Holomatix - Using Blaze 3D Light Maps

Purchase
Online Store

Using Blaze 3D Light Maps

Blaze 3D Studio allows you to place Holomatix light maps (.hdx files) into the scene and orientate them appropriately to provide the best view of your model.

Defining your Lighting Environment Library Path

Blaze 3D Studio allows you to specify a default path for .hdx files projects where it will look to find all the possible lighting environments for a project. This default Lighting Environment Library path is set by clicking Tools > Preferences (or press the shortcut key F11).

It is recommended that you create a global directory where you will save all your HDX files so that you can re-use them for different projects. For example, create a directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\user\My Documents\MyBlazeProjects\Lighting Environments

where user is your Windows login username.

To start your library, copy the example HDX files included in the Blaze 3D Extras Lighting Environments folder to your Library.

Using Light Maps in Blaze 3D Studio

All .hdx files in your Lighting Environment Library path or the current project path are available to every project. To view these, select 'Environments' in the Project Explorer. The Inspector will show a list of the available environments, divided into 3 sections: Recently Used, Those available in the current Extras directory and those in your own Library.

To apply one of these light maps to your scene, either:

right click Environments in the Project Explorer and select 'Load HDX...'

or

simply drag and drop the desired .hdx file from the Available Environments list in the Inspector panel into the Explorer panel and it will be added to the list of used environments in the project.

This will add the .hdx file to the list under Environments -> Current in the Project Explorer. If you select the 'Current' Environment, you will see a globe display showing the combined result of all the light maps applied to its surface.

Figure 1: Viewing a Project's Current Environment

This globe display is a conceptual view as the 3D model you have loaded is at the center of the globe at the base of the green arrow and you are looking along the green arrow at the environment before it. This can be hard to conceptualise, however you can navigate around this display by right clicking and dragging. As a guide to understanding the display, the grey grid shows the current 3D floor.

Each light map used in the project can be orientated by selecting it in the Current instances tree and left-click dragging the globe. Once selected a north and south pole (red and blue respectively) appear on the light map globe display as further aids to orientating them.

Orientations can be reset by clicking the Reset Orientation button.

Figure 2: Viewing a Light Map in your Project Environment

You can observe the changes this orientation makes to your model by clicking the Apply Now button, or if you wish to constantly see the effects of these movements you can tick the Apply Automatically checkbox.

< Prev		Next >