This tutorial is a walkthrough into creating and publishing a project through the use of Blaze 3D Studio.

The Nokia 7610 example model that you loaded and published in the previous exercise (Publishing the Sample Project) was created within Maya 5.0 using triangles and various texture maps. This model was then imported into Blaze 3D Studio using the File/Import/Maya menu.

Having loaded the project, you are presented with the main user interface (UI) with which the project can be altered and finally published. Once loaded the preview pane on the right hand side displays the current model. This can be navigated through dragging with the left mouse button, zoomed through the right mouse button and finally panned using both mouse buttons.

The first section Environment, is initially displayed, this allows you to place Blaze 3D Studio Lighting Environments (environment maps), which are files with the .hdx extension, into the scene and orientate them appropriately to provide the desired view of your model.

HDX light maps can be created by converting standard high dynamic range light maps (.hdr files) through a tool provided within Blaze 3D Studio. This is available from the Environment -> Conversion -> HDR to HDX main menu item. The .hdr file must be in vertical cross format in order for an .hdx file to be successfully generated. This process is a one off activity as these .hdx files can then be referenced and loaded into any project. However it can be time intensive process for high resolution light maps. In this example we have a sample .hdr file which has dimensions of 192 x 256 and converted to an .hdx file.

There are 3 example .hdx files provided as part of the Blaze 3D Extras downloads, which may be freely used in your own projects.

Load an HDX file by dragging and dropping it into either the world display view to its right or the tree control defining all the current HDX instances below. Once the .hdx is loaded you should see a globe display with the light map applied to its surface. This 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 instance can be orientated by selecting it in the .hdx instances tree and left click dragging the globe. Once selected a north and south pole (red and blue respectively) appear on the light map display as further aids to orientating them. Orientations can be reset through the Environment -> Reset Orientation menu item. You can observe the changes this orientation makes to your model by clicking the Update Orientations button, or if you wish to constantly see the effects these movements make you can enable the Auto Update Orientations checkbox.

Once you are happy with the defined environment the next stage is the Materials section which allows you to create materials by adjusting properties and then assign these materials to surfaces on the 3d model.

In this example we have created six materials:

Each of these have had their properties adjusted to create the desired effect of the material (as indicated by its name).

Next you need to assign each of your models surfaces to one of the six materials (e.g. "button_material" to the "flat" material); this is achieved by dragging the surface items onto the material items within the material tree control. The texture section allows you to view and edit each of the textures within the 3d model. In this example this was not necessary.

Publishing has two modes, basic and advanced. Basic mode provides a simpler UI as a number of the available options are set to their defaults, so you only need to specify the texture compression quality setting and the automated texture resizing setting. Once happy with the settings selecting publish will perform a two stage publishing process.

When this process is complete, a web browsing session is started containing the resulting presentation for you to preview. All these files are placed in a subdirectory called HTML ready for uploading to a website.