Previewing Level Lightning inside 3d modelers

Post topics regarding Level Building/Design and Entity Usage with Reality Factory
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Veleran
Posts: 903
Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2005 10:22 am
Location: Greece

Previewing Level Lightning inside 3d modelers

Post by Veleran »

It is easier to preview what the level looks like with lights and shadows in a modeler (in autodesc Max -for instance,you can hit "Quick Render" to see what the scene looks like in the perspective viewport),provided you can get to a .map exporter.

Because each time you move around a light in the editor you have to compile again and wait a while to see if the light casts nice shadows on the bsp geometry-if not,you go back to the editor,move the light again and preview once more over and over.

Newer modelers have hardware driver display support,which can show the shadows in the viewports without having to render the scene-at a performance cost.

If you have already placed approximately the lights to the right position in the modeler,all is left to be done inside the editor is to set the lights radius,color etc-anyway it saves much time to place geometry with lights in a modeler.
What you cant export as convex is tubes,arches,but you can build these in the editor.

I know the Editor is a modeler too,but what it can not do,is to quick render a single static frame of the perspective viewport so you can preview the Lightmaps.
Last edited by Veleran on Thu Nov 20, 2008 10:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
Jay
RF Dev Team
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Joined: Fri Jul 08, 2005 1:56 pm
Location: Germany

Re: Is Easier to Light a Level in a modeler than in the Editor

Post by Jay »

I don't think RF's entity system is compatible wiht other entity systems. But you could try to export it with the lights and then add a light at each position where the editor shows you an entity, then delete the lights placed by the other editor.
Everyone can see the difficult, but only the wise can see the simple.
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Veleran
Posts: 903
Joined: Mon Aug 22, 2005 10:22 am
Location: Greece

Re: Previewing Level Lightning inside 3d modelers

Post by Veleran »

I use the glb2 quakemap exporter and it exports the lights,and the editor imports them,and they just set to a default radius 150-which i chage afterwards.
So,i dont have to reposition them,all i have to do is set the radius and brightness for each light.
Maybe there arent many Max users here.
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bernie
RF Moderator
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Location: Ireland

Re: Previewing Level Lightning inside 3d modelers

Post by bernie »

Maybe there arent many Max users here.
Maybe because most of us can't afford the $3000 payment Autodesk require for the program.
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