How do you use gile[s] with Blitz3D?

Hi all,

There seems to be lack of tutorials for gile[s].
It is said that we have to explore the other functions
by trial and error.
I only created different lights and render and export to .b3d. Other functions has not been tried.

How do you make use of gile[s] functions for Blitz3D?

Thanks in advance
Sammy
:)

What functions do you mean?
Gile[s] is mainly a lightmapper so what else would you want from it?

Hi all,

I mean: which kind of functions of gile[s]
do use usually use?
(besides "Create>Light" and "Render>Render")

Thanks in advance
Sammy
:)

It's a special tool. I mainly use it for lights creation and Rendering, as you said.

It is capable of smoothing round shapes, something most other lightmappers can't do. And it supports Global Illumination that can be used to get superrealistic Lights. Although, this should be added when all settings etc. are done and the final render is performed. It may by a little tricky to find a good configuration for real quick previews.

I also use gile[s] for placing entities in the level and giving them custom properties so that my level loader can extract this data and make them interactive/dynamic in game.

Hi all,

I am sorry. I don't understand these:

(1) What is "smoothing round shapes"?
Does it mean that it make a round shape more round?

(2) How to add custom properties in gile[s]?

What menu options would be need to select to do above?

Thanks in advance
Sammy
:)

smoothing round shapes means: basicly there are two kinds of shading methods in 3D: smoothed and flatshaded. You may try it in a little blitz program, create a sphere and display it. Then add the EntityFX command for flatshaded (see docs) and compare the result.

Gile[s] is using some kind of smoothing groups to lightmap convertion. Other Lightmappers simply save things flatshaded.

Example:
flatshaded columns with Maplet:

smoothed columns with gile[s]:


Although you can see a seam on the near columns, the distant columns are smootly shaded and appear round. The seams make clear gile[s] needs some manual adjustment of the smnoothing to make it look best.

Thank you.
Now I understand "smoothing round shapes"

How about "add custom properties in gile[s]"?
(I only know that we could change the name of a mesh
in gile[s].)

Thanks in advance
Sammy
:)

To add custom properties scroll the right hand menu pane up, the one that has 'Basic Properties' 'Lighting Properties'.

At the bottom of this pane you will see 'Custom Properties'.

You can enter values here and then parse through them when you load your level into Blitz3D.

Thanks a lot.
Now I know more about gile[s].

Sammy
:)