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M. Wimmer:
"Gametools: Advanced Rendering Effects for Next-Gen Engines";
Talk: Games Convention Developers Conference, Leipzig, Deutschland (invited); 2007-08-20 - 2007-08-22.

The GameTools Project is an EU project from the 6th Framework Programme that brings together leading European computer graphics experts from universities in Austria, France, Hungary and Spain with European industrial partners from the fields of computer game development and virtual reality to create next generation real-time 3D libraries for Geometry, Visibility and Global Illumination for the PC platform, with an extension to consoles PS2, XBox, PS3, XBox 360 planned.

With the project now completed after 3 years, this talk will introduce you to the advanced technology available partly as Open Source, partly under licensing. The project comprises technologies such as continuous multiresolution models for animated characters, massive tree rendering, robust PVS generation for visiblity determination of arbitrarily large game levels, and real-time global illumination effects such as soft shadows, real-time radiosity, caustics, cloud rendering, and many more.

The effects created in the GameTools project are available as plugins that can be incorporated into any game engine, and are demonstrated with the Open Source Ogre engine.