I like 3dsmax best of all, but Giles is an amazing tool and the only alternative I'd consider.
Max has a lot of extra set up time, but thats made easier if you use a script lightmap tool like Bakersfield, which lets you set up scene nodes, afterwhich you simply pick your nodes from a list and click render to create new lightmaps.
The advantage of something like 3dsmax is that you can render tiny thumbnails that give you an impression of what your lightmaps will look like in very short notice. The problesm with it is that you need a thorough understanding of the lighting tools and max render which is far more complex having been designed for pre rendered film and video production.
Also for best results you will have to play around with the mapping a fair ammount yourself in order to avoid thin black outlined on edges.
Also, to map large scenes efficiently in blitz, you are better off combining a series of models into one and mapping and lightmapping them together as a single entity and seperating it after as needed.
Works great, but is a lot of extra work that makes more sense to do at the end for final polish.
The beauty of giles lies in its simplicity of setup, and the fact that it car render a single ligtmap over a variety of seperate meshes without any fiddle that you would find elsewhere. It also does a better job of auto UVmapping, allthough I still find I prefer to arrange my maps by hand at the end of the day.
I love B3dpipeline, and find that adding more intermediate tools gets in the way of other parts of my workflow and level design. But if it wasn't for pipeline and 3dsmax, I'd see no alternative but Giles.
And I'd probably use Giles for simpler time critical tasks simply because of how quick and efficient it is, and easy for a newbie to learn without losing power for more advanced users.
Max has a lot of extra set up time, but thats made easier if you use a script lightmap tool like Bakersfield, which lets you set up scene nodes, afterwhich you simply pick your nodes from a list and click render to create new lightmaps.
The advantage of something like 3dsmax is that you can render tiny thumbnails that give you an impression of what your lightmaps will look like in very short notice. The problesm with it is that you need a thorough understanding of the lighting tools and max render which is far more complex having been designed for pre rendered film and video production.
Also for best results you will have to play around with the mapping a fair ammount yourself in order to avoid thin black outlined on edges.
Also, to map large scenes efficiently in blitz, you are better off combining a series of models into one and mapping and lightmapping them together as a single entity and seperating it after as needed.
Works great, but is a lot of extra work that makes more sense to do at the end for final polish.
The beauty of giles lies in its simplicity of setup, and the fact that it car render a single ligtmap over a variety of seperate meshes without any fiddle that you would find elsewhere. It also does a better job of auto UVmapping, allthough I still find I prefer to arrange my maps by hand at the end of the day.
I love B3dpipeline, and find that adding more intermediate tools gets in the way of other parts of my workflow and level design. But if it wasn't for pipeline and 3dsmax, I'd see no alternative but Giles.
And I'd probably use Giles for simpler time critical tasks simply because of how quick and efficient it is, and easy for a newbie to learn without losing power for more advanced users.