3 replies to this topic

[afrosharpner]

Hi all,

I am new to this forum, I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question. If its not the please help me to find somewhere that is.

I want to find out the average price to licence a ray tracing engine & real-time engine. I have done some research and it is hard to get an idea of what this would cost, any suggestions would be much appreciated.

thx in advance,

[Vilem Otte]

Hello,

This forum is indeed good place to ask about engines and game development (I would say even programming generally) - lots of people from programming industries are visiting this place every day, from beginners, through hobbyists/weekend-programmers to professionals.

Real time engines are nowadays mostly OpenGL/Direct3D rasterized (some with ray traced effects), with various prices - from free license, to hundreds of thousands USD. Just do a little search here and I'm sure you will find one that will suit you.

Most ray tracing engines (non-real-time) are written by developers of 3d-studio like applications. So if you want non real time ray tracing engines and if you know how to programme, you probably will have to develop renderer on your own.
As for real time ray tracing engines, you should see Arauna real time ray tracer (it's open source) ... see more at phantoms page (also known as Jacco Bikker - he wrote those ray tracing tutorials here on devmaster) http://igad.nhtv.nl/~bikker/
You might also search for my engine, it is though not just renderer (Havok physics, OpenGL renderer connected with ForgottenLIB real time ray tracer (my own work), OpenAL based sound engine, lots of artifical intelligence is also present) ... so it is NOT a ray tracer (it is hybrid renderer in engine), it uses ray tracing on some effects (F.e. full scale GI). No web page is available right now (only one really really old) ... but it will be. ... I think few IOTDs here and on GameDev.net are still available.
You also can do some search on OMPF.org forum also, where you can find lots of links on papers about rtrt topic.

[afrosharpner]

Thanks for you swift reply Vilem,

It was very helpful, however i was trying to find out what engines are worth to the market as me and a few colleagues are working on an engine which sounds very similar to yours actually part real-time part ray trace, check out this vid it was taken at very early stages.



And one of my colleagues channels

http://www.youtube.com/user/zxmvb23

again thanks very much for your advice.

[cignox1]

I don't know if that is of help, but there are a few realistic (non real time) open source raytracers out there: luxrender, yafaray, sunflow and pow ray just to name a few of them...