Lightmaps for Dummies

[disbeliever]

Original discussion thread here

 

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.

[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