UE3 - UT3 Wierd Lightmap shadows

[alexhigh]

Hi, I posted this problem over at the epic forums but nobody seems to know how to solve this:

It's not a problem I've had before but it seems I'm unable to export simple meshes, (such as this sphere) from Maya 8.5 over to UT3 without getting stepped shadows generated in the lightmap, I've tried a number of different UV approaches - none of which seem to give me a different result.

I have also re-installed UT3, installed maya 7 and tried the same operation & also updated my graphics drivers. The only way I got a normal result was by using a mesh created by someone else, (DGunreal) which was a skysphere incidentally.

At the moment I'm really unable to get onto building more interesting things than sphere's until I solve this

Please someone help me this is driving me nuts

 

[DonJeffrey]

Could it have something to do with smoothing groups?

 

[Hourences]

The unwrap of that mesh isn't all too perfect, you should try with a dead simple cube and absolutely make sure nothing overlaps in that UV set, unlike this sphere.

Are you sure that Maya even exports the second UV set? Maybe you just get stepped shadows because it is loosing the second uv set during export.

 

[alexhigh]

Thanks for the reply Don

Could it have something to do with smoothing groups?

Well I looked into this, (maya doesn't have smoothing groups per-se). But it does have hard or soft normals & I tried both with the same results apart from obviously the normals looking different.

Thanks, Hourances. I took your advice and tried a cube which actually seems to shadow naturally with smooth gradients.

1. Cube with smooth gradients
2. One of my spheres with wierd dark shadows
3. A DGunreal skysphere with the lightsource inside (the normals face inwards)

I'm still not sure whats going on sphere-wise

Are you sure that Maya even exports the second UV set? Maybe you just get stepped shadows because it is loosing the second uv set during export.

Yeah it does seem to export (I think normally). The UV's show up in the SM editor exactly as they should. I also get the same sort of shadow results with UT's UV-map generator thingy.

 

[Hourences]

The UV on 2 looks less dense than the UV on 3.

 

[alexhigh]

The UV on 2 looks less dense than the UV on 3.

Yea the DGskysphere just has more poly's around U-axis than mine and in total around 200 poly's more.

 

[alexhigh]

Well I'm out of ideas on this for now, think i'll watch some telly and play a game to get away from this eternal hell of making sphere's for a while. In the mean time would some kind fellow reading this, email me a simple sphere exported out of their 3D app in .ase format. It might help me narrow down where the problem is coming from.

Roughly 750 poly's would be helpful with maybe a second UV channel, doesn't have to be fancy or anything.

You can send it to: [email protected]

 

[3DTexturizer]

Your answer could be on another forum, or at least someone that could help you-

www.polycount.com

 

[alexhigh]

Your answer could be on another forum, or at least someone that could help you-

www.polycount.com

Cheers, I'll give that site a go aswell