after experimenting a little bit with the most popular and recent lightmapping possibilities that exist for Irrlicht, I decided to post screenshots on the results with each format as well as a small comparative chart that summarizes some basic points. This as a reference point to help the community
I started out with a level created and lightmapped in Cartography shop and loaded it into Irrlicht using Mohaps' Mtrix extension csm loader:
http://www.danielpatton.com/afecelis/co ... estcsm.jpg
It's a basic level with 3 textures and radical colored lights to exaggerate the lightmapping effect. From cshop, I exported to .X to use deled's X importer and re-texture and place lights there, and also exported to Giles (from Cshop) for a third point of reference.
Deled result:
http://www.danielpatton.com/afecelis/co ... tdeled.jpg
as you can see, since the .X map exported from cshop doesn't include the original lights; they must be placed in deled's own pointlight format. So to achieve the same level of lightmapping involves a lot of experimenting with deled's lights.
Giles result:
http://www.danielpatton.com/afecelis/co ... tgiles.jpg
the gls file exported from Cshop does include the lights, but once in giles you notice that their values have gone crazy, so tweaking the lights is also necessary. At least the lights are placed where they're supposed to. To get the giles file into Irrlicht I used Zdimitors dll exporter to My3d format.
From Giles I exported to 3ds and used Lordtrancos PulsarLmtools to generate the lightmaps and Jox's loader for Irrlicht:
http://www.danielpatton.com/afecelis/co ... stlmts.jpg
more deep testing to do on lights here , ehehehe
And finally I imported the 3ds file into 3dsmax and re-placed the lights, rendered-to-texture and then exported to My3d format:
http://www.danielpatton.com/afecelis/co ... stmy3d.jpg
so here's a brief summary:
so you guys can make your own conclusions.
Final remarks:
1. Lighting is critic for good lightmapping results, so learn and study the tool of your choice in depth. Once you find a good formula that gives you great working results, stick to it. It's easy to tell by just looking at the pictures that I didn't tweak much in each format to try to get a similar result as the reference image (csm).
2. It's also important to remark that Irrlicht counts now with many supported formats for your levels; and also that you can translate between them easily without loosing any of the texturing or meshes info
3. I was also going to include a comparative with the map as bsp and lightmapped with Q3 tools, but I decided to use some of the free options available.
4. This chart wasn't made to say if a certain lightmapping format is better than the other. You can get excellent results with each and all of them if you follow my recommendation above.
5. Too bad I couldn't try any of Murphy's stuff. It would've helped a lot, so perhaps for next chart? The only one I had available was a blender level loaded into Irrlicht using OctTools, but I couldn't get lightmaps to work.
6. I want to thank Mohaps, Ilbuzzo, Jox and Zdimitor for their help and close interest to follow and answer each and every of my questions and emails. You guys are really patient!!! thnx thnx thnx!!
hope it helps!!!
if youd help her thatd be awsome just tell exodieous i dint mean to bark at him but he was the 10th peson to discourage me that day sorrry 
