Graphics middleware company Graphine announced today the launch of Granite SDK 5.0, the latest release of its flagship texture streaming middleware for high-quality real-time 3D visualization and video games. Granite SDK 5.0 brings similar video memory optimization and loading time optimization as previous versions while significantly improving iteration times for artists, combined with straightforward file versioning and asset distribution during video game development.
Virtual texturing, the technology behind Granite SDK, has always resulted in larger atlas files at some point in game production. Granite SDK has now removed these large files by completely redesigning its file format. It now streams from individual texture assets during production.
“Artist iteration time matters to our partners” says Aljosha Demeulemeester, Graphine CEO. “We found a way to keep working with individually compressed assets during production. Although you could already configure Granite to have no impact on the workflow of artists, we now efficiently allow a distributed approach next to the previous centralised file creation with less integration time required. You benefit from all the memory saving and fast loading during production as well.”
James Loe, Technical Director at Wargaming Seattle: “With the latest release of Granite SDK, Graphine have delivered a nearly seamless production workflow that makes our content creation process easier than ever. No other vendor we work with is better at listening to our feedback and delivering effective improvements as quickly as Graphine does, and that means a lot.” 
Granite SDK 5.0 is available as a stand-alone SDK that can integrate into any game engine and as a plugin for Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 3D. The benefits from Granite SDK 5.0 will be available with the next release of the plugins.
You can find more information about the release of Granite SDK 5.0 in this blogpost. Graphine will be exhibiting at Game Developers Conference in San Francisco to present its products and services to the video game industry on March 21-23.
