First off, thanks for the nice comments - makes it all worthwhile :)
LightBulb does NOT export the whole scene as a single .B3D. Why? Because this would not allow you to alter objects individually from within your engine.
Example :- You import your 'level' object and your 'door' objects and set them up within LB. If the whole scene got combined into one mesh, you wouldn't be able to open and shut the doors.
What LightBulb does instead is save the scene to it's own format (.LBL). This stores information about all the meshes INDIVIDUALLY. Then, using the provided 'LoadLightBulbLevel()' function you can import your levels EXACTLY as they appear in LightBulb, whilst maintaining access to each of the objects individually. This includes access to the UserFlag$() that each object can have that you can use to assign behaviours etc.
Check this example :
http://www.binary-people.com/downloads/lbexamplelevel.zip
that demostrates exactly what I'm talking about.
So to sum up that point, it's not one big .B3D that gets exported, but it's just as easy to load AND has MANY benefits.
To answer your other questions :
(1) I haven't looked at the DX export for a while because the call for it wasn't that great. Sorry.
(2) The transparent color is always 0,0,0 (Black). This is a Blitz limitation. However, you can set an entire texture to be alpha'd to any level.
(3) Meshes and lights always appear at the current camera position (so you usually need to move a bit to see them.
Thanks again for your kind words - much appreciated :)
LightBulb does NOT export the whole scene as a single .B3D. Why? Because this would not allow you to alter objects individually from within your engine.
Example :- You import your 'level' object and your 'door' objects and set them up within LB. If the whole scene got combined into one mesh, you wouldn't be able to open and shut the doors.
What LightBulb does instead is save the scene to it's own format (.LBL). This stores information about all the meshes INDIVIDUALLY. Then, using the provided 'LoadLightBulbLevel()' function you can import your levels EXACTLY as they appear in LightBulb, whilst maintaining access to each of the objects individually. This includes access to the UserFlag$() that each object can have that you can use to assign behaviours etc.
Check this example :
http://www.binary-people.com/downloads/lbexamplelevel.zip
that demostrates exactly what I'm talking about.
So to sum up that point, it's not one big .B3D that gets exported, but it's just as easy to load AND has MANY benefits.
To answer your other questions :
(1) I haven't looked at the DX export for a while because the call for it wasn't that great. Sorry.
(2) The transparent color is always 0,0,0 (Black). This is a Blitz limitation. However, you can set an entire texture to be alpha'd to any level.
(3) Meshes and lights always appear at the current camera position (so you usually need to move a bit to see them.
Thanks again for your kind words - much appreciated :)