Archive notice: This article was originally published on September 5, 2014. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The Lys app is a companion product to the already available tool Knald, which was created for generating game texture maps from 2D source images.
Lys converts HDRIs back and forth between panoramic, spherical and horizontal mixed formats, while users can determine the orientation of the axes independently of one another and in real time. Once formatted, the HDR is intended to be used to generate Radiance, Irradiance and Specular Textures – including various setting options.
Lys works in 8-, 16- and 32-bit image pipelines and supports BC6H and BC7 Direct3D 11 texture block compression for games running on DirectX 11 and GPU. In addition, the app has a toolset with which skies can be generated procedurally while camera height, zenith angle and luminance can be adjusted at the same time.
Lys is available here as an open-beta version – only as a Windows version.
Anyone interested in the Knald program can get a 30-day trial version here; a licence is available for 100 US dollars.
Knald was also used for one of last year’s nominated animago stills: "Happy Birthday, Nana", the impressive CG work by Dan Roarty. If you have not yet voted for this year’s best still, take a look here. You can still cast your vote until September 9.
In the upcoming DP issue, we have also put together a nice HDRI package for our readers: image-based-lighting icon Paul Debevec gave us an interview, and there is also a workshop on the subject.
