[tutorial] Lightmaps for Dummies

[disbeliever]

Hello All,

 

I wanted to put together a tutorial for creating and getting lightmaps in game. MagnusII has been wonderful in adding in this ability to his KA program, and if you have seen the screens in the Sleheyron thread, you should agree it makes a big difference in terms of realism. This new version has not yet been released, but I wanted to make a simple, to the point tutorial for any area modelers that may be interested.

 

Take a look, I do not believe I forgot anything. The cool thing is, there is allot of wiggle room for personal experimentation. Allot of the settings I use in the tutorial you can choose other options for, and play around with the results. I used the settings that I found to work best for my areas based on trial and error, feel free to take the knowledge and play with it.

 

Here is the link:

 

LMfordummies.doc

 

Edit: And if anyone has any questions, comments or concerns, I am happy to answer anything. Thanks.

[Istorian]

Many thanks, Dis!! Can someone put this in the tutorial section?? It has plenty great information!!

[disbeliever]

Many thanks, Dis!! Can someone put this in the tutorial section?? It has plenty great information!!

 

Thanks:)

 

As an update to people, i forgot to mention that sometimes it may be best to use a "mother file" to generate lightmaps, as to keep things consistant. You need to use a mother file to make lightmaps for the floor though, to have building shadows show up.

 

I have noticed though that 3dsm tends to have issues rendering HUGE chunks. My laptop is about the beefiest you can buy, and I was not able to render out the entire area at once.

 

So I saved the omni lights in one file, and merged that file with every cut to keep the same light source. Experiment

[Quanon]

A very nice tutorial Dis

Its refreshing to see another way of doing things in Max and trying to explain in it a clear way, so people understand what the hell your infact doing

 

Really a very nice tutorial!

We want more! We want more! We want more! We want more! We want more!

[ChAiNz.2da]

Nice tut disbeliever

 

Since the Tutorial is a downloadable, can LF have your permission to host the doc on starwarsknights.com so it will always be available to the LF community?

 

Not saying anything is wrong with your hosting of course, but we've had problems in the past with external storage. We try to make it a point to at least host/store resources just in case.

 

In the meantime, I'll go ahead and copy this to the Tuts sections

[disbeliever]

By all means, host it where ever you wish

 

Nice tut disbeliever

 

Since the Tutorial is a downloadable, can LF have your permission to host the doc on starwarsknights.com so it will always be available to the LF community?

 

Not saying anything is wrong with your hosting of course, but we've had problems in the past with external storage. We try to make it a point to at least host/store resources just in case.

 

In the meantime, I'll go ahead and copy this to the Tuts sections

 

I am almost done my video tutorial collection of modeling and getting in game outdoor new areas, so that will be another tutorial

 

A very nice tutorial Dis

Its refreshing to see another way of doing things in Max and trying to explain in it a clear way, so people understand what the hell your infact doing

 

Really a very nice tutorial!

We want more! We want more! We want more! We want more! We want more!

[ChAiNz.2da]

Thanks!

 

Copied the thread in the Tuts section. I'll have to upload a copy of the doc to SWK once I get home.. work here is behind a nazi-proxy that won't allow us certain types of external connections

 

Looking forward to your other tuts

[jamezy91]

This is great thanks!

I was just asking MagnusII about this the other day... Nice tutorial:thmbup1: