Need help with Cartography lighting in Blitz3D

I'm new to both Blitz3D and Cartography Shop 4.1.

I can create a scene in Cartography Shop that looks great.....for me that is.

When I export it as an x model and load in the model and apply it's associated lightmap, the scene looks really drab and washed out.

PLEASE! What am I dont wrong?

Any help will be most greatly appreciated.
Giompy

The best way I've found to use CS4 with B3D is to
use Halo's CSM loader. The source is up on his website
(I think): http://www.leadwerks.com

Thanks theduck,
I tried the CSM loader and got the same drab results as with the xloader and b3dloader. ???
Thanks for the information. I really appreciate the help.
Have a great day.
Gimpy.

Have you got

entityfx myLevel,1

in there anywhere?

Alternatively you can set the gamma to make dark areas darker and light areas lighter using this code:

; Gamma Controller
For x=0 To 255
SetGamma x,x,x,(x+x/3)+10,(x+x/3)+10,(x+x/3)+10
Next
UpdateGamma

The numbers within the parentheses will control your contrast (lower the number, the higher the contrast) while the numbers outside of the parentheses will control the brightness (higher the number, the higher the brightness). What you want is high contrast with low brightness. So I would set the last three values in Set Gamma to:

SetGamma x,x,x,(x+x/2)+0,(x+x/2)+0,(x+x/2)+0

I found this works really well with levels made in Maplet or .x levels with .bmp/.jpg lightmaps. Or any level that appears to be a bit dark.

That's not really an alternative to rendering fullbright (entityfx 1), it's a solution to a different problem (fullbright not being bright enough). If he's not rendering fullbright then the level is being lit by the ambient light value rather than having the lightmap alone govern its appearence - I tend towards fixing the cause of a problem rather than the result as it generally leaves less to come back and bite you on the ass in future.

If rendering is as intended and it's still too washed out them gamma is perfect, though controls (with a decent range) for the user are polite.

The CSM loader is good but it's not the only way to make your levels nice and bright.

(1) Design level
(2) Light it
(3) Export as B3D (with lightmaps)
(4) Go into Photoshop and load the lightmap associated with the model.
(5) Increase the brightness and contrast to suite your own desires. If I can remember correctly somewhere like +40 is a good value to start at.
(6) Load model as a b3d model and look at it in B3d, then say "Whoaa thats more like it!".
(7) Smile and NEVER give up.

IPete2.

I tried that. The lightmaps are limited by whiteness. IE- a lightmap can not be any brighter than 255,255,255.

A better solution would be to brighten the individual textures.

I got it fixed.
Exporting from CShop as a BSP works perfectly.
I got my textures, lighmap, and the whole 9 yards!!!
YEH!!!!
Thanks for the help everyone.
You're all great!
Gimpy