This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Windows Blog.
Our mission is to build one of the most powerful, beautiful, simple and open web rendering engines in the world. Today, we are thrilled to announce that mission takes a monumental leap forward with the release of Babylon.js 9.0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Th9mD_D5DrQ Babylon.js 9.0 represents our biggest and most feature-rich update yet. This is a celebration of an incredible year of new features, optimizations and performance improvements that push the boundaries of what’s possible on the web. From groundbreaking lighting and particle systems to geospatial rendering, animation retargeting and an all-new inspector … Babylon.js 9.0 empowers web developers everywhere to create richer, more immersive experiences than ever before. Whether you’re just beginning your Babylon journey, or you’re a graphics expert leveraging 327 simultaneous AI agents, Babylon is built for you! Before we dive in, we want to take a moment to humbly thank the incredible community of developers, contributors and advocates who pour their knowledge, expertise and passion into this platform. Babylon.js would not be here without you. So, let’s dive in and see what’s new!Clustered Lighting
When a scene has a lot of lights, per-pixel lighting calculations can get incredibly slow. Every single pixel has to compute the lighting contribution from every single light, even if those lights aren’t actually affecting that pixel. Clustered Lighting changes all of that. Babylon.js 9.0 introduces a powerful new Clustered Lighting system that dramatically speeds up lighting calculations by intelligently grouping lights into screen-space tiles and depth slices. At render time, each pixel only calculates lighting from the lights that actually affect it. The result? Scenes with hundreds or even thousands of lights running at buttery smooth frame rates! This system works on both WebGPU and WebGL 2, bringing next-generation lighting performance to the broadest possible audience. Check out a demo: https://aka.ms/babylon9CLDemo Learn more: https://aka.ms/babylon9CLDoc
Textured Area Lights
Building on the Area Lights introduced in Babylon.js 8.0, we’re excited to announce that area lights in Babylon.js 9.0 now support emission textures! This means you can use any image as a light source for your rectangular area light, enabling effects like stained glass projections, LED panel displays or cinematic lighting setups, all with physically accurate light emission. An offline texture processing tool is also available for production workflows, and a runtime processing option is provided for quick prototyping and experimentation.
Check out a demo: https://aka.ms/babylon9TALDemo
Learn more: https://aka.ms/babylon9TALDoc
Node Particle Editor
We are absolutely thrilled to introduce the Node Particle Editor (NPE), a brand-new visual tool that lets you create complex particle systems using a powerful, non-destructive node graph. If you’re familiar with Babylon’s Node Material Editor, you’ll feel right at home! The NPE gives you complete control over every aspect of your particle systems (from emission shapes and sprite sheets to update behaviors and sub-emitters) all through an intuitive drag-and-connect interface. Whether you’re creating simple smoke effects or elaborate procedural fireworks, the Node Particle Editor makes it easy, visual and fun. Check out a demo: https://aka.ms/babylon9NPEDemo Learn more: https://aka.ms/babylon9NPEDoc
Particle Flow Maps and Attractors
Want even more control over how your particles behave? Babylon.js 9.0 introduces Flow Maps, a screen-aligned texture that controls the direction and intensity of forces applied to particles based on their position on the screen. Each pixel in the flow map encodes a 3D direction vector and strength, giving you fine-grained, artistic control over particle movement. Flow maps work with both CPU and GPU particle systems, and integrate seamlessly with the new Node Particle Editor. Babylon.js 9.0 also adds gravity attractors to the particle system toolkit. An attractor is a simple but powerful concept: define a position and a strength, and watch as particles are pulled (or pushed!) toward that point in space. Set a negative strength to create a repulsor. Attractors can be repositioned and adjusted in real time, making it easy to create dynamic, interactive particle effects like swirling vortexes, magnetic fields or explosion shockwaves. Check out a demo: https://aka.ms/babylon9PartFMDemo Learn more about Particle Flow Maps: https://aka.ms/babylon9PartFMDoc Learn more about Particle Attractors: https://aka.ms/babylon9PartAttDoc
Volumetric Lighting
Realistic light shafts streaming through fog, dust or haze can transform a scene from flat to cinematic. Babylon.js 9.0 makes this easier than ever with a powerful new Volumetric Lighting system. The result is stunningly realistic light scattering with configurable extinction and phase parameters that give you artistic control over how light interacts with the atmosphere. The system supports directional light sources, and takes full advantage of WebGPU compute shaders for optimal performance. WebGL 2 is also supported with graceful fallbacks. Whether you’re building a moody dungeon crawler, a foggy forest or an atmospheric architectural visualization, Volumetric Lighting brings your scenes to life. Check out a demo: https://aka.ms/babylon9vlDemo Learn more: https://aka.ms/babylon9vlDoc
Frame Graph
One of the most transformative features in Babylon.js 9.0 is the Frame Graph system. Introduced as an alpha feature in 8.0, the Frame Graph is now a fully realized v1 feature that gives you complete, fine-grained control over the entire rendering pipeline. A Frame Graph is a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) where each node represents a rendering task, from object culling to post-processing. You declare what resources each task needs and produces, and the system intelligently manages texture allocation, reuse and optimization. This means substantial GPU memory savings (we’ve seen 40% or more in some cases!) and a level of rendering flexibility that was simply not possible before. You can customize and compose your own rendering pipeline visually using the Node Render Graph Editor, or programmatically through the class framework. No more opaque render black boxes! Check out a demo: https://aka.ms/babylon9FGDemo Learn more: https://aka.ms/babylon9FGDoc
Animation Retargeting
Animation retargeting is a game-changer for anyone working with character animations. New in Babylon.js 9.0, the retargeting system allows you to take an animation created for one character and apply it to a completely different character, even if they have different skeleton structures, bone proportions or naming conventions. The system mathematically remaps each animated bone transform from the source skeleton to the target, compensating for differences in reference pose, bone length and hierarchy. This means you can share an entire library of locomotion, combat or facial animations across many characters. An interactive Animation Retargeting Tool is also available for experimentation without writing any code! Check out a demo: https://aka.ms/babylon9ARDemo Learn more: https://aka.ms/babylon9ARDoc
Advanced Gaussian Splat Support
Babylon.js 7.0 introduced Gaussian Splatting, and Babylon.js 9.0 takes it to the next level. This release brings a host of advanced capabilities including support for multiple file formats (.PLY, .splat, .SPZ, and Self-Organizing Gaussians .SOG/.SOGS), Triangular Splatting for opaque mesh-like rendering, shadow casting support and the ability to combine multiple Gaussian Splat assets into a single scene with global splat sorting. You can now programmatically create, modify and download Gaussian Splat data, and each part of a composite splat scene can be independently transformed and animated. The result? Unprecedented flexibility for working with photorealistic volumetric captures on the web. Huge shout out to Adobe for their wonderful contributions to advancing Gaussian Splat support! Check out a demo: https://aka.ms/babylon9GSDemo Learn more: https://aka.ms/babylon9GSDoc
Those are just some of the standout features in Babylon.js 9.0—there’s much more to explore. Stay tuned for the next posts to learn more about our tooling updates and new geospatial features.