Essence Engine

Essence Engine

Developer(s)	Relic Entertainment
Operating system	Windows
Type	Game engine
License	Proprietary
Website	Relic Official Website

Essence Engine is a game engine developed by Relic Entertainment for video game Company of Heroes.

Features

The Essence Engine features many new graphical effects, including High Dynamic Range lighting, dynamic lighting and shadows, advanced shader effects and normal mapping. The Essence Engine is also one of the first RTS engines to create detailed faces with facial animations.

In Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, the Essence Engine was further improved to include weather effects, and also added support for DirectX 10 for Windows Vista.

Dawn of War II uses an updated version of Essence Engine (Essence 2.0) which allows for more detailed models and textures; more advanced lighting and shading effects; more complex "sync-kills" than those in Dawn of War; and better support for multi-processor systems.

Games using the Essence Engine

Essence v1.0

Title	Release Date	DirectX 10 Support
Company of Heroes (v1.7)	September 12, 2006 September 29, 2006	Y
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts	September 25, 2007 September 28, 2007	Y
Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor	April 9, 2009	Y
Company of Heroes Online	September 2, 2010	N

Essence v2.0

Title	Release Date	DirectX 10 Support
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II	February 19, 2009 February 20, 2009	N
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II - Chaos Rising	March 11, 2010 March 12, 2010	N
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II – Retribution	March 1, 2011	N