…to export a map into the ase format, load it with 3dsmax or another 3d software and render the level lights with a radiosity renderer and global illumination and then export the generated lightmap.
This should be possible, but is there a way to fit the generated lightmap back into the level ? Im sure the lightmap wont be the same like the q3map2 generated one.
Or in generell, i think youve understand my idea, is the whole process possible or just a nice idea ?
Theoretically, I suppose. The UV coords would be different for those lightmaps, not to mention the surface stuff. Might be an interesting approach…
How fast is the global illumination process in Max?
Hrm, hard to say, you have to set the whole lights per hand because the ase file does not export the lights and then render it with the max5s standard renderer with advanced lighting or use another renderer like vray, brazil or rendermen. But i think with easy geometric like a level its faster than to do it with q3map2 and it looks WAY better 
If it would be possible to export the map with lights (or light dummies) it would be easy to do the job with max or another 3d software.
Or another maybe possible way :
Export it, render it and then import the whole map as ase in radiant and load the lightmap via the shader for this big model - if its possible.
Ill try it if you could say me how to load the lightmap via the shader.
This is an interesting idea… rather than Max, however, there’s a piece of software out there called Cinema 4D–it has a GI renderer that is lightning fast and produces excellent results. How much of a stumbling block would the UV coords issue be?
If i translate this sentence right - no the generated mapping is not nearly a bit compatible 
Except you go the 2nd way over the modelmap ive postet in my 2nd posting in this thread.
Can you even export the lighting data? Only raytraced or area shadows in 3ds max seem worthwhile, and I don’t think those have anything that can be converted to lightmaps.
Certantly an interesting idea.
What does you mean with lighting data ? The Lightmap ?
It doesnt matter if it is a raytraced hard shadow or a smooth area one.
It just looks different (hard and soft).
There are any number of 3rd party “baker” plugins that “bake” the various passes of a given raytracer to bitmap files. These would be the useful files for this application, Emon.
You could unwrap the ASE-level and doing a “render to texture” in max5.
There is a biplane.max File with max5.
The .ase levelmodel should be split in multiple parts because of the skins and the vis-blocking (for caulkhull).
You could set up the scene like the radiosity.max (also shipped file).
So the skins would have the lightingh on the skins.
To illuminate your level in GTK, an ambient light could be enought. But i don’t know if the textures /skins will fade out.
If they fade out, you could adjust the gamma on the skins to make them darker.
But just some ideas. Maybe it’s totally crap what i wrote.