hikari
Editor & authoring

The engine, running inside the editor

Author the scene, play it, and refine it in place. The viewport and Play mode run on the engine’s own renderer and runtime.

Hikari Editor showing the Bistro scene, with the actor hierarchy on the left, the camera inspector on the right, and the asset browser below.
Hikari Editor / Bistro scene

Main asset: Amazon Lumberyard Bistro by Amazon Lumberyard · via NVIDIA ORCA · CC BY 4.0

01 / Workflow

An authored scene and a separate Play world

The scene document holds your authored world. The viewport presents its live preview, while Play runs a separate world. Editing, testing, and undo each have a clear place in the workflow.

  1. Build the scene

    Arrange actors, tune components, and work with prefabs. Undo and redo keep your edits reversible.

  2. Play in a separate world

    Run the game in a separate Play world. Stop returns you to your authored scene.

  3. Recompile in place

    Rebuild game logic in Edit mode while the scene stays open. Asset watching brings changed content back into the editor.

02 / Visual authoring / Animation

Animation graphs, previewed beside the character

Build motion from named clips and connected states. Conditions and parameters drive transitions, with a character preview beside the graph to make the result visible while you work.

The Fox example moves between Survey, Walk, and Run using a speed parameter. Gameplay can drive graph parameters through Zig or Kawa.

Hikari’s animation graph editor showing Survey and Walk states, footstep events, a speed parameter, and a fox preview with its skeleton visible.
Locomotion graph · State transitions, footstep events, and a live skeleton preview.
03 / Visual authoring / Materials

Material graphs with a live preview

Build surface and volume materials as graphs, with a live preview for iteration. Shared shader packages carry those materials into the renderer.

Akari takes one shader source through to Metal, Direct3D, and Vulkan. Its Vulkan target uses descriptor-set bindings and bindless arrays, compiling Vulkan-specific HLSL through DXC into SPIR-V for Vulkan 1.3.

Hikari material graph editor showing texture-coordinate connections to albedo, normal, and metallic/roughness nodes, colour and luminance controls, and a live sphere preview.
Hikari / Material graph editor
04 / Particles

GPU particle editor

Layer emitters for flame, smoke, and embers. Tune gravity, turbulence, drag, and colour over life against a live GPU preview.

Playback controls, emitter shapes, and visible bounds keep the effect easy to inspect as you refine it.

Hikari’s particle editor previewing the inferno_bonfire effect, with flames, smoke, flying embers, a playback timeline, six emitters, and a stack of particle modifiers.
Inferno bonfire · GPU particle preview with emitter and modifier controls.