SAN FRANCISCO, March 15, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Imagination Technologies (IMG.L) announces it has collaborated with Unity to deliver a lightmapping tool. A software-based implementation of Imagination’s PowerVR Ray Tracing technology will be integrated in upcoming Unity versions, improving the quality and performance of the lightmap baking workflow. With this new tool, artists will be able to quickly design and visualize advanced lighting effects in a convenient, easy to use workflow.

PowerVR Ray Tracing enables the creation of best-in-class lightmaps inside the Unity game engine. Lightmaps are the current gold standard for lighting quality and fidelity in games, and the PowerVR Ray Tracing-aided rendering delivers lightmaps with unmatched performance and accuracy while dramatically speeding up the lightmap creation process.

This integration opens up an unprecedented new workflow for lightmap creation. Traditionally, lightmaps must be pre-calculated in an offline process that can consume hours and interrupts the artistic process. PowerVR Ray Tracing delivers real-time feedback, allowing artists to create lightmaps interactively while they are working.

Joachim Ante, CTO of Unity Technologies, demonstrated on stage at the Unity special event today the benefits of the integration, and further comments: “We are delighted that our collaboration with Imagination Technologies brings to artists and game developers a very powerful way to build the lightmaps they want interactively, without sacrificing the quality of the rendering. Unity has demanding customers and by combining Imagination’s PowerVR Ray Tracing technology with our game engine we can empower them to create visually stunning games.”

Graham Deacon, senior director, PowerVR Business Operations, Imagination, says: “We are working with select partners like Unity to make it as easy as possible for our developer ecosystem to get involved with our ground-breaking PowerVR Ray Tracing GPU IP. Unity has a hugely popular and widely deployed game engine, so it was an easy choice to join with them to bring our ray tracing software rendering technology to developers. Fully interactive ray tracing has long been a ‘holy grail’ of the games industry and this brings us one step closer to our goal of making fully dynamic, physically based effects directly available to artists with Imagination’s hardware accelerated ray tracing technology.”

PowerVR: real-time, interactive ray tracing for consumer devices
Imagination Technologies’ ground-breaking PowerVR Ray Tracing technology delivers real-time interactive ray tracing  with power consumption and compact silicon area suitable for mobile and consumer games platforms. It makes possible the direct use of accelerated ray tracing in game runtimes, delivering the following benefits:

• Improved quality: the visual quality achievable through ray tracing exceeds that achievable on mobile platforms through conventional methods.
• Improved performance: PowerVR Ray Tracing is hyper-efficient, resulting in lower bandwidth requirements and lower GPU loading for effects such as shadows and reflections – this translates directly into higher performance games.
• Greater artistic freedom: by implementing ray traced effects in runtime hardware, intermediate mapping stages are eliminated, resulting in unconstrained gameplay and greater visual fidelity.
• Reduced development and deployment costs: with lighting effects generated in the runtime, asset creation and deployment are simplified, resulting in a faster development process and cheaper deployment.

To learn more about the PowerVR Ray Tracing technology, licensable GPU hardware IP and development platforms – please contact info@imgtec.com.

About Unity Technologies
Unity Technologies is the creator of a flexible and high-performance end-to-end development platform used to create rich interactive 2D, 3D, VR and AR experiences. Unity's powerful graphics engine and full-featured editor serve as the foundation to develop beautiful games or apps and easily bring them to multiple platforms: mobile devices, home entertainment systems, personal computers, VR and embedded systems. Unity also offers solutions and services for creating games, boosting productivity, and connecting with audiences including the Unity Asset Store, Unity Cloud Build, Unity Analytics, Unity Ads, Unity Certification and Unity Everyplay. Unity Technologies serves over 5.5 million registered developers including large publishers, indie studios, students and hobbyists around the globe. For more information, visit: http://unity3d.com.

About Imagination Technologies
Imagination is a global technology leader whose products touch the lives of billions of people across the globe. The company’s broad range of silicon IP (intellectual property) includes the key processing blocks needed to create the SoCs (Systems on Chips) that power all mobile, consumer and embedded electronics. Its unique software IP, infrastructure technologies and system solutions enable its customers to get to market quickly with complete and highly differentiated SoC platforms. Imagination’s licensees include many of the world’s leading semiconductor manufacturers, network operators and OEMs/ODMs who are creating some of the world’s most iconic products. See: www.imgtec.com.

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Imagination, PowerVR and the Imagination Technologies logo are trademarks of Imagination Technologies Limited and/or its affiliated group companies in the United Kingdom and/or other countries. All other logos, products, trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Imagination Technologies’ Press Contacts: 
UK: David Harold  david.harold@imgtec.com  +44 (0)1923 260 511
USA: Jen Bernier-Santarini  jen.bernier@imgtec.com  +1 408-530-5178