SunBurn Sneak-Peek (Part 1)

As we near the launch of SunBurn, our latest generation of lighting and rendering products, I think it's time for a sneak-peek into some of SunBurn's features, tools, and design.


What is SunBurn?

SunBurn is our (Synapse Gaming's) latest lineup of lighting and rendering products – and follows our very successful Torque Lighting Kit, which now ships with nearly the entire family of Torque game engines and tools.

Several years of architectural design went into SunBurn, aimed at creating a lighting and rendering system easy to integrate into existing games and engines, and customize, while just as easy to use out of the box. The goal: make SunBurn accessible to the widest range of developers and artists regardless of their project's design, technology, and/or complexity.

Screenshot from SunBurn Power Station Demo

Similarly, a lot of energy went into the design and functionality of SunBurn's editor suite. It allows real-time in-game editing of scene lighting and materials, including user-defined custom materials and shaders, and performance/diagnostic tools.

SunBurn is initially launching with support for Microsoft's XNA Game Studio on both PC and Xbox 360, with other platforms planned to follow.


What type of projects are using SunBurn?

Since its launch last February, the SunBurn beta generated a ton of interest from a wide variety of people working on some really cool projects. In order to keep the beta manageable, unfortunately, we could only accept a small percentage of those interested.

The people we did bring into the beta are working on some amazing projects including games, simulations, visualizations, applications, and an awesome Imagine Cup entry by student development team "Elemental" which placed in the top 20! Not bad for software that's in beta. :)

Screenshot from IceDome Imagine Cup entry by team Elemental

SunBurn allows them (and you!) to build commercial and non-commercial products for both PC and Xbox 360, including self-publishing commercial games through Xbox Live Community Games.


What features does SunBurn offer?

SunBurn provides 100% dynamic lighting and soft-shadows, a powerful material system, built-in rendering system, and a flexible framework for adding, modifying, replacing, and integrating SunBurn features, objects, and systems.

Screenshot from SunBurn Abandoned Town Demo

SunBurn's material system offers top effects like parallax, bump, specular, fresnel, and glow mapping, and many more out-of-the-box, as well as support for user-defined custom materials and shaders.

SunBurn's editor suite allows real-time in-game editing of scene lighting, shadows, and materials, including editing user-defined custom materials and shaders, and performance/diagnostic tools.

Screenshot from SunBurn Power Station Demo

SunBurn also ships with several Starter Kits including the Abandoned Town demo, Power Station demo, skinning/animation demo, and a full Day/Night demo with 100% dynamic lighting and shadows.


Wrap-up

We'll continue to release more information and dive into greater detail in the coming weeks, so keep an eye out for upcoming blogs. If you have any questions or would like to know specific details just ask and I'll try to answer them here or provide details in future blogs.

"SunBurn" Beta and Write-up on Ziggyware

SunBurn Lighting System and Beta

This weekend we announced our latest lighting and material engine, codenamed "SunBurn", for Microsoft's XNA Game Studio. SunBurn provides XNA developers with highly flexible unified dynamic lighting, shadowing, and material systems.


SunBurn is the culmination of years of architectural design aimed at creating lighting and material systems that are as easy to integrate into existing games and engines, and to customize, as they are to use out of the box. Based on the feedback we've received and the work already being done with SunBurn, it looks like we definitely achieved that goal.

SunBurn is entering private beta and we are looking for people working with XNA to put the system through its paces. If you are interested in beta testing SunBurn, contact us (beta.sunburn@synapsegaming.com) with some information about you, your team, and the XNA project(s) you are working on.


Review on Ziggyware

Michael Morton posted an awesome review of SunBurn over at Ziggyware.com. He covers some of SunBurn's features, its flexibility and easy to use architecture, and his experiences beta testing it.

For anyone not familiar with Ziggyware, it's one of the top XNA resource and news sites, and Michael is the owner/operator, so it's one hell of a cool write up – thanks Michael!


More SunBurn Info

How easy is it to use out of the box? SunBurn has a built-in rendering system and array of starter kits and examples that get most projects up and running without touching a line of code.


SunBurn is completely modular, so you can create your own rendering, lighting, and/or shadowing systems using SunBurn's (or your own) lights, shadows, effects, and helper objects (the same objects used internally by SunBurn).

Couple it with an existing rendering and lighting system using SunBurn's lights, shadows, and/or effects to enhance your existing game or engine.

Or any combination in-between... SunBurn provides the flexibility to use the pieces you need, and modify or replace the pieces you want to customize or already have.