Afterwarp Framework ® provides both low-level graphics API that can be used to implement a custom rendering engine and a high-level graphics API, which includes InnerFlux ® rendering engine for real-time 2D and 3D visualizations. The framework has modular design, where each module is aimed at solving a specific group of tasks with a strong aim on reliability and high real-time performance.
The framework provides powerful 3D visualizations for industrial CAD applications leveraging power of modern GPUs. It uses a hybrid forward, deferred rendering using clustered shading enabling up to 65 thousands of light sources in the scene, in real-time.
Each light source in the scene can be optionally assigned a shadow casting capability, producing beautifully looking real-time shadows with soft penumbra. Both omni-directional and cone-shaped light sources with attenuation are supported.
Accurate rendering of semi-transparent objects in a single pass using an order-independent transparency (OIT) technique. For lower end GPUs, an approximated solution is also available. Both solutions produce an optional and fully customizable Frosted Glass effect. This allows showing complex see-through CAD structures, glass windows, water and any other type of transparent surfaces.
An object in the scene has its associated material with many different parameters and several types of different BDRFs, enabling physical-based rendering (PBR) with unlimited possibilities. The scene is rendered with a real-time bloom, producing visible glare from very bright light reflections, and in full high-dynamic range (HDR) with controllable white level, resulting in a highly realistic visualization.
A variety of visual effects can be applied to the scene, including real-time ambient occlusion (SSAO), depth-based and ground fog, Gaussian and Kawase blur, and the final high fidelity image can be quantized using color dithering to reduce visible color banding. Certain objects can also be outlined using Selection Highlight effect, which produces a colored outline and mask of varying colors, which can be used for object selection or status indication.
The framework is capable of rendering thousands of objects with an efficient frustum culling and instancing techniques. A powerful camera module enables first-person view (FPV) and third-person view (FPV), which can be switched at runtime. This enables precise navigation and control in 3D world, where objects can be picked by mouse quickly and precisely from an internal bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) using object's bounding boxes and/or their voxel volumes. An utility is provided to generate such voxel volumes from existing mesh files.
For rendering objects, the framework is capable of generating many types of meshes at runtime such as planes, cubes, cones, and many others; more complex meshes can be created from vector-based path using extrusion. The framework can also natively load Wavefront OBJ files and their material files, supporting very large files up to several gigabytes, limited only by an existing RAM of the system. For other file formats, the framework will automatically attempt to load and use Open Asset Import Library (Assimp), an open-source third-party library supporting loading and saving many different 3D model formats.
The framework is capable of displaying full volumetric 3D text in real-time with gradients, lighting, shadows and ambient occlusion. Optionally, volumetric 3D it can be converted into a real object for further manipulation and mouse picking. Also, the framework can render a high-quality text in 2D and 3D using Signed Distance Fields (SDF) and Super-Sampling, which appear vector-like and remain readable even under steep viewing angles. The text may be optionally filled with color gradients, with border and shadows. The framework includes full international support for Unicode text in UTF-8 standard.
Finally, the framework, in addition to above features, has extensive functions for real-time drawing of 2D vector graphics using lines and curves, with gradient fill and stroke, real-time image processing and visual effects. It also provides many service functions dealing with colors and timing operations, a full 2D and 3D math library and other functionality covering many different aspects of enterprise and CAD use case scenarios. The framework also comes with full support for Hi-DPI and Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) displays.