CyberAgent develops Sirius system and boosts Houdini to elevate mobile game graphics
Graphics quality in smartphone games has shown continuous growth year after year. Details in character models are crucial, but the representation of environmental elements such as sky, water, vegetation, weather and large landscapes has also become a determining factor in the overall perception of a game.
Within CyberAgent’s Games and Entertainment (SGE) Division, the SGE Core Technology Headquarters (CoreTech) serves as an organization that provides cross-departmental technical support to address challenges in game development. CoreTech is currently directing its efforts towards creating the integrated rendering system called “Sirius”.
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Sirius is being designed as a rendering platform that aims to unify shaders and rendering pipelines, which were previously distributed among different subsidiaries, while maintaining the base of the Unity game engine. However, the current focus goes beyond simply optimizing development efficiency, also encompassing strengthening its role in research and development, with the aim of achieving the graphic quality expected in the coming years.
With Sirius, CyberAgent plans to enhance its signature anime visual style. To understand how the system is used in the development of its open worlds and what the expectations are, we spoke with Takayuki Kiyohara, Yasushi Okamoto and Yuki Tatami, directly involved in this project.
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Takayuki Kiyohara, who leads the graphics team at CoreTech, has a career spanning 13 years at a console company and 7 years as a teacher. He joined CyberAgent after publishing a book and is now responsible for infrastructure development, including Sirius, as well as fixing graphical flaws and optimizing performance in several products.
Yasushi Okamoto, a graphics engineer on Kiyohara’s team, has experience in several game companies and in *engine* development. She arrived at CyberAgent about a year and a half ago and focuses on developing Sirius, integrating the demands of different products as a basis for the platform.
Yuki Tatami, also a member of the CoreTech graphics team, serves more as a graphics engineer than a technical artist. With nine years of industry experience, six of which were dedicated to consumer games, he is now in charge of developing Sirius and working with Houdini. Previously, Tatami participated in the management and development of “NOVA Shader”, an effects *shader* that became a standard in the company.
Understand the role of the Sirius rendering system in CyberAgent
Asked what exactly Sirius, an integrated rendering system, is, Kiyohara explained that it works as an internal infrastructure developed to specialize the visual expressions that each product wants to achieve. Although the company uses Unity as its game engine, he highlighted that Unity alone can make it difficult to create specific artistic expressions without additional customizations.
Kiyohara detailed that, in the past, each company in the group developed its own specific rendering *shaders* and *pipelines*. Sirius integrates these features, functioning as an extension of the Unity platform. This centralization of common elements in each business unit’s infrastructure aims to improve development efficiency, allowing teams to focus on creating a striking anime visual style while avoiding duplication of efforts in building core technologies. The initiative reflects CyberAgent’s strategy to optimize resources and innovate in an increasingly competitive mobile gaming market, where visual differentiation is a key factor in player success and engagement.
