Unreal Engine 3 Gets Illuminate Labs' Beast System

Rendering and lighting technology developer Illuminate Labs and Epic Games have announced a licensing agreement to incorporate its global illumination system, Beast, into Epic's Unreal Engine 3. Through the agreement, Illuminate Labs joins Epic's Integrated Partners Program, making its technology immediately available to any publishers or developers that license UE3. Beast enables the addition of global illumination to development environments using the Unreal Editor. It is also a platform-independent baker that utilizes the open-standard FBX file format, which allows users to add extremely baking functionality to 3D asset creation tools. Beast features new to the engine include global Illumination baking, skylights from HDR images, and baked soft shadows with transparency. As part of the partnership, future feature sets developed by Illuminate Labs will be incorporated into UE3. Illuminate Labs CEO Magnus Wennerholm said, "We are very proud to be part of Epic’s Integrated Partners Program. Visual quality and cost effectiveness in the production process are key issues to all games studios, and with this partnership UE3 customers will benefit from easy access to our advanced lighting technology.”