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.
 
 
 

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.
 

 

 
 
 

 

Real-time axis rotation and Cube map face position debugging

Lys gives you the flexibility to rotate in the X, Y and Z axes independently while retaining the integrity of the conversion between all layouts.
 

 

 
 
 
 

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!

 

 

 

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.
 

Versatile image adjustment

Tweak the hue, saturation and exposure of your images while retaining the precious HDR data.
 

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.
 

 
 
 

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.
 

 
 
 

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!


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!


 
 
 
 
 
 

All HDRI photo based source images shown in the above were kindly provided by Marmoset.
 
http://www.marmoset.co

 
 
 

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