Light map export

Mel_Ebbles, that’s fine. Work by whatever philosophy that makes you comfortable. I view DB and 3dc and blitz3d as tools to be used. If I can use several tools to make my job easier then that’s fine, I really don’t like re-inventing the wheel for every project that I undertake. But that’s just what I’m comfortable with.

D_Akuma, Yep, that’s the idea. It can be super fast. Especially if you only update the textures of the objects that are visible to the camera.

Hmm… Can you send me the files so i can have a look at them? I’d be interested to see them.

later

Simon

Though that may happen in some cases, I’m almost certain that’s not the case here.

Reasons:
1. There are other textures amidst the lighting/shadows and DB doesn’t support multi-texturing.

2. There are no textures of light-maps anywhere in the file folders, but the other textures are there.

3. In order for these to be textures, they would require a lot of VRAM.

4. I took out the light map X file, and the game ran without the lighting/shadows.

5. I took out the textures. The lighting does not look like textures, it reacts like lighting even on unpainted surfaces.

Thanks for your input, but you must be wrong about them being textures in this case. I’m sure An X file alone hasn’t the neccessary info to tell DB how to render textures. I am at a loss as to how it tells it to do lighting either though, so I could be wrong.

What lightmapping does is it creates textures that basically andquot;fakeandquot; the light. They arent actually lights, but the give a good look to levels.

Simon

Hey there.
I noticed in the .x export for lighting it says N/A.
Now I thought that was because DX doesn’t export lighting at all.
But…
I got hold of a demo which seems to prove different. andnbsp;??? andnbsp;It’s for Cartography Shop (you need to either buy it or have Dark Basic to run the open source demo). I was intrigued to know how the light mapping worked and so I read the code, and found that the lightmaps ( lighting andamp; shadows) were contained in a seperate X file from the level, and loaded in as an object along side the X file level.
I wonder, will you ever be able to export lighting from 3DC? andnbsp;

D_Akuma,

LOL, I didn’t invent lightmaps. I wish I did though <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>

From what I understand, DBPro fully supports BSP levels, and some comments from the Cartography Shop developer also seem to imply that CShop may eventually be a fully-featured BSP level editor for DBPro.

So when they’re released, there may be a pretty good chance that these two bits of software will do the trick for making decent game levels and actually being able to do something with them other than watching your CPU’s knees hit the floor.

Personally, I’d rather do all the work in 3DC using its scriptability plus game code written to specifically take advantage of scripted 3DC output. But that’s a pretty daunting task, to say the least.

-Mel Ebbles

Whoaaa!!
You guys are good. I stand corrected. :
Bloody Hell, Mel… did you invent light maps? You’re knowledge is outstanding. andnbsp;:oops:

Thanks for informing me about this double level approach, I was at a loss as to how DB was capable of it.
Hopefully either 3DC or DBPro will have exportable light mapping features one day, as the alpha channel way you describe is over my head, and the double poly count way is a no no for my game, which has enough as it is. :-X
Ah well, keep dreaming…

Thanx all

Not really. <!– s:( –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_sad.gif" alt="" title="Sad" /><!– s:( –>
As stated above, you need to either buy it or have DB to run it.
You can however download files from the site at your leisure, if you simply wish to view the X files or textures. I think the one I downloaded was about 700k(ish)
[img:3pwgiv24]http&#58;//www&#46;darkbasic&#46;com/c&#46;php?f=cartographyshop1[/img:3pwgiv24]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.darkbasic.com/c.php?f=cartographyshop1">http://www.darkbasic.com/c.php?f=cartographyshop1</a>&lt;!– m –>

Yes,
DBPro supports BSP. In fact, an external .exe that comes with it transforms X files into BSP with the option of CSG compiling thrown in. Knowing this months ago, I designed many an X level in anticipation of this compiler, but I since found that light mapping [i:3lngu7h5][b:3lngu7h5]may[/b:3lngu7h5][/i:3lngu7h5] become available for it some point after release (which, knowing these guys is a bit vague for my liking ) and even if/when it does it may not be that great.
The option of CShop I don’t like: It’s another $39 and doesn’t import X files, so I’d have to start again. (NOT an option ]).
AT the moment my game is over a year at least to go on dev, so I’ll hang out and hope it becomes available in the free compiler before I want to release it. Should just be a case of recompiling the levels with lights I hope.

I guess if one isn’t prepared to pay ID huge fees for their editor, one has to make do. I’d love to see my levels with lighting right now though.

BTW: I know what you mean, 3DC’s lighting is a cinch to use and would be great to export.

Yep, the lights are textures… Take a look at the lightmap .x file and the level.bmp file. I think what it does is just blend the textures together so it looks like lighting.

Later

Simon

D_Akuma,

1. They ARE textures. That’s what Level.bmp is, as Simon pointed out. It’s a packed lightmap.

2. The DB demo is a crude hack. There are two levels, one textured with Level.bmp, and the other textured normally. Both are loaded at runtime, and the lightmap-textured level is simply, in DB parlance, andquot;ghostedandquot;.

In other words, twice the polygons of the normal level are displayed, with half of them acting as static lightmaps.

This appears to be the current approach for both DB and 3D RAD. Blitz 3d *apparently* can multitexture, but don’t quote me because I’ve never used it.

If Richard wanted to implement lightmaps quickly, the best approach at the moment is for him or someone else to write an ENT exporter and an OCT importer for use with the freeware Fluid Studios FSRad radiosity lightmapping utility. 3DC can blend two textures plus an alpha channel, so I’ve faked lightmapping in 3DC levels with limited success before.

Patching into FSRad would be pretty trivial, importing the OCT wouldn’t be too challenging, but getting the lightmaps out into an usable game geometry file would pretty much require exporting two copies of the object…one wearing the original textures, and the second wearing only the lightmaps.

It could be done, but I don’t see it happening unless someone with a compiler and spare time took a look into the FSRad source and wrote the ENT/OCT plugins.

-Mel Ebbles

D_Akuma,

Doh. Sorry it took so long to respond. I’ve been really busy, lol.

I agree that CShop isn’t an option. I have TOO many hours of work invested in perfectly good prefabs, textures, and other models to justify starting over in something as andquot;nicheandquot; and limited as CShop. andnbsp;

The $40 asking price isn’t exactly winning me over either since the author has a track record of abandoning projects seemingly at random. Granted, he *did* refund the purchase prices to everyone who bought the last CShop, but still.

At this point, I’m not parting with my money unless CShop happened to be completely finished, robust, and better than 3DC Pro for levels. I think it’ll be a cold day in Hell before anything of a similar nature to CShop will ever beat out 3DC for putting out well-textured, optimized, accurate, and most importantly of all…professional quality level geometry.

Lightmaps schmightmaps.

I’m working on a DarkBasic compatible level exporter for 3DC, at any rate. I used to have very accurate brute-force polygonal sliding collision routines in DB 1.09b that ran at a consistent 75FPS on my Pentium 200. (Yes, a Pentium 200.) I think the new collision routines I have in mind will work a lot better.

It’s also supposed to export the 3DC lighting as well. I hope it works as well as I think it should.

-Mel Ebbles

if it exports 3DC lighting… I’ll be your friend forever!
<!– s:D –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!– s:D –>

C shop was made with Blitz Basic.If you want to know more about how it works from the authors end go to Blitzes forums and do a seach for CSHOP.There was lots of talk on how he added both maps to one file,or one . X file I mean.It was a little above me.

You were right 1st time: two X files.

Thanx 4 the info.