have you tried to use other formats like LWO? i don't have gile[s] but maybe i will experiment a bit with the demo. i think the demo only has export disabled?



yes, doing a good unwrapper for light mapping is really hard! currently it works great with my test level but look how simple those houses are. with more complex geometry there are too many artifacts because the unwrapper doesn't keep the right faces together, makes important areas too small, wastes space with packing,...

maybe i will release just the lighting part (for free) and you will have to care for the uv-map yourself (this means loading it with my mesh plugin), or i could try to make a better unwrapper but this will take a lot of research and time, or i will experiment with using the graphics card for baking the lighting instead of using ray tracing. i could imagine the uv-map wouldn't have to be that great then and it would be extremely fast.

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maybe i will release just the lighting part (for free) and you will have to care for the uv-map yourself (this means loading it with my mesh plugin)

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Thank you soooo much for your efforts, ventilator!

What about releasing both as seperate tools?
Then one can use the uv-mapper for simple models to have a fast workflow, and does the uv-mapping for complicated meshes in MED.

For this, your uv-mapper has to save the second model with its uv-map.

As a workaround, if one has the second model with the uv-mapping and with the light mapping, maybe, he could scale the uv-parts smaller, each seperately, and fix this way the artifacts?
And, if the model is still too complicating, he can do the uv-mapping by hand in MED, and make only the lightmapping.

Hi, ventilator, I think that I got a good idea to get a good second uv-map!

What about using the given uv-map of the textures in MED?

Could you code a plugin for MED, which simple picks a vertex or a triangle of the uv-map, tests which vertices/triangles are connected, stores this mesh, picks a vertex or triangle which is not connected to this mesh, choose all vertices/triangles which are connected to this one, stores it etc.
... this means it takes all the connected meshes as they are in the uv-map of the model, and simply place them side by side, and scales them identically down until they fit into a certain measure of the lightmap.

Okay, then simply release the lightmapper!

Honestly, I still build my models in MED!
I start with a small terrain, let's say 8x8,
then I add a texture,
then convert it to mdl,
build blocks out of this plate which give the rough shape of a canyon or whatever gives the natural environement that I try to achieve;
after that, I connect the plates,
and deform their blocky shape to get more stony and scarp-like shapes...

This means that I have all the surfaces that I use in the 3D-part already unwrapped in the uv-map, I simply have to scale them down and place them side by side on the skin map - and therefor all I need is a lightmapper, because I can't export and import the mdls to and from another tool where I make the lightmap!

By the way: How do you get the right pixel in the skin which were hit by trace?

i rasterize the triangles, calculate the 3d position of each rasterized pixel and trace to the light from there. at the moment i try to do a version which works without ray tracing though.

Nice! Amazing work Ventilator, as always. I'm looking forward to future progress of this plugin...