Static mesh vertex lighting

[CyMek]

Is there any way to light staticmeshes without using vertex lighting other than going into maya/Max and making a lightmap? If there is not one currently, is there any way someone could write a plugin for Unrealed to light meshes as though they were BSP? I realize that it would take a very long time to build the lighting on meshes, but I think the result may be worth it.

 

[flo0tz]

oh i wishes but you never know...

 

[rich_zap]

YES, i just found out how to do this for my map and its simple, just go into your staticMeshes Properties, go into Display and let bStaticLighting be False. The only problem ive found with it is that it doesnt block the light from sunlight actors when the mesh is obscurred by terrain but it helped me fix some nasty Ued made SM lighting problems.

 

[Kantham]

well

after all , when you make a meshe in maya , be sure to have many subdivision , they are the lighning result on your meshes
and don't forget to manualy Triangulate your meshes before exporting them @ ued

i just started with maya , i have done this meshe not long ago , look at the ligning on it , it's awesomme

400 triangle on a meshe is perfect for a meshe of this size

 

[rich_zap]

yes i agree maya made meshes do texture better, take a look at http://angelmapper.com/tutorials/uedmeshes.htm for a reason why.

 

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

What the hell? Making meshes in maya doesn't mean your lighting results are better than max. It's what your doing, i.e having more subdivisions. Max users tend to control the polygons a lot more closely, thus have less subdivisions...

 

[Thewiruz]

 

[rich_zap]

i was reffering to Ued made static meshes been worse han maya, nothing to do with max. I dont have max but i dont doubt its a good program.

 

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

Well, that's a given as UED isn't a polygon creation program... it's always noted to not make static meshes in UED even though it's possible.

 

[W0RF]

As much as baked lighting appears to suck, that's the way it's done these days to ease strain on the engine.

 

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

Baked lighting is awesome. The only problem with it, is that lower resolution textures are often use thus the final outcome is a blurry skin. Increasing the resolution fixes that but it uses up more VRam. The best fix is simply a better shading engine (Most engines just use Phong shading... 3DMark2005 doesn't, it has individual shading models per texture). So baked lighting when done correctly, can look very good ...

 

[W0RF]

So baked lighting when done correctly, can look very good ...

And here we hit the wall...

 

[JonAzz]

And here we hit the wall...

ow...


I'd rather bake textures on to my maps than use ued to do it... just the problem with thats is you need to create most of you map in max/maya...

 

[Hourences]

its not that simple. Baking everything is really hard to do and goes against the principe of UED (eg reusing meshes)
Next to that the lightmap sometimes translate wrongly in the engine (different color) and other crap, just doesnt work well

For experimental stuff its great, im doing radiosity lighting in ut like that right now but for anything more you are going to hit some really serious walls

 

[[SAS]Solid Snake]

Depends Hourences. In the case of Chaos Engine where the entire map are built up with static meshes using this method is fine. How ever you are right that it does go against using the principles of using static meshes in the first place ... yes. The properly part is what I was mentioning 'when done correctly'. Although it would be entire possible to export the entire map -> 3DSMax and place lighting positions in UED so that Max can be aligned. But even then, you can get rather interesting results... with mismatched things.

 

[JonAzz]

The castle is CTF-Magma has baked lighting and sometimes that gets all funny... but another map (can't think of the name.... its like underwater and one big SM) has all baked texturing and looks great, no problem there though.

I've messed with it a bit and the engine doesnt like it when you mix a bunch of different things together, don't know why...