Thursday, December 20th, 2012 Posted by Jim Thacker

Video demo: Square Enix’s Luminous Studio editor

Japanese website 4Gamer.net has posted a video three videos on YouTube (scroll down for the new ones) showing the editor for Square Enix’s Luminous Studio next-generation game engine in action.

Luminous Studio caused a buzz at E3 this year when Square released its Agni’s Philosophy real-time demo, although there wasn’t much technical detail, or information on when we will see games using in in production.

Editing the demo on the fly
The new video goes some way towards answering the first point, showing a user moving the camera around the opening scenes of Agni’s Philosophy, adjusting materials, rendering and simulation parameters on the fly.

This seems to be possible via a console-style overlay, or via a more conventional software interface. (Most of the interface is in Japanese, but you can see the names of individual simulation parameters in English.)

If Google Translate has done its job accurately, the video was shown as part of Square Enix’s Open Conference the week before last.

Either way, it looks impressive, and only makes us keener to see finished games using the technology – when and if they finally arrive.

Updated 20 December: Two more videos have been released on YouTube. The first (embedded above) shows hair and cloth parameters being adjusted on the fly – although solely the material properties, not an actual simulation. A second video, which is very similar, but focuses on depth of field, can be found here.

Visit the Agni’s Philosophy website (in Japanese)