C4 Engine
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| Developer(s) | Terathon Software LLC |
|---|---|
| Stable release |
Version 4.5 / 28 March 2015
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| Platform |
PlayStation 4 PlayStation 3 Microsoft Windows Mac OS X Linux iOS |
| Type | Game engine |
| License | Multiple types |
| Website | www.terathon.com |
The C4 Engine was a proprietary computer game engine developed by Terathon Software that was used to create 3D games and other types of interactive virtual simulations for PlayStation 4,PlayStation 3, Windows (XP and later), Mac OS X (versions 10.9 and later),Linux, and iOS.
Development of the C4 Engine was led by computer graphics author Eric Lengyel, who is also the founder of Terathon Software. Although in development sporadically for several years beforehand, the engine was first made available under a commercial license in May, 2005. The C4 Engine was 'retired' in May, 2015 in favor of the development of the Tombstone Engine.
The C4 Engine is based on the OpenGL library on Windows, Mac, Linux, and iOS platforms, and it uses a one-pass-per-light forward rendering model. The engine is capable of rendering with several different types of light sources and shadowing methods. The primary method for rendering dynamic shadows is shadow mapping, and a variant of cascaded shadow mapping is used for very large outdoor scenes.
Shaders are created in C4 using one of two available methods, both of which isolate the user from the shader code required by the underlying graphics library. Simple shaders can be created by specifying a set of material attributes such as a diffuse reflection color, a specular reflection color, and a group of texture maps. The engine internally generates the necessary shader code for each combination of material and light type that it encounters when rendering a scene. Material attributes can be used to produce effects such as normal mapping, parallax mapping, horizon mapping, and bumpy reflections or refractions.
C4 also includes a graphical Shader Editor that allows complex custom materials to be created using a large set of predefined operations. This method of designing materials enables greater creative freedom and functionality for expert users, but requires somewhat more work by the user. Materials created using the standard material attributes can be converted to custom shaders to serve as a starting point in the Shader Editor.
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