Are you using lightmapping?

Murphy · Post by **Murphy** » Wed Sep 07, 2005 7:44 am

I'm just wondering what tools and formats and workflows people are using for lightmapping now.

Some may remember that I did some work on this stuff a while back, but have been a bit out of the community since then. I'm considering doing some more work in this direction and am just trying to get a feel for where things are now.

Also... there was a thread about someone's lightmapper that they were trying to add vertex normals (smoothed surfaces) to and were getting some artifacts. Was it LT? There were some screenshots. I did a search but didn't immediately turn it up and it's sort of painful on this slow dialup connection. If anyone remembers, would you let me know?

dhenton9000 · Post by **dhenton9000** » Wed Sep 07, 2005 4:17 pm

I've been trying to use it, but no luck, I'm trying to use blender for modelling, OCTTools never really worked for me all that well (no curved surfaces).

bami · Post by **bami** » Wed Sep 07, 2005 5:01 pm

.MY3D:

Straight from max into irrlicht, gotta love it

Electron · Post by **Electron** » Wed Sep 07, 2005 10:02 pm

I've been attempting to use Lord Trancos's modded FSRad, along with his obj2ent converter. Certain models cause overloads in FSRad unfortunately

Murphy · Post by **Murphy** » Wed Sep 07, 2005 11:49 pm

Electron wrote:Certain models cause overloads in FSRad unfortunately

What kind of overloads?

dhenton9000 wrote:I've been trying to use it, but no luck, I'm trying to use blender for modelling, OCTTools never really worked for me all that well (no curved surfaces).

Assuming you mean vertex normals/smoothing. Does Blender support this anyway? But yeah, that's a limitation of FSRad. Do your models have a lot of smoothed surfaces that look faceted in the lightmaps?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 7:21 am

Same as bami - 3dsmax to my3d (but you can use giles to my3d etc) - perfect results EVERY time, and simple to use. The only downside is you can NOT load my3d from zip archives at this time

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 6:08 pm

I Lightmapped with FSrad, and its partitioning of UVs and lightmaps has no equal.

Pitty it has not curved surfaces support.

Blender does not support creasing in smoothing normals. But oct does not support the smooth-all(but all faceted) that at least Blender does(but then, you could use OBJ2MIM, even with Blender, using third party OBj exporters) . blender can't set a hard edge in smoothing, unless you actually split the edge, which is a solution, but quite tedious compared to other packages. Blender is not so focused in games as is in video and movies. One of the reasons. Anyway, Blender will surely have that in a future, my guess. Let's let it catch all that animation wonder for characters, it was really needing it

There's a new plugin for lightmapping in blender, but as mo multiple UVs, I think it bruns to a texture in uv1, which would be ideal to use obj2mim and its two objs method. http://www.alienhelpdesk.com/index.php?id=22

Anyway, is the same, as FSRAD will not render smoothly the curved surfaces (spheres, cilinders, columns, etc)

My Giles does it :p

Lightmapping in Giles is slightly different than in Max. I have done with both; each has its advantages.

Anyway, I'd prefer FSRAD to BOTH specially for a full town or stuff like that, due to its clever way of doing for UVs and partitioning...I hope some day someone adds curved surfaces to fsrad.(better if starts from Murphy's modification of it

)

btw: anothe rmodification of FSRAD, it seems :

http://raydium.yoopla.org/wiki/FsRadRayEn

Nice 3ds importer, and OBJ exporter, for Blender :
http://members.iinet.net.au/~cpbarton/ideasman/

cool obj importer for blender
http://jmsoler.free.fr/util/blenderfile ... dif236f.py

Electron · Post by **Electron** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 7:41 pm

Murphy wrote:
Electron wrote:Certain models cause overloads in FSRad unfortunately
What kind of overloads?

My problem is explained -->here<--. I suspect there's something about the mesh or materials that FSRad doesnt like, but I can't figure out what. . .

Murphy · Post by **Murphy** » Thu Sep 08, 2005 8:24 pm

Electron: My guess is that this isn't really a PROBLEM with FSRad and that it's just taking a while. From memory... While FSRad has an option to limit the number of iterations, it doesn't actually work in the released version. I fixed it in my modified version.

Vermeer: Yes, FSRad's lightmap partitioning is great. I'm hoping to get working on my own lightmapper soon, and I plan on basing my partitioning system on FSRad's (the author wrote a little document about it in FSRad's distribution). One of my main objectives is to support smoothing in my lightmapper, so hopefully that will work out...

Also, aren't you a fan of some lightmapper that outputs B3D, Vermeer? I'll probably be releasing a B3D to OBJ+OBJ or MIM converter in the next few days...

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 3:54 pm

@ Electron: I think in Fsrad it easily makes times go really high. There are several settings, and, some can really make it go up...Just read well the FSRAD help, and try a lot of settings, you end up finding an averagely fast yet nice render.

@ Murphy: hey!

I am very interested in that new project of yours, that lightmapper.

I will send you a PM now, to send you my new email address, so in case you want to chat about it, and maybe if I find the time, help a little bit with testing, like with the past projects

I am very interested anyway in a partitioning system for UV/lightmaps like fsrad had....So, Of course!! Strongly interested in it. Is really more tedious to lightmap a town in other tools, comercial ones I have

And anyway, I am allways interested in 3d. Yup, b3d is a good all around format, yet though, I'm mostly interested in that lightmapper project, but anything 3d/2d you'r own, just tell me

I have less time now, but hey, allways curious at least

Murphy · Post by **Murphy** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 4:25 pm

Thought I'd post a quick screenshot. I took the Maplet test map, lightmapped it in Maplet, converted it to OBJ+OBJ (textured+lightmapped) with an early version of my new tool, and then opened up the lightmapped OBJ in Blender to take a look at it. And thar it is.

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 10:40 pm

Nice thing...

maplet is free since some time...But... Does it lightmap curved surfaces? I think it didn't, plus the quality was low, if I remember well...

BTW, I think that's Blender 2.37, am I wrong?

They'r actually making and extremely great revamp of Blender lately, specially in character animation stuff, I am more or less following it...

But the statics and stuff, is not much changed, probably.

Hmm...hey, a good OBJ exporter... for blender.
http://members.iinet.net.au/~cpbarton/ideasman/

and a good obj importer, for Blender(right click and "save as") :

http://jmsoler.free.fr/util/blenderfile ... dif236f.py

http://jmsoler.free.fr/didacticiel/blender/tutor/

I know there are allways OBJ I/o native in Blender now, but hey, I tend to prefer allways grab the latests of these two... They often are more powerful or simply better.
(while surely these are some newer versions of the native, indeed, surely it is. But the aproved ones doesn't have to be the latest, or the most advanced or convenient... )

Blender has got widgets , as u see in screenshot, and now is easier to handle for newbies.I personally like a lot that the option has been added.

Murphy · Post by **Murphy** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 12:44 am

Yup, that's 2.37. I'm so out of practice with Blender and 2.37 is a bit difference... I need to do a tutorial again.

Yeah, the lightmapping in Maplet doesn't appear to be great, but its modeling ability seems pretty nice. Too bad I don't think it exports lights so that they could be lightmapped with something else.

But... you could use the B3D converter to import something from WindsSoft Light Map Maker, which you have a pretty high opinion of, yes?

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 6:40 pm

2.37 is sweet , but latest builds are really outstanding, in character animation.

mapplet...have never tried. Just someone said me something that by its nature was of no use fo rme. can't remember what.

B3d has support fo rmultiple UV, and a load of things more. So, basically support all needed stuff for a basic level (I think it can do more than 2 materials in multitexturing, but not sure. Anyway, I think dx *.x can't either )
I prefer b3d for character animation, but well...
Overall is quite a complete format.
Just not as much supported by free tools.
Anyway, few to no tols supporting special features of x like multiple UV or weights and bones.Some do, though.

My only issue with b3d is lack of tools supporting it, specially free ones, fully.

comercial ones: well, ultimate unwrap(it can load to a compiled bsp(hl,q2,q3), and an x) does it, but imho for levels, is a bit..no vertex normals real support unless use certain tricky way, but that means build the thing there: I'd rather prefer it imported well the v. normals.

So, b3d tool with good support...dunno...Max free pipeline, but that means max. Not free tool by any mean.

Windsoft...yup, cool thing. But imho in no way of FSRAD quality.

And...I guess... as I said fsrad partitioning is not in any tool...So, if you base on it, we're speaking on a many times better tool

That's for sure!

Anyway, that other tool,(wind..) yep, it did seem it could make lightmaps, and was free. Lol, I tend to forget things, lately. But nothing near fsrad.

I'd prefer allways the OBJ+obj way, is more support for every package out there...I haven't tested yet the raybaker plugin from macouno http://www.alienhelpdesk.com/index.php?id=22

..but as Blender does not have multi UV, that's sure a bake to channel1. That means only OBJ+OBj way.

Well, a lightmapper from you would be quite welcome

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Sep 15, 2005 6:15 pm

Zat is poop. dhenton9000 you are wondering vhy zere arent any tuts on lightmapping yet, arent you? Ze reason is: No vay around propietary softvare (gile[s] , max) yet. At ze time vhere someone publishes an OPEN SOURCE lightmapper vhich supports funking curved surfaces, i promise (funking serious) to release a tutorial on zis workflow as soon as i have got it working.
(ze anonymous german vith ze strong accent, hehe)