Here's a few notes that may help if you've just started using Gile[s]. Most of the features are well documented in the Help file so these notes are just things I've come across whilst using Gile[s] that may help.
I hope any other 3DC/Gile[s] users will add their own hints and tips as I feel this is the best way forward in learning how to get the best from Gile[s].

As Alex says in his signature, “just keep easy things easy and share the knowledge”


A BRIEF REVIEW

As I understand it Gile(s) is a texture based lightmapper rather than geometry based . I stand corrected if I'm wrong. I didn't quite grasp the importance of this at first but as an example, when I rebuilt Pauls' 527 loco I wanted to import the body into Gile(s) as a single mesh. Unless you need the scene hierarchy things are much less cluttered this way.

This is were the importance of the texture based system comes in. One of the options in the material palette is to have the TEXTURE not the OBJECT flat shaded. This meant I was able to produce a skin with all the flat areas, tank sides, cab etc. and select flat shaded for this texture. For the boiler, smokebox, chimney and dome textures I left the flat shaded option unchecked.
The result, all the flat parts of the loco are flat shaded leaving the boiler,smokebox, chimney and dome smooth shaded, but all on the one mesh. The more you think about this the more you realise how important a feature this is.

Two important points.

Firstly, if you build your models to scale, when loaded into Gile(s) they will appear quite small. If you scale up X,Y,Z by 4 you will find it easier to move around the scene and the lighmaps produced seem to be of better quality. It's something to do with the ray bias, which you can adjust if requiered.

OR

You can set the viewport prefs in Gile[s] as follows :-

If you set the following:

Near Clip Plane = 0.1
Far Clip Plane = 1000.0
Grid Size = 1.0
Movement Speed = 0.1

If you do this you shouldn't need to resize your scene.

If you use the Lightmap Wizard you should set '1 meter = 1 unit' under the lightmap preferences.

Second and also VERY important, conserving lightmap space.
Everything you apply a texture to in 3DC and then assign to a lightmap in Gile(s) will take up lightmap space, obviously. However what isn't quite so obvious is that if you applied the texture using the Fill tool in 3DC all UNSEEN faces will also carry the texture and take up valuable lightmap space.
For this reason I use a small texture (32 x 32) called 'No Light', I apply this to all NONE VISIBLE faces in 3DC.
When loaded into Gile[s], I move this 'No Light' texture to the No Light section in the lightmap window and turn off Fullbright in material window.
This ensures that only textures visible to the camera take up lightmap space.

As an example, I've just rendered a large factory scene which took 30 mins to render. As soon as the render was complete I knew something was wrong. I'd forgotten to apply my 'No Light' texture to the underside of the buildings which had grabbed nearly 50% of the lightmap space!!

Bazza

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bazza,

LIGHTMAPS

If you open the light methods window, select the name of the lighmap you want, you can change it's size. Default is 256 x 256. This will give you better results but increases the rendering times. My loco shed scene now has 5 lightmaps, the smallest 512 x 512, the larges 1024 x 1024. It now takes 50 mins. to render the scene but when you consider the poly count is up to 52,000 with over 60 textures, 50 mins. isn't to bad.

If you find, after a render that the shadows are a bit vague, offset or out of alignment this is usually a good sign that you are trying to cram to much onto the lightmap. You can either increase the size or use 2 lightmaps and divide your textures between the two.
You can of course use as many lightmaps as your system will take.
Remember that a 1024 x 1024 lightmap takes up Three times as much memory as does a 512 x 512, so its quite often better to use two maps at 512 than one map at 1024.

I find that 512 x 512 is a good all-round starting size and will usually not need to be increased for smaller models.

If you start to get unsightly blotches of shadow, I've found this is usually a normals problem which can be corrected by using the Recalculate Normals feature in the Tools menu.

You can use the paint feature in Gile[s] to paint to your lightmap. This can be a bit slow if your system specs are a bit on the low side or the model is really large. ( large in polys not in size)
Trial and error is the key here. I find it's handy for adding grime, darkening the bricks at the base of a building.
I also find it invaluable for lightening and darkening large brick areas. When you produce your brick texture you can make all the bricks more or less the same and then lighten and darken odd bricks in Gile[s]. This gets rid of the repetitive pattern effect and looks quite nice.
A word of caution though, if you need to re- render the scene for any reason you would loose all you painting work so make sure the render is how you want it before you start.

If you haven't used any coloured lights you can load the lightmap into a paint program and change it to greyscale. ( I hope Fredborg doesn't read this, he'll ban me from the Gile[s] forums! ). This saves you about two thirds of the memory normally used in a 512 x 512 size map.

Whilst you have the map in your paint program try other effects and see what you can come up with. Adding a small amount of noise will give the model a slightly grubby effect. Depending on the subject you could add a colour to different parts of the map. The possibilities are endless.

Blurring the lightmap will give you softer shadows and helps gets rid of any jaggies. You need the light methods window, select your lighmap then select BLUR LIGHTMAP

Bazza

TEXTURES

Selecting a texture by its name in the layers part of the material panel takes you to the Texture Window, where you can set various flags for your textures. These are the same flags as used by Blitz3D.
The combinations seem endless as you don't have to use just the one setting, you can mix and match!!

Colour = default setting. WYSIWYG

Colour + Alpha This will switch on any translucency setting you applied to the texture in 3DC.
You can also use this setting for any .tga type textures that you have applied an alpha
channel to. See through windows etc. I prefer to use the .png format for this as you
also get the file compression.

Colour + masked All black areas of the texture are transparent. You don't need to use a format with an
alpha channel for this to work.

Colour + mipmapped Blurs the texture with distance and gets rid of any texture shimmering.

As I say the combinations are endless but the above will give you some idea of the effects you can get.
Sometimes you need to move the texture to Vertex Lighting for the settings to take effect. Trial and error!!

It's also worth downloading the Transparency FX scene from the Gile[s] download page which gives even more combinations and a visual as well.

Here's my example from one of my factory walls.
The pic on the left is the texture as loaded into Gile[s] with just the colour flag selected.
The one on the right is the same texture with colour + alpha flags set. I've also used the paint feature on the brickwork ( not very well ) to lighten and darken some of the bricks.
This is a WIP shot, I mention this just incase eagle-eyed Alan spots a brick thats not quite right.

In the layers part of the material panel you can apply more than one texture but for some reason you need to leave an empty layer between textures to get the effect you want. Also the Default lightmap layer must be last.
The easiest way to explain this is to use Fredborgs example:-

0: Spherical reflection
1: None
2: Alpha masked rust
3: None
4: None
5: None
6: None
7: Reserved for lightmap

You will get shiny/rusty metal with lightmapping...How sweet is that

You can change the default layer for the lightmap in the prefs but must re-start Gile[s] for it to take effect.
Just thought, is their such a thing as shiny, rusty metal.

Bazza

Flags.jpg (58 Kb, 168 downloads)

LIGHTING

This is documented well in the help file.
Adjusting the Radius of the light effects its softness/harshness
Try the Toon shading, even if your not into cartoons. You will be when you see what this can do.
If you get a lighting set-up you like remember to use the Save Lights option in the File menu. You can re-use them in another scene using Merge Lights.

RENDERING

I usually have the following render settings checked :-

Clear before rendering
Enable Direct Illumination
Enable Global Illumination
Enable Shadows

All other settings are left as default.

When I'm happy with the way things look I check the Enable Soft Shadows box and do the final render.
When you Enable Soft Shadows it can increase rendering times quite a lot so leave this till last.
If you were doing a space scene then don't use Enable Soft Shadows, you need a harsh light.

If your doing an outdoor scene you can enable the Global Illumination Sky Light. I usually leave this at its default setting. Again trial and error may produce the effect your looking for.

I think some kind of skydome generator is due to be included in a future update.

Trying to achieve natural daylight is, I find, difficult. My shadows always appear to deep or to light but I will get there in the end.

Bazza

Here's one of Fredborgs screenshots demonstrating the Toon shading.

Bazza

ToonShading.jpg (47 Kb, 236 downloads)

Here's a correction to one of my tips. You don't have to re-scale x,y,z by 4.

You can set the viewport prefs in Gile[s] as follows :-

If you set the following:

Near Clip Plane = 0.1
Far Clip Plane = 1000.0
Grid Size = 1.0
Movement Speed = 0.1

You shouldn't need to resize your scene.

If you use the Lightmap Wizard you should set '1 meter = 1 unit' under the lightmap preferences.

Thanks to Fredborg for pointing this out.

Bazza