Advanced High Quality Lightmapping

Epicness has been produced.


Awesome lightmapping method:

HaloCE's Lightmapping:

Awesome lightmapping method:

HaloCE's Lightmapping:

Awesome Lightmapping method:

HaloCE's Lightmapping:

Awesome Lightmapping method:

HaloCE's lightmapping method:


No competition.

As you can see. My method has:

• Raytracing
• Shadows for objects with transparency
• Softer GI
• Dithering
• Self illumination
• Shadows for scenery
• Physically correct lighting

Some things to know:

All of my major lightmaps are at 2048x2048. Minor lightmaps are at 1024x1024. Dithering is using the Floyd-Steinberg method. Lightmaps are in-fact baked in 3ds max 2009.

This tutorial was made with the use of VRAY and Ather, both are included in the tutorial


Download Tutorial

http://files.h2vista.net/tutorials/d...apping_tut.rar

I predict some good things for Halo1 in the year 2009...

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Originally Posted by Kornman00

I predict some good things for Halo1 in the year 2009...

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wow.....awesome lightmaping method looks......awesome.

Holy doodle that arouses my noodle.

Did any more noodle arouses occur?

My noodle has long been broken.

Sorry to hear that.

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Originally Posted by T1xAnton

My noodle is long been broken.

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:raise:

FireScythe has been staring at this page for a while...

Approximately how long would it take to run nice light maps like this for 7 multiplayer maps all about 15000 polygons? Trying to decide if its worth it...

Hasn't this been done several times before? Looks great none the less.

Jahrain, and I made a Maxscript to take the location of the sun from a sky tag, convert the radians to degrees, and then create a fully automatic light positioning method to mimic it. Then you could just texture bake.

I'm not sure if this is your method, since I haven't watched the video yet, but it worked like a charm. I lost the .ms though. :|

Using Jahrain's lightmapping tool this was done quite a while back, though no major tutorials have been released. I played around with the same concept back in H2V, and a bit in CE. It's all been a self-learning kinda deal, with no docs or help from anyone, so this is going to be really helpful to getting better lighting into Halo!

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Originally Posted by DEEhunter

FireScythe has been staring at this page for a while...

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It's because this threads damn sexy :haw:. Tut looks good to me. Only restrictions with it is because you don't use the textured mesh you can't get any colour bleeding/reflections/refractions from the surfaces, and you can't put transparency on ladders and such because the UV's and materials are different on lightmaps. Oh and just incase people get the wrong idea, your not restricted to VRay, you can use whatever lighting techniques your comfortable with :D.

Btw, you don't have to rename your imported gbxmodels, the script uses what you have selected, so your renaming it to only end up deleting it afterwards :p.

I dont have to re-name?! Gah!

I really like the instancing that his script does. Ours required a ghetto "3d screenshot" of the mesh to do the process.

Coolio. I'll do the tutorial later.

DEEhunter, you said something about "later tutorials" explaining how to add self-illumination for objects like teleporters? I would really appreciate that.

I followed DEEHunter's tutorial using mental ray and ran into this problem is there any type of fix?

http://www.xfire.com/screenshots/dontu/ss_file-216bace00d14ff43a45792

You need to increase the padding value when you render to texture so that when the image is scaled up/down the black background doesnt seep in.

show us self illum or gtfo!

just kidding. this will come in handy tho. great work, mate.

~Scoob

Gah. Ill do the illum tut after my finals. That would be in a week or two.

Yeah, I was going to say that using max for lightmapping isn't a great idea if you have lighted interiors for your map.

I've long wondered how to get materials to emit light.

Now that's the shit right there son.

Uh, didn't Jahrain post a tutorial on how to do this a year or two ago? Plus, I've been mentioning it regularly. Oh well, glad to see it's resurfaced.

Nah this is a much better less annoying version.


Also, theoretically, if you uv mapped 2 channels instead of 1 for your bsp and gave the extra one normal maps and full materials, like your terrain and what not, you could render displacement baked into the lightmaps, but I'm not sure on that. Could be a way to get all the bumps in the level to look lit rather than having to flashlight them or put a dynamic light near them. You may even be able to do it without a seperate uv channel, I'm not sure.

IF so, you could zbrush or mudbox just your terrain, project render it as normals to your bsp terrain models uvws and apply it to your scene where the ground map material is located. Basically fake some sexy rocky shit happening on the cliffs and what not.

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Originally Posted by p0lar_bear

Yeah, I was going to say that using max for lightmapping isn't a great idea if you have lighted interiors for your map.

I've long wondered how to get materials to emit light.

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The only method I know of is using the Advanced Lighting Override material with scanline and radiosity. Replace the emissive material with this, whack up the luminance scale (I usually put it around 150 for starters) and set the self illumination to a colour.
http://www.kxcad.net/autodesk/3ds_ma..._material.html

i like your thoughts, dano. i bet the bumps could be achieved by messing with the materials in max. i mean, instead of a fully white material, you do something else like add a bump map, reflection properties, illum maps, etc. i guess if we experiment with it, we'll find out :)

but, DEE did say that self illum had something to do with max materials i think. but we have to wait for his tut... :(


~Scoob

Actually. You may use things like omni and so on. But vray has the best self illumination method I have seen.
http://www.9jcg.com/tutorials/Floren...tal_ray_01.jpg
And even bitmap based lighting.
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150S...paper_lamp.png

E: works now. For "renderer" slot, had to choose "------------". Sapien crashes if I do 2048x2048 lightmaps tho. Cool. Awesome. 50x faster than lightmaps in tool.

Made a new tut.
It is VERY brief. But it goes over baking and having objects of self illumination. Baked in low quality. I was rendering lightmaps for yoyo on my other screen so there may be a few skips.
http://www.filedropper.com/lightmappingtut

Mirrors of this will be appreciated.
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/625...1720441061.png

I must be the only person who thinks this looks terrible.

I mean, yeah it's more realistic but I want it to look like Halo 1, not something it's not (and the realistic shadows look so out of place with the rest of the H1 graphics) :saddowns:

nice video :)

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Originally Posted by n00b1n8R

I must be the only person who thinks this looks terrible.

I mean, yeah it's more realistic but I want it to look like Halo 1, not something it's not (and the realistic shadows look so out of place with the rest of the H1 graphics) :saddowns:

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So its too good for halo? :o

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Originally Posted by n00b1n8R

I must be the only person who thinks this looks terrible.

I mean, yeah it's more realistic but I want it to look like Halo 1, not something it's not (and the realistic shadows look so out of place with the rest of the H1 graphics) :saddowns:

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who says only halo1 canon mods would use this? I would've liked modern combat better with this tbh.

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Originally Posted by SnaFuBAR

who says only halo1 canon mods would use this? I would've liked modern combat better with this tbh.

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Nobody.

I'm just saying that I think it looks odd with all the other graphics (especially the real-time shadows).

Mirror:
http://rapidshare.com/files/223001741/Lightmapping_tut.rar

Bad mirror =/ Use filefront!

This is cool though, I didn't notice this ever.

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Originally Posted by Syuusuke

Bad mirror =/ Use filefront!

This is cool though, I didn't notice this ever.

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Its not bad if you have Rapidshare.. :highfive:

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Originally Posted by DEEhunter

So its too good for halo? :o

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I believe he was referring to artistic differences made from this feature :P

but yah as Snaf said, shitty little canyon bloodgulch cliff texture maps wont benefit these lighting effects 100%.

Urban maps ftw though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by n00b1n8R

I must be the only person who thinks this looks terrible.

I mean, yeah it's more realistic but I want it to look like Halo 1, not something it's not (and the realistic shadows look so out of place with the rest of the H1 graphics) :saddowns:

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Well it's by no means just for realistic, high quality lighting, it just gives you more artistic control and a faster way to getting things right.
The tutorials alright but theres no use of scenery and such as there was in the other tutorial.

is the tutorial from the first post still available?
can't find it on filefront
.....is gone....