Autodesk Levels Up, Will Release Stingray Game Engine August 19th

Autodesk is no stranger to 3D animation and professional software. The company offers several design tools for developers, including Maya, 3ds Max, Fusion 360, AutoCAD, Civil 3D, and the list goes on, though up until now, one thing you wouldn't find in Autodesk's portfolio is a game engine. That changes today.

Announced at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Europe 2015, Stingray is Autodesk's entry into the game engine business. It's built on the data driven architecture of the Bitsquid engine, which Autodesk scooped up in 2014, and supports a bunch of industry standard game development workflows. It also includes connectivity to Autodesk 3D animation software to simplify game development across various platforms.



Stingray will compete against popular game engines like Unreal 4 and Unity 5, both of which are well established at this point. That's not going to be easy, though Autodesk told Engadget that it's taking aim at small and mid-size studios that don't have an enormous programming staff. To attract smaller studios, Autodesk inserted node-based scripting tools for drag-and-drop coding. And for more ambitious projects, Stingray's C++ source code is available for a fee.

The Stingray engine runs on Windows and will be available through an Autodesk subscription starting August 19 for $30 per month.