Hello.
I'm new to lite-C and to programming in general. And to 3d. I wonder what am I doing here Still I'm so excited to get started. I followed a few workshops and read from the manual.
Can you tell me if everything done with WED can be as well done by coding in SED?
I don't know at this moment but I've got the feeling WED is more like a GUI for setting up different game elements and that SED could do it too but with a lot of effort. Is it true?

Most things can be done in SED, but WED also includes a map compiler that you can use to calculate static lighting, and use BSP culling if you own Pro edition and know what you're doing.

Jibb

Thank you for replying. Excuse me for going on with this.

About the lightmapping, I suppose I can do it in an external program, as it's not runtime dependent, right? I mean although the light from a static source (precomputed) intersects an entity, it doesn't affect it.

About the culling, how expensive is to do it manually by coding vs. native way (if it's feasible)?

Lightmapping can certainly be done in an external program. For this to work you'll usually need to have two uv-sets for each model that gets lightmapped -- this is because they will usually have tiled/repeating textures, but you don't want the lightmap to be tiled.

I don't know if a default shader comes with this, but I'm pretty sure a shader will be necessary to make use of both the lightmap and the other textures.

As far as culling goes, I think it's always a good idea to cull some things manually anyway, and BSP culling generally won't do much for an outdoor level.

Jibb

With A7 there's no need for a shader to use 2 uv-maps, one for the shadowmap and one for tiled textures. You only have to activate the second uv-map in MED, maybe, not even that, but I don't remember. Somewhere in the threads about ventilator's blender exporter in the Third Party Tools forum is some more information.

Thank you.
I'm a little confused: I thought precomputed static lights (lightmapping) don't affect models in runtime, as read in Gamestudio manual. They're just color-improved textures. So you must be talking about dynamic lighting. If I understand it correctly:
By default a model uses a uv; when "intersecting" a static light or better said - when it lies within a precomputed-lighted area (cause in fact the light source doesn't exist), the "lighted" model uses another uv. If it's so, it makes sense. And this way we get to fake dynamic lighting.

Groovy even better.

Yes, they don't. What we meant is that if you're not using WED you'll be composing your level out of static models. In order for them to have lightmapping like WED-blocks, you'll want to bake the lightmap in an external program (such as Blender) and use two uv maps on the model -- one for the textures (which will usually tile), and one for the lightmap (which won't usually tile).

Dynamic lights can be set up using entities with a "lightrange" parameter. This has nothing to do with the model's uv maps.

Jibb

Thanks a lot.