If you thought that Epic's famous Unreal Engine 3 couldn't get any better, you were wrong. Following a licensing agreement with Illuminate Labs, creators of rendering and lighting technology for next-generation games, Epic Games will be incorporating Illuminate Labs' global illumination system, Beast, into UE3. Illuminate Labs' tech will be immediately available to any publisher or developer that licenses UE3.

Basically, Illuminate's tech adds global illumination to development environments using the renowned Unreal Editor. For those who know their graphics engines, Beast is also a fully platform-independent baker that utilizes the open-standard FBX file format, which allows users to easily add extremely complex baking functionality to 3D asset creation tools. Some of the new features include global illumination baking, skylights from HDR images and baked soft shadows with transparency. Naturally, any future additions that Illuminate Labs can come up with, will be incorporated into UE3 per partnership.

"We are very proud to be part of Epic's Integrated Partners Program," said Magnus Wennerholm, chief executive officer of Illuminate Labs. "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."

"We are very pleased to give our licensees access to one of the most advanced lighting technologies available through this partnership," said Dr. Michael Capps, president of Epic Games. "Integrating Beast into UE3 will help our licensees more easily create games utilizing best-of-breed global illumination techniques. We welcome Illuminate Labs into the partners program and look forward to empowering more developers through this relationship."

Developers utilizing the UE3 and Beast technology integration include Gearbox Software, creators of the celebrated Brothers in Arms franchise, an upcoming first-person shooter based on the Aliens motion picture and Borderlands, a game for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.