Illuminate Labs Announces Beast API, Tiered Pricing

Rendering and lighting tech maker Illuminate Labs has made available a general API for its Beast global lighting tool. At the same time, the company announced a new tiered pricing structure based on project size and number of platforms. Beast is a platform-independent pipeline product that allows developers to add global illumination and baking functionality to their internal tools. It integrates with development tech including Unreal Engine, Gamebryo and Evolution Engine, and the company says it can also integrate with in-house engines and has been used in titles like Gran Turismo, Tomb Raider: Underworld and Wet. "There has been a strong demand for Beast from smaller and midsized projects using a number of game engines," says CEO Magnus Wennerholm. "Now with the API in place, it makes sense to meet this need with a more differentiated pricing." The company's sales office will be speaking with developers on the new pricing options. Wennerholm explains that the Beast API is aimed at "significantly" improving ease of integration, hiding tasks like scene export, resource caching and setting up renderings for distribution. "This first release is focused on scene export and data caching to make it easy and fast to convert levels into a representation that Beast understands," he adds.