Can you export lighting models directly from 3D application to a real time renderer?

Question

is it possible for example to insert lighting in a 3D Model software like 3DSMAX and export an animated model like md5,..etc. and export the lighting too ?

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly, and you need to export the lighting model and not the light info (position, color etc). No, unless that particular lighting model shader was written in GLSL/Cg/HLSL.

3Ds max and other modelling tools use different totally different rendering algorithms, for instance Maya (and probably other programs) use [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reyes_rendering][1] (with ray tracing) and uses Renderman as its shading language.

While real time rendering engines use different kind of rendering algorithms based on forward rasterization that makes implementing most lighting models and global illumination a totally different thing.

So unless you re-implement what the 3D applications renderer do in your application, or your application just generate your GLSL/Cg/HLSL code for you, and even with that you still have a fairly complex task to integrate it with your real time renderer. it's not possible out of the box.

On the other hand exporting the light info is fairly trivial and you only need to read the exported file in your application and read the light info like {Position, Diffuse, Diffuse Color, Direction, Specular etc)