John Kabus: Available for freelance and consulting!

Good news!  I'm now available for both short and long-term freelance and consulting, this includes work spanning anywhere up to six months, possibly more (depending on the project).

As many of you know at the end of every product cycle I take on freelance and consulting work to help fellow businesses and developers with their projects. It also gives me the opportunity to step away from my normal routine, see the industry from different perspectives, meet and work with new people, and generally clear my head for the next round of technology development.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm the founder of Synapse Gaming and lead developer / architect on all of our products, including SunBurn. I've also done freelance work for Microsoft, Disney, British Airways, and others:

http://www.synapsegaming.com/external/personal/JohnKabus-Freelance.pdf

I'm open to any number of different projects and products, both in and out of the game industry.

For developers using SunBurn this is an excellent opportunity to work one-on-one with the product architect. And rest assured development continues on all your favorite SG products in the meantime.

Please contact me via email: jkabus@synapsegaming.com

-John Kabus


Edit: over the weekend I was asked some excellent questions about the types of projects I'd consider:

• Would you consider working on non-game products / projects?  Absolutely, part of stepping back and clearing my head involves a large chunk of work away from the game industry.
• Would you consider working on small indie game projects?  Absolutely, I've worked on a lot of smaller projects / products over the years and loved doing it.

And some that are SunBurn specific:

• Would you consider working on custom builds of SunBurn?  Absolutely, but please keep in mind these are not created by Synapse Gaming and cannot be supported / updated like official releases.
• Would you consider working on new official SunBurn features or platforms?  Absolutely, assuming the features or platforms make sense to maintain long-term (when we put stuff into SunBurn we maintain and grow it), being contracted by the community to develop specific features and platforms is an excellent idea.

We are very excited to announce SunBurn 1.3.2, the first full release of 1.3 is now live! As mentioned in previous blogs this release is absolutely massive, and easily the biggest SunBurn update ever.

It includes SunBurn's new engine-centric design, component system, new and more streamlined editor, terrain system, volume lights, 2D rendering, avatar rendering, and much, much more.

And like all SunBurn updates, it's completely free for SunBurn Engine developers!

Beyond Ambient Lighting

To avoid flat ambient lighting the initial SunBurn release introduced material-level ambient occlusion, which adds a significant amount of depth even to ambient lit scenes.

SunBurn's material-level ambient occlusion has the added benefit of being very lightweight and compatible with both forward and deferred rendering. In fact it's so lightweight the effect is always on, there's practically no performance benefit to turning it off.

For over a year this technique made a considerable impact on SunBurn games, demos, and visualizations. But this time around we wanted even more awesomeness. :)



Indirect Ambient Lighting

To further enhance SunBurn Engine's existing ambient lighting we've added another SunBurn unique feature: material-level indirect lighting. Once again the effect is very lightweight, always enabled in deferred rendering, and is absolutely stunning.

SunBurn's material-level indirect lighting adds considerable lighting depth, and at detail levels ambient occlusion cannot achieve. The depth is also controlled by the scene's ambient light object, making it easy to tune in-game for the best possible visuals.

Full 2D Rendering

Probably the most exciting new SunBurn Engine feature is full 2D rendering. This was certainly one of our favorite R&D projects over the past year, and one we couldn't wait to get started on (we started immediately after the initial SunBurn launch)!

This is not just a 2D renderer. It's full 2D support for all SunBurn features: lighting, shadows, materials, your existing custom effects, post processing, forward rendering, deferred rendering, the new component / manager system, scene interface, …, EVERYTHING. :)

SunBurn also supports rendering 2D scenes to texture for display in 3D scenes, and vice-versa.
This latest SunBurn Engine release includes two 2D starter kits, one for Windows and one for Xbox 360 – both featuring the cool 2D demo we've been showing off:



SunBurn's 2D rendering uses a very lightweight and familiar interface based largely on XNA's SpriteBatch. However SunBurn also supports submitting static sprites once and re-rendering them many times, making the interface much faster than SpriteBatch (which requires all sprites to be submitted / drawn every frame).

Terrain System

Even before its launch we considered including some type of terrain system in SunBurn, and in fact the Tiling Terrain example was one of our first SunBurn examples. Unfortunately many terrain systems are either very dynamic but cpu heavy, or very lightweight but static – neither of these options were acceptable in our opinion.

So instead of rushing a terrain system out, we spent the past year researching tech and (more importantly) getting a feel for how we and the SunBurn community ideally would want to use the system. Interestingly our initial assessment was fairly accurate – the ideal system should be lightweight on both the cpu and gpu, as well as highly dynamic (so imported or content pipeline generated meshes were out).



Based on this we developed a height map based terrain, with configurable tessellation and lod transition, blend mapping with several material layers, normal and specular mapping, and entirely gpu driven. The terrain also has a constant and very reasonable poly count regardless of the height map size or detail, which means the terrain can be tuned to a specific polygon budget.

And because the terrain height map is processed on the gpu, the terrain is entirely dynamic. Meaning you can write shaders to procedurally morph, edit, and erode the terrain, as well as the blend map.

New Editor

This release also includes the new SunBurn editor; the streamlined, cleaner, and better looking front-end we demoed at GameFest. While the new editor is feature-wise similar, the ui provides a larger 3D viewport, shows more controls on-screen, and allows stacking and organizing object browsers.

Probably the best new feature are real-time assets – textures are automatically updated in-game when they change on disk. This adds a whole new dimension to game workflow, you can edit textures in Photoshop, Gimp, ... and see the changes in SunBurn without toggling back and forth.

Originally we planned to release the new editor shortly after GameFest, however while working on it we had the opportunity develop an even better workflow. Now instead of being a separate application, the new editor is integrated into SunBurn – hitting F11 opens the editor without tabbing over to the Windows Start menu, and the editor hotkey is customizable. In addition we've added detailed tooltips throughout the editor.

More to Come!

And we're still not done talking about all of SunBurn 1.3's new features. Check out our latest dev blogs below for more information!

Countdown to SunBurn 1.3.2 (SunBurn's engine-centric design, component system, and new editor)
SunBurn 1.3.2: The New Editor (a look at the new editor from its lead developer)

-John Kabus

GameFest - Awesome SunBurn Demo!

This year for GameFest we put together an awesome demo showing the latest SunBurn Engine 1.3 features including; Xbox LIVE avatar integration, avatar lighting and shadows, and several upcoming unannounced features.

Check out the awesomeness, and see what SunBurn Engine 1.3 can do in your projects (requires flash 10):



Follow us at GameFest for more details!

SunBurn - Latest Updates, Examples, and More

Over the past couple of weeks we've released awesome new SunBurn updates, including performance enhancements, an updated instancing example, tutorials on ambient occlusion mapping, and sneak-peeks at some of the future examples we're working on.

Ambient Occlusion Mapping Tutorial

Our lead artist, Alex "Turbosmooth Operator", posted an excellent article on applying high quality ambient occlusion mapping to SunBurn scenes.

Alex’s technique uses tools available to all XNA developers (including XSI ModTool), and can be applied to most other tools and modeling applications, as well as used for light mapping and grunge mapping in SunBurn.

Alex also talked a little about future examples we're working on, and how SunBurn's material and shader support allows you to use a few very small textures to provide incredible amounts of scene detail.

SunBurn 1.2.4

Along with the usual features and updates, SunBurn 1.2.4 also includes enhancements that boost performance considerably in cpu limited scenes. These enhancements make a significant difference on the Xbox, where the cpu often limits rendering.

To see some real-world examples of how these enhancements improve performance, check out Ultrahead's SunBurn articles on “Do as I say, not as I do...”.

Instancing Example Update

We've also updated the SunBurn Instancing example. The example is now a complete instancing solution showing how to quickly and easily instance XNA models and custom objects.

And like all of SunBurn’s examples, it includes complete source code and assets, so you can modify and enhance the code to fit your project's needs.

And More

These updates join our ever-growing library of resources, which include full source code and assets to use in your projects.

Other resources include:

Reflection / Refraction Example - shows how to quickly and easily create reflection and refraction effects using SunBurn’s helper classes, and combine these effects with the built-in renderer.

Power Station Example – shows how we created the Power Station demo for GameFest 2008, as well as how to use custom materials, shaders, and rendering with SunBurn.

HDR Example – shows how to use SunBurn's built-in post-processing and high dynamic range (HDR) lighting and rendering.

Skinned Model Example – based on the original XNA Skinned Model example, shows how to use skinned models with SunBurn, and how to integrate SunBurn into custom content processors.

WinForms Example - based on the XNA WinForms Content Loader example, shows how to integrate SunBurn into WinForm applications with full support for lighting, shadows, HDR, and more.

And other great examples, as well as SunBurn Documentation, API docs, Community Created Resources, and more!

Check it out Now!

If you’re a SunBurn developer head over to the Downloads section and check out the latest updates and examples.

And if you’re not, what are you waiting for? Become a SunBurn developer today!

-John Kabus

SunBurn Joins Microsoft XNA Partner Program

It feels good to say it:

Synapse Gaming is proud to announce we are joining the Microsoft XNA Game Studio Partner Program, giving us the opportunity to work even more closely with the XNA Community.

Along with helping to support and grow the XNA Community, we are kick-starting the next level of XNA game development by offering special pricing on our SunBurn Engine to XNA Creator Club Premium members.

While we transitioned into the new role a few weeks ago, much of that time was spent settling in, and meeting new XNA team members, community members, and MVPs.

I’ve only recently had the opportunity to sit back and enjoy our hard work. Being recognized by such a large company and talented team is awesome.

What’s also awesome is seeing the amazing new SunBurn games under development. Indie Games are about to get a lot more interesting - and with access to self-publishing on Xbox, a lot more visible.


About the SunBurn Engine

The SunBurn Engine equips indie and professional game developers with the latest in lighting and rendering technology. As a natural extension of the XNA framework, SunBurn's architecture is clean, familiar, easy to use, and flexible.



Designed with both individual and team environments in mind, SunBurn offers a suite of in-game tools, flexible workflow, and support for all major modeling and asset creation applications.

With full support for both Windows and Xbox 360 - and the ability to run games on your retail Xbox 360 - SunBurn lets you build AAA quality console games without expensive dev-kits, licensing, and software.



Come join our creative, engaging and friendly development community!