I am looking into getting Sunburn to give my game (Cyborg Mice Arena) better visuals.  Currently all the 3D assets in the game are .x files.

Using Sunburn, will I be able to add normal, specular, etc maps to my models?  What are the general steps to achieve that?

You can :) The process of getting a normal/specular onto your model is very simple. Sunburn has an editor that can be used to drag&drop texture files into the material that is used by your model.

I'll try to sketch it using words :)

If you import your model, it will have a material attached to it (if this was exported with the model) this material can be used inside the editor to add diffuse, normal, specular maps etc. to the material updating your model right infront of you with the new maps. It's very cool to tweak your materials and instantly see the result in the actual game.

I hope this clears things out for you.

SunBurn comes with an accompanying editor that allows you to manipulate lights and materials in real time, in your own game. This gives you the benefit of seeing the scene exactly as it would appear in your final product. While its not really possible to explain how it works with a description, a video should do the trick.

The following link shows the transformation of a BasicEffect scene into a scene utilizing SunBurn materials in no time.

XNA Materials with SunBurn via YouTube

Thanks for the answers and the video.

Is there a way to achieve the same results with code?  Like load a model and apply the materials, or does it all have to be done with the editor?

I assume you can save your final model in some Sunburn format and then load it in the game at runtime.  I just want to make sure I will be able to gradually upgrade my assets without breaking the current system.

Thanks.

Hi bioroid,

Absolutely - most of SunBurn's features are accessible both from the editor and in-code.  The SunBurn examples and starter kits show both techniques to help familiarize you them and allow you to choose which is best for your projects.

SunBurn uses the XNA Model format (or your custom objects passed to SunBurn as vertex and index buffers), so you can load existing models right into SunBurn as if you were using standard XNA (loading them from the content pipeline in the same way).

Often the only necessary change is to use the SunBurn content processor, but even here the SunBurn API allows to you to easily derive your own processors from SunBurn's or continue to use BasicEffect if you'd prefer (SunBurn applies automatic shadowing to BasicEffect and your custom effects).

Let me know if this helps!

sgDarkSquirrel,

Yeah that sounds perfect.

Thanks!

Custom Direct3D FX Shaders - this feature is not available for Indies.

Anyone knows, will I be able to use Animations Components with Indie license with SunBurn?
Because I'll need to write my cutsom shaders for it.

Hi RyuMaster,

SunBurn's built-in materials support standard DirectX / XNA skinning, which is compatible with both the XNA Skinning sample and 3rd party libraries like XNAnimation.  Regular animations, like moving objects around via world transform are also supported.

In most instances you do not need to create custom shader to animate objects in SunBurn.

Let me know if this helps!