"Thanks for the info on getting better previews in Blender, Vermeer. I'll look into it later. "
Indeed, I forgot to emphasize that those are used with omni (point lights...actually in Blender called Lamp, in Max called
Omni) I was a bit tired yesterday and I wrote with not much sense. So, in a step by step (hope to not forget any) :
-add a light, "lamp" type, which is the one you want.
-click on shading(F5) button.In main toolbar. Appear new icons at the right, then in the light bulb icon, that is , light
settings.There you could even change light type, but leave it as lamp.You can transform an existing light type to another
type. Great advantage over other packages.
-set in these light settings area, "RaySHad" button pressed (it gets dark green instead of grey)
-You have values like energy, that gives power of light.
-quad and sphere can be activated here. As well as then u can play with quad settings. All this stuff unless I am wrong, is
to play with attenuation (also present in Wings3d) so that u play with the distance when light disminished and how is the
progression.U can leave it off, it just will look nicer and more real, is up to you for the preview, as wont be ported to
FSRAD. Though, some of the stuff is needed to be switched on as if not, some basic rendering can't be done, as we'll see.
I have checked, though, that with basic needed feature (and idea of general lighting depending on power, nº of lights,
light color and position, proyected shadows, all these values can be translated somehow to fsrad, just never will look
equal, but a raw idea ) is balzing quick in render. The basic scanline render of Blender is pretty fast, if not too much extra
settings are trigered. Ok, that's it for light settings, no need to make it more complex
-Now material settings. You do need to do this with every material you want shadows in, usually , any material in scene,
of course. (perhaps except a neon light emitting material) Right click on the level object to select it and configure his
material. Ok, again F5, the shading buttton. That is , the shaded spher icon between scripts icon and object (the 3 arrows)
icon. Or hit F5. But now, in the new icons that will appear, hit on the other shaded sphere icon, not in the light bulb. Just
at the right of light bulb. You can add a texture inside a material (if i am not wrong you can also link a material with ctl+l
, but not sure now) . But to the point : in standard material settings (not in texture) set :
* Traceable, shadow,trashadow ON. Buttons pressed, I mean.(shadows, if u want shadows
; trashadows, so to allow
subtle transparent shadows, traceable, so material would cast shadows or detect ray traced shadows. Set the 3 on.)
* OK, for now u have all you need. But so to get it more useful, some more settings : standard specularity and reflection
values maybe to high, and the material would have burning white areas for this. Set spec to zero, or much lower, and if u
disminish reflection also (less recommended) , u'll need to increase light power.
* Beware, standard perspective-camera view maybe too fish eye. While u can change the FOV of viewport view, I tend to
find easier to manage stuff in ortographic "user" view, (tap 5 in numeric pad to toggle).
Also, a great tip. U can align your existing camera to any angle you are viewing now in viewport just hitting ctrl+alt+0
(numeric pad also only, I think, in this case)
* Light wont go through the level walls, if light is outside the building.
* U can have "backface culling" view (that is, if u look at the level from outside, from th back side of the wall, from
outside I mean, you will then see all interiors: faces poiting opposite to u are not rendered in viewport (but they will in
render, and will occlude cameras and lights, of course) QUITE cnvenient for level editing, don't forget. ) ONLY if you
texture the model. Dunno if it forces it to be an UV texture (that is, loaded in UV Blender window) , or enough if it is just
in texture slot. Just i don things automatically, only remember at the moment of doing
* The rotation system of the world, imho is not as good as Wings3d's. U need to think on how u click on space, better said,
where. As what ur doing actually is like move a table, like if u had the level on a wood table that ur moving and rotating:
if u click and drag with middle mouse in riht are, u "lift" the table, rotating, by that side. I got more or less the hang of it.
But like allways, find more comfortable Wings. yet though, I yet keep thinking Blender is better thanks to the load of
settings in materials and lights, and the render function (the ogl render preview in wings is good but not for this purpose)
* you can add ambient occlussion (world(blue) button), full osa (material settings), OSA rendering (value 5 is fastest, I
think) , but then again, this all can defeat the purpose of a quick render preview, as all what is wished is an overall
ambience look, and shapes of projected shadows . I don't think is possible to translate much more to Fsrad, and even so,
it'll look quite different , but the main intention will serve :we want a weak light, near to ground, red color, projecting
long shadows. All that can be previewed in Blender. It'll look different, but will serve for the purpose of the general
purpose for teh game, which is the important matter. of course, with the use, people will become more and more used,
and will learn how to setup the Blender scene to make it more accurate to fsrad later output, so to "imagine better".I
guess the way to go would be after this use, save the standard lighting and write down(or just remember) main material
settings (u can reuse perfectly the lights, world/ambient values, etc.Even materials. ).So this scene would be reused for
every level
Ideally would be that way, but this all is not really necesary.
* if in material settings, you increase the emit light setting, u'll have a quick way to illuminate the scene. Of course, is not
accurate, but how fast in render
(instead of adding more lights
) It also makes shadows look more realistic
If something does not work for you, then is just I have forgoteen something. Say so if is the case.
"Yeah, you have those other light types, BUT... FSRad and OCT only have support for point lights. Smile Direct support, "
ok, all those pics are done with point lights. Maybe putting a point light *really* far,(with very small attenuation, and a lot
of power) has a similar effect, in case it does not offer calculation problems to fsrad.beware light attenuation then in
fsrad.
"anyway. Well, to be really technical about it (I'm not sure I've mentioned this before), FSRad only has support for light
emitting polygons,"
I'd bet for just OMNI (lamp, point lights, whichever the names) with he raytracing shadow explained settings.
" like the ones in ENT files. Point lights loaded from OCT/ASE/whatever are done by creating two infinitely small light
emitting triangles, I think."
I see...
"The problem with using Blender's sun light type is that I don't think it easily maps to any concept supported by FSRad. For one thing, it's of the same strength everywhere, regardless of distance. Secondly, it's not positional."
You mean in Blender, or in fsrad? In blender, maybe sun is. But omni accepts a basic distance disminishing, and also make quadratic attenuattion, if you wish. (like seen in screens)
Not positional? Sun in blender can have it's position and direction changed...that is,is a directional light, like area, spot, hemi. Only Lamp has not got a direction (point light)
"The "native" method of FSRad is light emitting surfaces, since that's really how radiosity renderers work. I think I was on "
maybe it is just about convert somewhat basicly a blender point light inwhat is position, color and intensity into fsrad. I don't think much more accurateness is possible... (the basic effects (proyected shadows, general amnience/color)could be previewed so with a quick render in blender. Enough to go, surely. ) If later on is possible to have also access to porting the per-distance lighting dismishing the blender offers in its light properties, great. But imho for a basic preview, is not that essential. BTW, if you want to play with that setting in Blender, in the lamp settings, besides La:Lamp , you have a Dist:20 (for example) value. at that distance value, intensity is divided by half.("sphere" will set light to zero after surpassing the distance value) .Quad attenuation is just better attenuation, and has two settings. Dunno much about them, I have them also at Wings3d.
"a decent track earlier... export ENT from Blender. Have the exporter notice a special texture image or material name (i.e.
LIGHT_whatever) and know that it's supposed to emit light. Use the R, G and B of the material for the color, and -- I didn't
think of this before -- use the transparency setting for intensity. The only real question is how to remove this object from
the actual geometry after the lightmaps are generated. Kind of hacky, but if implemented it'd at least let you do suns and
fluorescent/neon lights and stuff decently."
You mean then using a standard coloured or textured polygon in blender to be use for extra lighting like small light bulbs, etc...? maybe, but...that has not actual preview of lighting in Blender.
Imho best way sounds could be traslating an omni to whatever.
the ant format fromTrancos was adding support to UVs, and his fsrad modified tool (the one I have been using) supposedly supports the UV thing. As seems there was plainly no support, so Trancos add it to the format (geenrated an improved one: ant from ent) , also made command line tool to support it, and I think he also modified fsrad to support it..but don't not sure about it now.
Hmmm...perhaps then a blender script or plugin, to export the scene to ANT format, as this is directly opened by FS Rad modified by Lord Trancos. As FSRAD generates its own UVs, we stil need a geometry export out of it... so, grab the output OCT from Tranco's fsrad....maybe you may wish to get into Fsrad modified code, and start from that, as UV support is already there, to "simply" add the possibility of render also at higher lightmap resolution, not just 128x128.
Lastly the OCT2OBJs would be my preference, so it'd output both OBJs, lightmap and texture one, so to load in an standard way with OBJ2MIM already done. I prefer that as if there's some error, or detail to be added, and OBJ and a tga is so universal...you can open everywhere and fix it. Anyway, if you prefer it for being easier, a direct OCT2MIM, as you prefer, but if is equally hard, I'd vote for OCT2OBJs(+2 tgas, of course), for reason given...
I think all Trancos code is in the site to download, as he was using an already open source aplication and modifying it. I guess you can grab that code and adapt it for what is yet pending
I think it's quite good already if he blender->ant can be done directly, if UVs are preserved (now I guessed)...wait...Fsrad does make ahuge subdivision...does the oct ouput is exactly the same? is it uber high res? would not be usable...? If the mesh being exported is low res, even if it has chaanged (once changed we can't afford to make the import UVs trick in Lithunwrap tool ) , there's still hope. If you do a final code to convert OCT2OBJs, and the oct is not high res, then the only thing to notice is that...the uv maps for UV channel1 would have to be done now, and not before. Is not very usual to do the lightmap before it has been textured, but at least is a way. So the artist would do the channel1 UVs and texture it AFTER lightmapped. If the path choosen was OCT2OBJs, then no issue for him.While being same geometry, is two independent files; he does not need an special comercial tool to work with 2 uv channels, but only one. He will pick the OBJ nº 1, and he will uv map it, asign his textures, export the OBJ+mtl. ready to go together with the other OBJ (same mesh) + the tga bitmap (fsrad bitmap lightmap)+ mtl. And load into Irrlicht with OBJ2MIM
I see the path quite flexible: Blender preview, export to Fsrad. Do the lightmaps in FSRAD, export, use OCT2OBJs. Then uvmap+texture the "texure OBJ" (channel1 in MIM) as he wish. With the UVs he/she prefers to make, are independent of the other OBJ. Then now is more a matter of the coder part, he'll use your existing OBJ2MIM, and they're done.
"Work and thought for another day.
quote: I made so to avoid to opaque shadows, as I am not gonna fake a radiosity solution inside Blender when I only
wannit for a quick previewer. that is, knowing or thinking a bit on how real life happens , it must give an aproximate
thing to fsrad later on, and in the worse case, serves for giving the shadows projections of sun ,or omni lights. Even teh
egeneral ambience if using those lights u use a low or powerful intensity or that or this colored lighting. Of course, is an
aproximation, but hey, I think is enough.
I think it's enough too. It's far more than you get with Radiant, and people used that for ages. As you say, just being able "
Absolutely.
"to get a general idea of the shadow projections and colored lighting... I think that'll be invaluable. I know that I
sometimes end up with dark spots in maps and have to go back and light them. It'd be nice to see it as I go because
maybe I'm mis-imaginging the lighting."
Actually, Blender would give you quite a good "planned lighting" thing, better than in most editors.
And fsrad lightmaps are definitely of more quality.
(and GILES being used with obj2mim, a dream come true
)
"On a sidenote, my new website is starting to be up, so I'll fix the screenshots in this thread soon, and I'll have the proper
place to put up the files.
www.constantthought.com"
Checked it.Nice design
And curious name
