Aether - Lighting Helper

[FireScythe]

Hey. After Jahrain released his lightmap exporter I thought i'd have a go at simplifying the process of making your lightmaps in 3ds Max/Maya, so once I had the time I made this! Enjoy :D.


Aether
Halo:CE Lighting Helper

Created by : TheFieryScythe
E-mail: FireScythe813@hotmail.co.uk

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for any damages that may occur from the use of this program or its associated scripts.

This program is made for Halo: Custom Edition and serves to simplify the process of lighting a Halo map using a 3D modelling program.

Program Features:
*Scenario object marker export
*Perfect bsp extraction including all bitmaps and correct smoothing
*Perfect bsp lightmap extraction including lightmap bitmaps assigned to the mesh
*Portal and fog plane extraction
*Bitmap injection into BSP lightmap

3ds Max/Maya Script features:
*Fixes bsp materials to show in viewport and ignore alpha channels (Not in Maya Script)
*Places marker spheres according to marker positions exported by Aether
*Instances meshes and places them according to marker positions exported by Aether

Read the Readme for details on using Aether.

Credit and thanks go to:
DevIL image library creators,
Tao Framework team,
Kornman for his help and tag interface,
Jahrain for his contribution to a previous project on which this is basedImages:
http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo66/TheFieryScythe/aetherprogram.jpg
http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo66/TheFieryScythe/aetherexample.png
http://i362.photobucket.com/albums/oo66/TheFieryScythe/timberlandexample.jpg

Download!
(http://files.filefront.com/Aetherzip/;12684384;/fileinfo.html)http://files.filefront.com/Aetherzip/;12684384;/fileinfo.html
http://wol.modacity.net/Aether.zip Replaced dead link with new one ~Reaper


Any problems, let me know:).

[=sw=warlord]

Looks awesome il have to try it out later.

[TeeKup]

Holy shit its FireScythe. You've been away far too long.

[Inferno]

Very cool. I don't see this getting used to much but its still really cool.

[Anton]

Sweet, this will help me out a bunch. :P Thanks.

+Rep.

[ThePlague]

Downloading now, looks very interesting. Good job.

[Alwin Roth]

cool.

timberland looks like a nightclub.

[Roostervier]

Wow, looks like an awesome tool, nice job. : D

[teh lag]

Shit, I've been waiting for something like this. <3^1000.

[FluffyDucky™]

Nice job! And yeah it does look like a night club! :awesome:

[Con]

have my babies

[FireScythe]

Glad you guys like it. Will be interesting to see what people come up with :).

[FluffyDucky™]

A pink map for me and Teekup! :D

[DEElekgolo]

Awesome! Now I can use my CG lighting in halo!

[MetKiller Joe]

This is great news. +Rep.

[Disaster]

Hey its FireScythe :o Thanks mate, this will really help me out.

[DEElekgolo]

No! I cant export the scenery models!
Maxscript doesnt work either.

[FireScythe]

Have you done everything in the right order?
1. Debug light your BSP's with Tool.
2. Populate with scenery in sapien and save.
3. Open your scenario in Aether and save a project.
4. Export your BSP bitmaps and markers from Aether. (Doesn't export models, only position and rotation).
5. Import your gbxmodels into Max using Ghosts Gbx Importer. (Personally I do this first and save all scenery to max files to XRef at this point).
6. Use the script to instance that model around the map.

It should be noted that changes you make in sapien aren't reflected in the Aether project, so if you make changes, just make a new project to overwrite the old one. Come to think of it I might drop this in the ReadMe and re upload.

EDIT: Also, the MAXScript is accessed by running it in the hammer tab on the right and selecting it in the drop down list. (Just incase you don't know).

[DEElekgolo]

I can do all of that but when I run the script it does nothing in both my 3ds max 9 and 2009

[FireScythe]

Are you sure your selecting it from the dropdown list? Just running it will make it appear in the list but you have to manually select it for it to load.

[DEElekgolo]

I got it working. I had to select "Maxscript" and select it.
http://deehunter.h3underground.com/Images/haloce%202008-12-18%2017-52-38-42.png
http://deehunter.h3underground.com/Images/haloce%202008-12-18%2017-52-49-81.png
http://deehunter.h3underground.com/Images/haloce%202008-12-18%2017-52-58-00.png
http://deehunter.h3underground.com/Images/haloce 2008-12-18 17-53-40-82.png

[Inferno]

Fuck.... Now I'm going to have to do that to every map in the IMP...
It just looks so right.

[FireScythe]

Glad you got it working :D. Looking good, might be worth trying it with a lower shadow density though so that their not so overpowering. Kind of like the warthogs shadow.

[DEElekgolo]

Updated with better GI rendering and 2048x2048 lightmaps.
http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/3524/haloce2008121822080067mz6.jpg
http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/3504/haloce2008121822074429cv1.jpg
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/5759/haloce2008121822064678zv6.jpg
http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/387/haloce2008121822044257ta9.jpg
http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7840/haloce2008121822042815oc9.jpg
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/1065/haloce2008121822041015cy5.jpg

[taterSALAD]

Link is broken. =/

[Roostervier]

http://wol.modacity.net/Aether.zip

Uploaded.

[Reaper Man]

http://wol.modacity.net/Aether.zip

Uploaded.
Updated link in first post.

[Kelno]

I've got two problems with Aether
First, the lightmaps UV seems to do not extract correctly, I tried on different maps and the result is always the same, it gives me something like that (http://s3.noelshack.com/old/up/bug-010431875.png). Also I tried another app (http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=3452) that gives me a bit different result, but still completely wrong.
Im pretty sure the problem come from the extracting since when I use the same process with the already extracted files in this tut (http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?13546-Advanced-High-Quality-Lightmapping), everything is fine and I can get the new lightmaps ig. But with the same map, if I try to extract the lights myself, same problem.
Second, the extracted model itself got a lot of wrong faced faces, any idea about that?
Thx for reading

[Patrickssj6]

I've got two problems with Aether
First, the lightmaps UV seems to do not extract correctly, I tried on different maps and the result is always the same, it gives me something like that (http://s3.noelshack.com/old/up/bug-010431875.png). Also I tried another app (http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=3452) that gives me a bit different result, but still completely wrong.
Im pretty sure the problem come from the extracting since when I use the same process with the already extracted files in this tut (http://www.modacity.net/forums/showthread.php?13546-Advanced-High-Quality-Lightmapping), everything is fine and I can get the new lightmaps ig. But with the same map, if I try to extract the lights myself, same problem.
Second, the extracted model itself got a lot of wrong faced faces, any idea about that?
Thx for reading
Sry cannot help you but wow..that tutorial sucks. First he complains about tool being shitty and then he cannot even improve upon it xd

[Kelno]

I thought he said this tool was awesum xD But totally agree with the fact it's a bad tut, you just cant get anywhere by just following his tut, some importants informations are missing.
Maybe... well I think I already got models problems with the fact im from Europe, something about PAL vs NTSC models, maybe something over there? Would be weird n_n But I never really understood that kind of "region lock"

[=sw=warlord]

NTSC and PAL is to do with television standards...

[Kelno]

Then these are probably not the right words to describe it x)
I remember having problems when extracting models from WoW, then I had to switch the location of my computer (in windows) to US, and it worked fine. Also, I remember a map from Halo wich was unplayable for the same reason, some models were going crazy. That seems just weird to me but I remember it that way. Anyway, I tried to change the location, nothing better, wrong idea I think