We've been making some good progress lately on Milo, our experimental Unreal-based companion to Silo which we envision as a realtime renderer and possibly much more.
We've already shown a base version of Milo up and running using Unreal, including basic scene navigation and UI. (I'm trying to be better about blogging, but if you've missed updates so far on Silo/Milo, the best place to get realtime info is our social media: Facebook and Twitter.) This includes a lot of custom code to allow for shape generation and potential modification directly inside Milo, as well as generating models from loaded files. It also can export quick turntable renders to gif at the press of a button, which is handy for sharing your work online.
As the next step, we've added experimental PBR (physically based rendering) multimaterial setup tools in Silo. Those of you who have used Unreal or Unity will recognize the PBR material workflow. These materials besides diffuse are not rendered in Silo, but are rendered in realtime in Milo. We've set up a bridge between the two apps using modified FBX (though we're keeping an eye on PBR-native formats such as Pixar's USD; currently FBX can't export PBR to third party applications.) These developments are good for both apps: more robust FBX and materials support is a natural next step for Silo, and it's a lot of fun to be able to see the results in realtime in Milo.
Here's an example model with diffuse, specular, displacement, emissive, normal, and bump maps applied, along with values set for metallic and roughness, in a modified version of Silo. Milo auto-updates from the model whenever you save it in Silo.
So far we've focused on establishing a strong base for Milo, but we're also hoping to get a little more experimental with its future and features in the coming months. Unreal offers some intriguing possibilities. We've recently had some good news in that regard, and we'll share it with you as soon as we can!
-John