Mizuchi, new PC/PS4 graphics engine from Silicon Studio

Silicon Studio’s Advanced Engine “Mizuchi” Will be Shown on PS4 For the First Time at GDC

Silicon Studio’s Advanced Engine “Mizuchi” Will be Shown on PS4 For the First Time at GDC

by Giuseppe Nelva on February 7, 2015 3:46 PM

The Japanese developer Silicon Studio, which you probably know for Bravely Default, announced with a press release that it will showcase its new rendering engine “Mizuchi” at GDC 2015, held in San Francisco between March 2nd and March 6th.

What’s even more interesting, is that the developer will show for the first time the engine running in real-time on PS4.

As you may remember, when I visited Silicon Studio in December, I was shown the engine running on Sony’s console, and it’s definitely promising, granting amazing graphics and visual effects while running at 30 frames per second in 1080p resolution.

I was even allowed to “play” with it by controlling the camera with the DualShock 4, and the demo was really impressive. Hopefully, with it being shown publicly at GDC, you’ll be able to catch a glimpse of it as well.

On top of Mizuchi, the studio will also showcase its optics middleware Yebis 3, it’s older engineOrochi 3, and its C++ multiplatform engine Paradox. They’ll also have a playable demo of Bandai Namco’s Rise of the Incarnates, which uses Orochi 3 and Yebis 3.

The press release also specifies that Mizuchi is going to be made available to developers in Summer 2015.

If you’re curious about Mizuchi, and you want to see the impressive “The Museum” demo, you can check it out below, alongside a few screenshots. It’s worth mentioning that it’s running on PC in the video, where it reaches 60 FPS (even if the video itself shows just 30) on a Nvidia GTX 780 Ti video card.

Advanced PC/PS4 Rendering Engine Mizuchi by Silicon Studio Gets Amazing Screenshots, Video and Info

Advanced PC/PS4 Rendering Engine Mizuchi by Silicon Studio Gets Amazing Screenshots, Video and Info

by Giuseppe Nelva on February 24, 2015 5:29 AM

You probably know Silicon Studio for the development of Bravely Default, but if you follow our site regularly, you probably know that the developer also works on middleware, including the advanced rendering engine Mizuchi, currently in the works for PC and PS4 in view of an official launch this summer.

Today the developer released a brand new video featuring the engine, alongside its optics middleware Yebis 3, and its cross-platform engine Paradox. In addition to that, they also released some spectacular new screenshots of Mizuchi. You can check them all out at the bottom of the post.

We also got some more data about what the engine can offer to developers, and how it will integrate with their own tech.

Features:

Physically Based Rendering

With Mizuchi’s physically based rendering engine, users can easily achieve rich material expression that stands up under any lighting conditions in real-time. Materials that can be expressed includes, metal, wood, glass, cloth and leather.

High Customizability

Mizuchi provides an easily customizable rendering pipeline to meet the various needs of any project. Design and build your own rendering pipeline.

Integration of “Mizuchi” Runtime

Users can benefit from beautiful and realistic visuals by replacing the rendering component of their game engine with Mizuchi.

Workflow of “Mizuchi”

Mizuchi provides seamless workflow from DCC tools to runtime.

1. Export popular texture and model file formats created from paint and DCC tools.
2. Author material and lighting using Mizuchi editing tool.
3. Export scene to a custom Mizuchi scene format and use it in the Mizuchi runtime.

Mizuchi Use Cases

In Game Rendering Engines

• Integrate Mizuchi rendering engine for new game titles.
• Replace rendering component for existing game engines.

Interactive Visualization Application in Building/Industrial Products.

• High quality rendering comparable to offline rendering.
• Design and visualization products using our rich material system.

But without further ado, I leave you with Mizuchi’s beautiful assets, also reminding you that the engine will be publicly shown running on PS4 for the first time at GDC. Considering what I already saw with my own eyes, I’m quite sure many jaws will drop.

Let me guess, it's only possible on PS4, right?

It is also worth mentioning their first console game was an Xbox 360 exclusive, Operation Darkness, and they had no particular affiliation up till now. So they're just hired guns going in for the money.

And PC, which is what it was originally announced for, and what the tech demo is running on, before they announced the PS4 will be getting a downgraded version running at 30 fps. But no word on any X1 support yet.

The optical effects are most impressive, the high contrast created by the sun's natural light are a great touch, as well as the use of depth of field gives it such a cinematic like artistic quality. The textures are also really impressive, not just in their high level of detail, but also the way in which the surfaces of the objets have realistic qualities in how the light radiates and/or reflects off them.

I remember running RTHDRIBL demos back then in 2005, is this from the same creator?

Agreed. While the textures look detailed, what really makes it look photorealistic is the lighting, shading and optical effects. We've reached a point in graphics tech where the polygons and textures can only be pushed so far. The next evolution in graphics tech is in the lighting, shading and optical effects. The Order already demonstrated this to some extent, but this new Mizuchi tech demo seems like the next major step forward.

Why is it that all these new engines, or their demos for that matter, attempt to mimic a lens? I'm in no way saying things look bad, just find it odd that this seems to be the course developers are taking while at the same time VR--something that attempts to mimic two eyes--is being pushed.

All that chromatic aberration

But seriously, it looks cool, maybe it has a relation to SE's new JRPG

And yet the most Japanese games continue to look like PS2 games bar Capcom and Kojima.

Games will still look like crap for awhile. PC is years ahead but it's being held back like usual and the cost for such production is risky. Just look at The Order 1886. What a flop for a game that looks pretty.

Reminds me of the first Uncharted 4 trailer "real time, in game, in engine, running on PS4" but we all know how that downgrade went. Then it got delayed hoping they could wipe the internet of comparisons or some shit.

Plus this tech demo reminds me of The Dark Sorcerer. Another tool used to hype idiotic fanboys into a stupor and do all the promoting for Sony. Still waiting for that Greatne.........................ah never mind.

Not sure. Those demos seem to be from Japan, but I don't know if Silicon Studio was involved. But they did make similar demos later on, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was them.

Pretty much. The "bokeh" DOF effect in particular seems to be getting really popular this gen. I think it's because, like I said above, there's only so far we can go with pushing the polygons and textures, so developers are now focusing on lighting, shading and optical effects to further evolve the graphics. Since a camera lens works in a somewhat similar manner to the lens of a human eye, mimicking a camera lens is the closest we'll get to mimicking the human eye (which VR also attempts to mimmick, like you said).

u doubt that pc can produce these graphics real time?

Yes but I don't see how dictating a players focal point is an accurate representation. On the contrary it seems limiting in many ways.

No doubt a PC can do that. I like to single the PS4 out.

Like this.?

Tech demo....

We all know whatever game it will be used on will not look like what was shown to us beforehand.

Still, pretty cool though.

@tormentos said:

@FoxbatAlpha said:

Reminds me of the first Uncharted 4 trailer "real time, in game, in engine, running on PS4" but we all know how that downgrade went. Then it got delayed hoping they could wipe the internet of comparisons or some shit.

Plus this tech demo reminds me of The Dark Sorcerer. Another tool used to hype idiotic fanboys into a stupor and do all the promoting for Sony. Still waiting for that Greatne.........................ah never mind.

Like this.?

Yeah, you would still be worried about little things like crowds. Crowds no one sees in a 60fps racer. How is your 60fps racer doing? Oh wait............

tech demo king

no word on xposbone so sad dx12 failed once again!

when was the last time a game looked better than a tech demo? There are tech demos from 5 years ago that we still haven't even seen surpassed by current PC games.

It makes more sense to just let our eyes do the work, yeah? Though it can be beneficial in small amounts.

Post processing has gotten way out of control. Worse is developers seem to act as a hive mind. "They're using chromatic aberration, let's do it too - it's the next big thing!"

@tormentos: bahaha texas ranger @foxbatalpha got owned haha

Just for reference sake, QD's game always turned out to be better looking than their initial tech demos.

The Casting tech demo.

Heavy Rain retail game

Kara tech demo

Beyond two Souls

So STFU hermit and lem rats, I shall wait to drink your tears when QD's next game outdoes Dark Sorcerer's graphics come this E3.

...And Square Enix, and Silicon Studio.

The tech demo is running on PC. The PS4 version of the engine will be downgraded, running at 30 fps and missing some features.

Square Enix, I'll give you that but I haven't even heard about Silicon Studio before let alone any games from them.

The cute little robot makes me want a Wall-E sequel :P

The bokeh DOF effect isn't really supposed to serve any purpose other than making the graphics look more photographic and/or cinematic.

Tech demos are usually a few years ahead of released games. The Agni's Philosophy demo, for example, arguably still looks better than games today. It's hard to match a tech demo's graphics when you have to take gameplay into account.

The gap between that video and anything on consoles is same as between PS2 and PS3 graphics...

Sadly we have a PS3.5 and Xbox360.5 and not a proper gen jump...

Doubt this will be up there with the big boys, might be an alternate to Unity however. I'm waiting for the consoles to run unreal or a optimized CryEngine.

^ I don't remember any Unreal or CryEngine tech demos looking quite as impressive as the Mizuchi tech demo above. It probably won't become as popular as Unreal, CryEngine, or Unity, but Mizuchi seems to have the edge in graphics technology.

Silicon Studio is a tech company founded by Teruyasu Sekimoto, formerly the senior vice president of Silicon Graphics (SGI), making Silicon Studio a successor company to SGI. Silicon Studio later branched into game development, with low-budget games like 3D Dot Game Heroes and Bravely Default... which probably aren't great examples, since they have PS2-quality graphics. But if Silicon Studio combined the acclaimed gameplay of Bravely Default with the cutting-edge graphics of Mizuchi, that could be a winning formula.