Build a Palace

Build a Palace

	Introduction
	This tutorial will introduce you to some basic texturing and lighting techniques in Awakening. It assumes some basic knowledge of the User Interface. To begin, press Ctrl+N to start a new project or select File > New Scene.

Loading the mesh

First you will import 3D geometry into your scene. There are two ways to load geometry in Awakening: press Ctrl+L to load mesh from .tri files, or press Ctrl+I to import from various popular 3D format files.

Press Ctrl+L and open the hall.tri file which can be found at .../Awakening/Models. Once the geometry is loaded, press "N" to select none (Awakening automatically selects all imported surfaces) and press Shift+A to see all. You should then see a complete white palace, it's white because it has no textures and no lighting at all.

To see wireframe, right-click in the viewport, and select Fill Mode > Wireframe.

Texturing the palace

To load textures, right-click on the Texture page, select Add Texture, then select your image files. Another method is dragging image files into the Texture panel from Windows Explorer. Download and add these four images into your scene.
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If all goes well, you will see four images ( one for floor and three for walls) displayed in the texture page. You can press < and > to zoom images in this texture window. Lock the Texture panel, otherwise the panel will be hidden when you select 3D object in viewport. To do this, right-click on the Texture page tab, and check Lock tab.

Press Shift+T to toggle texture mode. Click on the button on the toolbar, so Awakening is ready to select entities. Press Ctrl+A to select all surfaces, then left-click on the wall2.jpg in the Texture panel. This will assign the image to all surfaces. Click on the button on the Texture toolbar to tile the texture. The palace should no longer be all white.

Change to FRONT view using the View select combo box on the toolbar, then hold the Ctrl key. Click on the left wall, front wall and right wall separately. Then assign the wall1.jpg to them and tile texture the same way as above. Similarly, assign and tile the floor.jpg to the floor. Texturing the last wall is a bit harder as it has some windows. Change to BACK view and select the front wall by clicking on the front surface; assign the wall0.jpg to it, then click on the button at the texture toolbar to fit the texture (to the surfaces).

Hold Shift key or Ctrl key when fitting textures to bind direction.

If the windows seem too big you can scale the texture. Click on the button on the toolbar, then hold the left mouse button and drag your mouse around. Notice the size of window is changing as you drag your mouse. Scale the windows to appropriate size, and you've finished this section. If you have locked the texture page, remember to unlock it now (right-click on the texture page tab).

Lighting the palace

Now add some lighting. Click on the toolbar button

, then move the camera near the front wall. Left-click aim the upper rounded window and you will see a white wireframe hexahedron and a green bounding box (this is a Point Light). You can modify this light's properties in the control panel (default on the left). You can also move/rotate/scale the light by clicking the corresponding button

on the toolbar and dragging in the viewport. The light's default color is white. Click on the button "Color:" first in the Light panel (the control panel for light properties), then select a light blue in the color-picker dialog that appears. In the same way create a light in front of the lower window and change it's color to a light red.
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Press F9 to compute lighting. Press Shift+T to change texture mode, to check the lightmap. The effect should similar to the left image, amazingly realistic for only a few steps, isn't it?