Physically Based Rendering in Filament

48 points 17 comments 6 days ago
nmfisher

Filament is a great lightweight cross-platform PBR rendering library. There's a few things missing (real GPU instancing is one), but in terms of shadows/antialiasing/color grading, it's very powerful. The material (shader) language is also very accessible.

I maintain an open-source Dart/Flutter package[0] which is mostly a wrapper around Filament. This makes it considerably easier to have a single UI+codebase that runs across macOS, iOS, Android, Windows, and Web.

[0] https://github.com/nmfisher/thermion

Austizzle

Man, I got excited for a second from the title thinking this was about a way to produce 3d printer filament from PBR settings, so you could tweak a material on the computer and have your filament match the digital version

rustystump

It is funny u say that because my head went directly to physically based rendering but i dont 3d print.

petermcneeley

I use the page to test scrolling.

EsportToys

Nice, it's also a great test for my https://github.com/EsportToys/LibreScroll

pjmlp

This is yet another library that made some Google I/O headlines, had an Android framework, and eventually got forgotten.

EDIT: Indeed, that was the case.

https://developers.google.com/sceneform/develop

unwind

Huh? That literally says that the (higher-level) "Sceneform" library uses Filament for the PBR, isn't that the opposite of it being forgotten? What am I missing, I really don't follow Android development ...

pjmlp

You should pay more attention to the whole site,

"Sceneform SDK for Android was open sourced and archived (github.com/google-ar/sceneform-android-sdk) with version 1.16.0."

RomainGuy

Sceneform != Filament. Sceneform was an AR-oriented framework that used Filament as its renderer. Filament itself is very much alive and under active development.

pjmlp

As far as I remember, one was used to implement the other.

Can you provide examples of commercial Google products and SDKs using Filament?

RomainGuy

Like I said, Sceneform used Filament (not the other way around). I know of a few Google products that use Filament but having left the company I'm not sure what I'm at liberty to talk about unfortunately. Btw, I'm one of the authors of Filament :)

pjmlp

I know, I do follow you since the Filthy Rich Client blog series at Sun, hence why I asked.

michaelbrave

that's going to be a confusing name with the connections to 3D printing

ChadNauseam

I'm not sure how it's confusing. Is it any more confusing than "v8" also being a type of internal combustion engine or blender also being a kitchen appliance?

NBJack

Yes.

v8 as a drink and as an engine.

blender as a piece of software and as an appliance

filament as a physical building material and as a physical rendering material.

One of these things is not like the other (or rather, one of these things sounds very much like the other).

burnt_toast

You can make lithophanes with 3d prints. I don't know about anyone else but that's what I thought this post would be about.

gdbsjjdn

v8 is also a beverage.

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