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.
