make it work, I have to activate the "specular" checkbox in the main tab also, then it works.

    Same thing goes if I activate to export both radiance and specular in the export tab, but do not check the specular checkbox under the main tab. This only exports radiance without giving any reason as to why specular was not exported.

    It would be nice if it tells me when and why it doesn't export a thing. Also, sometimes the export button is gray, would be really nice if the button had a tooltip that tells me what I need to do to enable the button.
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    lukors wrote: »
    I found a way I could make it work, I have to activate the "specular" checkbox in the main tab also, then it works.

    Same thing goes if I activate to export both radiance and specular in the export tab, but do not check the specular checkbox under the main tab. This only exports radiance without giving any reason as to why specular was not exported.

    It would be nice if it tells me when and why it doesn't export a thing. Also, sometimes the export button is gray, would be really nice if the button had a tooltip that tells me what I need to do to enable the button.

    Thanks for the info and comments!

    We have been able to reproduce the checkbox/export bug and will have an update out for it soon.

    Cheers!
  • Eric Chadwick
    Hey Andy, I just downloaded the demo.

    Any plans to add a command-line mode? It'd be great to be able to batch process maps.

    For example I'm rendering architectural cubemap viewpoints using 3ds Max and V-Ray, which outputs in vertical cross layout, but a client needs them as individual faces instead. AMD's cubemapgen has a batch mode, but it adds seams to the faces (even when there's no filtering!).
  • Eric Chadwick
    Would it be possible for the license authenticator to allow copy/paste of that long license key? Took forever to type that string of gibberish in, zeros look like Os, made a different mistake and had to hunt it down.
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    Hey Eric,
    Hey Andy, I just downloaded the demo.

    Any plans to add a command-line mode? It'd be great to be able to batch process maps.

    For example I'm rendering architectural cubemap viewpoints using 3ds Max and V-Ray, which outputs in vertical cross layout, but a client needs them as individual faces instead. AMD's cubemapgen has a batch mode, but it adds seams to the faces (even when there's no filtering!).

    I will stick it on the list for possible features for the future :)
    Would it be possible for the license authenticator to allow copy/paste of that long license key? Took forever to type that string of gibberish in, zeros look like Os, made a different mistake and had to hunt it down.

    You should be able to copy the key directly from your web browser or the purchase email notification and paste directly into Lys.

    https://www.knaldtech.com/licenses/ then View & manage Keys. Just highlight the key and copy/paste. It might copy whitespace so it's a good idea to paste it to notepad to remove that before then pasting into Lys.

    Hope that helps :)
  • Eric Chadwick
    Thanks Andy!

    The little license window that pops up before the program first runs, that one didn't seem to allow pasting. So I typed it in by hand. I did get the key automatically by email, which was nice.
  • armagon
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    armagon polycounter lvl 11
    Is there a way of exporting the faces of a cubemap individually? Like cmftStudio does.
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    Thanks Andy!

    The little license window that pops up before the program first runs, that one didn't seem to allow pasting. So I typed it in by hand. I did get the key automatically by email, which was nice.

    No worries, mate! :)
    armagon wrote: »
    Is there a way of exporting the faces of a cubemap individually? Like cmftStudio does.

    Currently we don't have a way to do this, but I would be happy to put this on our user wish list for you.

    Cheers!
  • kodde
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    kodde polycounter lvl 18
    +1 for command line support. I also want to process multiple environments and it would make batching easier.
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    kodde said:
    +1 for command line support. I also want to process multiple environments and it would make batching easier.
    Thanks for the suggestion Kodde!
    Added to the list :)
  • metalliandy
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    metalliandy interpolator
    Lys 1.0.1 Released!



    Since the 1.0 release of Lys we have been hard at work fixing a bug & adding new improvements to Lys.
    In addition to bug fixes & optimizations in Lys 1.0.1 we have added the option to use Burley as a power drop, .HDR support, Copy/Paste, the ability to save your setting to a file & more!

    What’s changed since Lys 1.0.0?

    New Features, Improvements and Optimizations

    • Added a the option to use Burley as a power drop.
    • Added support for HDR (Radiance) export.
    • Added support for Copy/Paste.
    • Added the ability to load/save Knald settings to a file (.ksf).
    • Add button triplets to 3d preview saving
    • Added notification group to the preferences.
    • Improved precision for the Info Tab Mix/Max values.
    • Increased online activation grace period from 7 to 30 days.
    • Added “P” hotkey for 3d preview viewport.
    • Added new default/fall back Knald Technologies folder in Documents.
    • Updated tooltips.
    • Miscellaneous improvements and optimizations.

    Bug fixes

      • Fix for issue where Irradiance would not export unless the Specular map was checked
      • Fix for issue where the Specular group would not save correctly in some cases.
      • Fix for issue where the legacy DDS export was using the wrong header information in some situations.
      • Fix for various modifier key sticking issues in 3d preview and settings cluster.
      • Fix for issue where the red channel Max value displayed incorrectly.
      • Fixed a few minor GUI related issues.
      • Fixed some rare license authentication issues.
      • Miscellaneous bug fixes.


      You can grab the new builds from your account

      You can find build notes here: https://www.knaldtech.com/lys-update-build20160313001/


      We really want to thank everyone for all the hard work and feedback during Lys's development. Please do continue sending us suggestions & posting everything you can! <3

    • armagon
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      armagon polycounter lvl 11
      Still no individual cube face export? cmftStudio is open source and it's getting better and better, while Lys seems stalled: https://github.com/dariomanesku/cmftStudio

    • metalliandy
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      metalliandy interpolator
      armagon said:
      Still no individual cube face export? cmftStudio is open source and it's getting better and better, while Lys seems stalled: https://github.com/dariomanesku/cmftStudio

      Hi Armagon,

      Thanks for the comments. May I ask why you need this as an export option please?
      Also, which export file type are you looking for? If it's DDS which format do you need?
      Cheers!



    • armagon
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      armagon polycounter lvl 11
      Multiple engines only support skyboxes with individual cube face textures. File type shouldn't really matter.
    • metalliandy
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      metalliandy interpolator
      armagon said:
      Multiple engines only support skyboxes with individual cube face textures. File type shouldn't really matter.
      Thanks for the information, Armagon.
      I will add this to the user wish list but as this is considered a legacy method (new engines all support proper cube maps) we might not be able to get to it immediately, though we will try our best of course. :)
    • metalliandy
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      metalliandy interpolator
      Lys 1.0.2 Hotfix Release!



      Since the 1.0.1 release of Lys we have been hard at work fixing a few bugs within Lys and adding a few miscellaneous under the hood improvements. Time for Lys 1.0.2!

      What’s changed since Lys 1.0.1?

      New Features, Improvements and Optimizations

      • Updated tooltips.
      • Miscellaneous improvements and optimizations.

      Bug fixes

      • Fixed an issue where Gaussian fails to work correctly when swapping between the Burley Powerdrop & Gaussian
      • Miscellaneous bug fixes.


      You can grab the new builds from your account

      You can find build notes here: https://www.knaldtech.com/lys-update-build20160403001/


      We really want to thank everyone for all the hard work and feedback during Lys's development. Please do continue sending us suggestions & posting everything you can! <3
    • metalliandy
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      metalliandy interpolator
      Lys 1.0.3 Hotfix Release!



      Since the 1.0.2 release of Lys we have been hard at work fixing a few bugs within Lys and adding a few miscellaneous under the hood improvements. Time for Lys 1.0.3!

      What’s changed since Lys 1.0.2?

      New Features, Improvements and Optimizations

      • Updated tooltips.
      • Miscellaneous improvements and optimizations.

      Bug fixes

      • Clear Sky: We re-implemented parts of the Clear Sky shader code in order to circumvent a bug in the NVIDIA driver’s shader compiler (present since driver 364.51) that was generating bad code that caused Clear Sky to render a black sky.
      • Miscellaneous bug fixes.


      You can grab the new builds from your account

      You can find build notes here: https://www.knaldtech.com/lys-update-build20160814001/


      We really want to thank everyone for all the hard work and feedback during Lys's development. Please do continue sending us suggestions & posting everything you can! <3
    • Eric Chadwick
      Hi @metalliandy

      I'm wondering if Lys can reduce saturation by mip level? I'd like the highest mip to be original color, but fading to monochrome by the lowest mip. I'd like the glossy IBL reflections to have color, but irradiance IBL to be monochrome. 

      Reason is we would like to be able to judge color accuracy once models get into PBR/glTF. We are creating custom IBLs for use in glTF viewers like BabylonJS or the Khronos glTF Reference Viewer. https://sandbox.babylonjs.com/ http://gltf.ux3d.io/

      We'd like monochrome irradiance so rougher surfaces get less color cast from the IBL. But I'm wondering if we were to keep color in the higher mips, would that still look OK? For example in a room with a wood floor, we don't want the warm color to influence a white couch so much.

      Some screenshot examples here 
      https://github.com/KhronosGroup/glTF-WebGL-PBR/issues/127
    • metalliandy
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      metalliandy interpolator
      Hey Eric,

      Thanks for the info!

      Will talk to you privately to get some more specifics and see if it's possible to add :)
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