Babylon.js 8.0 launches with shadows, area lights, and lightweight viewer

Following the revelation of DirectX Ray Tracing (DXR) 1.2 last week, Microsoft has announced the availability of Babylon.js 8.0, an open-source 3D engine used for web graphics and games. This update is the culmination of around a year’s worth of work and introduces some really nice improvements such as image-based lighting shadows (IBL shadows) and area lights that let 2D shapes emit light.

Every 3D object, with light shining at it, casts a shadow. As a 3D engine, it’s important for Babylon.js to support this, and now it does thanks to Adobe. In a demonstration video, Microsoft showed a before and after scene of a trophy. In the after image, the trophy is casting a realistic-looking shadow. Developers that rely on Babylon.js will be able to use this feature to cast shadows of buildings, and more.

In this update, another lighting feature called Area Lights has been added. It allows you to specify a 2D shape and emit light from it. At first glance, you may wonder what purpose this could serve, but it’s a frequently requested feature and after seeing the demo, you can definitely see how it might be used in a game.

Another new feature in Babylon.js includes an alpha implementation of the Node Render Graph which gives full control over the rendering pipeline. This lets you customize the render pipeline without having to write render process code.

Other improvements include:

• Lightweight viewer: This viewer can render scenes with the same quality as the full renderer but comes in a bundle with a smaller footprint. This can be added to any webpage and if it needs dependencies, it will import them on the fly based on which model is loaded.
• Viewer configurator: To go along with the lightweight viewer, Babylon.js 8.0 introduces an easy-to-use configurator. Microsoft says: “The Viewer Configurator is a simple tool that allows you to customize the Viewer to your exact specifications and give you the simple .html properties to set so it looks the same in your website!”

Finally, this update brings all the core engine shaders to GLSL (OpenGL Shading Language) and WGSL (WebGPU Shading Language), providing direct support for WebGPU without a conversion layer thus making Babylon.js 2x smaller than before. You can also create custom WGSL shaders using the Node Material Editor in this update. To learn more, check out Microsoft’s announcement.

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