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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Lightmap rendering for free: how?

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SamotH
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2003 20:41
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Is there any Free utility that creates lightmaps, so i can use them for my levels?
I don't want to use bsp.
thanks
My wizards are many, but their essence is mine. Forever there are in the hills in their stone homes of grief. Because I am the spirit of their existance. I am them. I am the black wizards
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haggisman
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2003 21:01
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Im currently making one, and it will be finished soon which i will give away for free including the source. I don't know of any programs that create them for free currently though...

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SamotH
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2003 21:08
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that's great news! When do you expect it to be released? I really can't wait to use it!

My wizards are many, but their essence is mine. Forever there are in the hills in their stone homes of grief. Because I am the spirit of their existance. I am them. I am the black wizards
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haggisman
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2003 22:11
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I have basically finished most of it, with only lightmap sharing to really finish off. But before the lightmaping can become useful i'm waiting for some functionality to appear in patch 5.

Heres a recent pic.



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SamotH
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2003 22:32
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Perfect! If you have a working version, i'd be glad to test it as it is. But, then, i could surely wait for the official release... [b])

My wizards are many, but their essence is mine. Forever there are in the hills in their stone homes of grief. Because I am the spirit of their existance. I am them. I am the black wizards
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Chenak
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2003 23:39
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Wow!!! haggisman that looks very cool can't wait for the release . did you use memblocks to do that or vertex/pixel shaders?

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haggisman
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Posted: 22nd Apr 2003 23:50
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I just used memblocks to access the triangle data and then later on change the UV mapping co-rds. The rest of the code is just the run of the mill spaghetti code...

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pugmartin
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Posted: 24th Apr 2003 00:47
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Class!! Thats just what ive been looking for! Very good. Cant wait to see more of this!

That picture actually is me you know...
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The Big Babou
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Posted: 24th Apr 2003 01:21
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looks great, really

for max4 there is luminaire lightmap, do a google on it
for max5 there is the render to texture option in the render menu
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SamotH
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Posted: 24th Apr 2003 06:06
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the only problem with luminaire is that it needs a per face uv mapping so that every face has its own lightmap. I can't find a way to do that in max.it would be nice if you could post an exact way to correctly export lightmaps with luminaire...

My wizards are many, but their essence is mine. Forever there are in the hills in their stone homes of grief. Because I am the spirit of their existance. I am them. I am the black wizards
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Kohai of UWDesign
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Posted: 24th Apr 2003 11:11
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I tested Luminaire a while ago, and i must say i didn't find it quite useable ... The setup of light is quite horrible.

So i point this out :
http://www.windssoft.com/index.htm

Look at the beta soft ( which has .3DS import/export ). The only thing is that, on export, each face is considered as a separate object. SO while repimporting it into Max, you have to 're-attach' them, and weld all vertices ...

But this soft is a pure pleasure ...

[Kohai]
[url]www.underwaredesign.com[/url] [url]www.kohaistyle.com[/url]
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SamotH
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Posted: 24th Apr 2003 14:30
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This is great!!! Many thanks Kohai!

haggisman: i'm still waiting for your prog too!

My wizards are many, but their essence is mine. Forever there are in the hills in their stone homes of grief. Because I am the spirit of their existance. I am them. I am the black wizards
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 24th Apr 2003 14:32
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personally i perfer the Quake2 VIS as it is pretty good quality, and easi to understand to develop your own Radiosity from
especially as it compacts all of the lightmaps into a single lightmap texture for a single direction (meaning you end up with 6 lightmaps per level)

you're only problem after that is howto show the lightmaps
because outside of BSP it isn't exactly a simple task ... but i'd recommend 4x4 Matrix for projection texturing.

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
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SamotH
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Posted: 24th Apr 2003 20:55
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when i import back to max, it tells me that the objects lack uv coordinates. Why?

My wizards are many, but their essence is mine. Forever there are in the hills in their stone homes of grief. Because I am the spirit of their existance. I am them. I am the black wizards
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haggisman
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Posted: 24th Apr 2003 23:18
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Does anyone happen to have a level/scene that i can test my lightmapper on? It of course would have to be .X for DBpro to accept it but it doesn't need to be textured.

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The Big Babou
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 13:42
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@ samoth

I don't know what you mean with a per face uv mapping. one map for every face of an object? but that would be wrong.

1st I make my object
2nd I texture it using chilliskinner and texporter, so that you have one texture for one object
3rd set up the lights
4th I use luminaire lightmap to render the shadows to the texture

sometimes it crashes sometimes it doesn't, sometimes you will get a black texture, sometimes everything works fine, so save before point 4
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 17:22
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Hey haggis i'll make something up in a few mins to test for you ... you just wanna see how complex the world can get before it choaks?

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
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SamotH
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 17:41
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BigBabou: chilliskinner doesn't work for me, can i use lithunwrap?
What mapping do you use? Do you use box mapping for every group?

My wizards are many, but their essence is mine. Forever there are in the hills in their stone homes of grief. Because I am the spirit of their existance. I am them. I am the black wizards
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haggisman
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 18:08
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Raven that would be great, thanks. I have only tested up to 1000 polys so far, and everything seemed to be fine. I would really just like to test it on lots of different situations to see if any problems arise...

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ZomBfied
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 19:44
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Isn't it 6 lightmaps per light per level?

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ZomBfied
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 19:46
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I still don't get it. You change the uv data for every triangle with memblocks? Man it looks like a nightmare. And by uv data you mean what like each face has it's own texture and you change that? So it's like a bajillion new textures are created?

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haggisman
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 19:47
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I just squish everything onto one lightmap

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haggisman
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 19:52
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I intend to write a tutorial/tech document to explain how all the code works, though its about 1200 lines (without a frontend) just now so it might take a while.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 20:05
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hey do i need to put in like objects for the lights or something?

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haggisman
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 20:18
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No, unless you want to.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 20:52
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lol ... oki well i won't make the scene too complex then

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 22:10
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oki i've finished a simple level - isn't anythng impressive, but should be good for testing the depth of your lightmapper
really just thrown together so is pretty bad

emailing in sec once i've setup the exporter right (not used it in Max5 yet)

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 22:25
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i need a real email address if you want this map haggis... your barrysworld one was sent right back

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
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haggisman
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 22:30
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did you send it too [email protected] ? For some reason i typed it in wrong in my profile.

Alternitavley just send it to [email protected]

thanks for all the help.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 25th Apr 2003 22:46
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sent

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ZomBfied
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Posted: 26th Apr 2003 00:50
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What format?

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ZomBfied
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Posted: 26th Apr 2003 00:51
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Oh... nevermind I see..

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SamotH
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I'd really like to know when this program is ready. What is the progress?

My wizards are many, but their essence is mine. Forever there are in the hills in their stone homes of grief. Because I am the spirit of their existance. I am them. I am the black wizards
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haggisman
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Posted: 30th Apr 2003 12:09
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Ravens model showed up a few flaws in the program. Mainly to do with the performance, the packing routine became tremendously slow and so did the intersect tests, thats what you get for using a 3000 poly model.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 30th Apr 2003 13:11
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well i made it simple enough not to kill your system, but complex enough to really test it hehee

Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
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APEXnow
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I recently posted a new thread in "3 Dimensional Chat" regarding a question to do with the BSP/PVS Compiler tool provided with DBPro + (Patch 4). It's all well and good if the question is answered but I was wondering if I should even be going down this road.

I've been reading posts here which seem to provide suggestions for map creation and light mapping using technical information obtained from sources I'm not aware of. For example, accessing vertex data using a memblock, where did you find out the structure of the data provided in the memblock? These technical issues are the kind of information I'm looking for which I could use for experimenting and using it for my own purposes. Technical issues like these are not documented in the DBPro help file or manual, for obvious reasons, but accessing this information would be benefitial, and it would also help me to understand the inner workings of DBPro a little more too.

Interesting topic though...

"Man who looses key to woman's appartment...... He get no nookie" - A wise chinese man.
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Soyuz
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Posted: 30th Apr 2003 14:09
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Haggisman, you might want to chat with Ydnar who resides at http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=8 or http://www.shaderlab.com/. He worked on a level compiler (BSP, VIS, LIGHT) for the Quake 3 Arena engine and is pretty good about helping people out if you post on that forum.

He's a demi-god when it comes to the technicalities of lightmapping - although I have no idea how Quake 3 lightmapping would compare technicaly to DB Pro lightmapping. Just thought this might be of use.

I doubt those web links above will work
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Soyuz
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hey they worked - wow first time!! Woohoo!
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The Big Babou
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Posted: 30th Apr 2003 14:42
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sorry samoth, i didn't see your question earlier. i don't know if lithunwrap works, i didn't use it before.

chilliskinner and texporter assign uv coords to the object, so that the model "knows" exactly the place, where each texturepart has to be mapped on to. thus no boxmapping.

whats the problem with chilliskinner?
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SamotH
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Posted: 30th Apr 2003 14:54
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if i do box mapping it happens that not every face has its unique uv coordinates. In that case i can't make correct lightmapping

My wizards are many, but their essence is mine. Forever there are in the hills in their stone homes of grief. Because I am the spirit of their existance. I am them. I am the black wizards
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The Big Babou
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Posted: 30th Apr 2003 15:20
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yeah right. does luminaire give you wrong shadows, no shadows, does it crash or what?
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haggisman
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Posted: 30th Apr 2003 18:29
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Accessing vertex data in memblocks is actually not that hard once you get your head around the format. Though i am completely useless at explaining them, i think Raven has a good understanding of object memblocks and FVF format that governs the access of them.

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APEXnow
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"Accessing vertex data in memblocks is actually not that hard once you get your head around the format. Though i am completely useless at explaining them, i think Raven has a good understanding of object memblocks and FVF format that governs the access of them."

Yeah, cheers for that . Accessing vertex data for objects, whether created elsewhere or in DBPro, it's nice to be able to access the vertices for normal calculations. Shame it doesn't work for BSP files though.

"Man who looses key to woman's appartment...... He get no nookie" - A wise chinese man.
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haggisman
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Posted: 30th Apr 2003 22:58
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program update:

I have started to add in some partioning of triangles, which with my own intersect object code should allow me to greatly increase both obscurance mapping and lightmapping mapping performances, especially with high poly counts.

Hopefully once i deal with some mapping issues with small triangles i might actually release a demo.

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Shadow Robert
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Posted: 30th Apr 2003 22:59
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if you need to ever have help about acceing the memoryblock for editing data specifically 3D wise then i can usually help out.
my fvf.inc.dba thats floating around is pretty comprehensive for the FVF that darkbasic professional currently uses - and i've got little snippets here and there of the maths behind the actual 3D Commands, which can help development along.

as for SamotH's problem, your problem isn't with ChilliSkinner ... once you've created your UVMaps properly for the entire level, before you do anything else - save the level and then select ALL of the vertex and click Break from the edit geometry rollout - now you'll have all the individual Vertex per face
you can then reweld once you've run Luminaire, but else it can't find the sections properly.

most people don't realise that for MD3 exporting (specifically when gmax first arrived) that you can't have multiple vertex using seperate UVpoints for thier index - and wondered why no UV data was ever exported... they believed there was a bug in the exporter but the fact of the matter was they were UVmapping it wrong becuase each UVmap section had to be broken from the model and made a seperate mesh as it were

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pugmartin
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Hi there. Been following this post for a while now and have to say it sounds like its coming along nicely. What im even more interested in though, is whether you definately will bless us with a tut/explanation as you mentioned. That would be very helpful. Other than that, keep up the good work!

10 Rem Code goes here
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Puffy
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haggis could you email me... O_O when you finish... o_O I'm not on the forums much...

AMD Athlon XP 2100+ OC to 3Ghz/1.5gigs ram/128mb ti4200/120gigs hd/19" monitor/Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum EX/3072kbs Sat Con... I joined in!
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