Re-learning Age Building

[Calena]

To add a bit to what Tach said, the best baking results are achieved by baking the map as large as possible. I bake all of my lightmaps at 2048 x 2048. For images where I don't need the final result that large, I scale it down in my favorite image editor after running it through yet another anti-aliasing pass.

I'm fussy, I prefer natural looking shadows that aren't obvious. When I walk in a room, I never think first, "look at the shadows!" If the lighting/shading is done right, it should not be the first thing noticed in a scene. I don't bake black shadows, I use Constant QMC rather than adaptive and I prefer a softness factor of 3 or more; but that's up to the tastes of each artist .

[Justintime9]

Oh cool. I'll have a look at that. It looks like probably the biggest problem is cubic shadows. I did fix those weird shadows in the screenshot though. I had forgotten to move the sprites before baking it, and they were casting shadows. A larger texture does work quite well too.

[Justintime9]

Ok... next issue. Regarding lightmaps I believe. I've just re-lightmapped the office, and it looks great in game... EXCEPT, when I back up (Middle Mouse Button), the lightmap suddenly brightens up. (or gets darker, not sure which.) So it's not stable. It changes every time I click with the mouse! Here's basically how it looks. It's kind of fuzzy, but I needed a video to really illustrate the problem.

[Calena]

The lightmap itself can't be the cause of the problem since it's nothing more than a texture. Look for a setting you used when baking the lightmap that you forgot to turn off, or possibly there is an actual lamp that you didn't page out and it's exporting with the age.

It's a pain having to turn everything on and off when baking the lighting and it's very easy to miss a setting, so I keep two copies of my .blend files. One has all the lights turned on for baking, and the other has them off . It makes life easier for me.

[Justintime9]

But isn't it important to leave the lamps in the age so the avatar is properly lit?

[Calena]

But isn't it important to leave the lamps in the age so the avatar is properly lit?

Sorry, I didn't realize you were using the same lighting for both the avatar and baking light maps. I use separate lighting for each. In my experience, the lighting that works well on the avatar doesn't work so well on the age and vice versa. So I do export the lighting for the avatar and in some particular circumstances, I may export run-time lighting set to be exclusive to specific objects. But as far as the lighting I use for baking the lightmaps, no. I don't export those with the age and as a general rule, I turn off all lighting, shading, and tracing on my textures. The lightmaps are meant to replace run-time lighting, thereby saving cpu power needs and allowing me to build bigger, more interactive ages without adding to lag.

[Justintime9]

Ah, I gotcha. I actually did do that for one of my ages (because there was a ridiculous overabundance of lights used for the lightmap, so it would have caused lag in game.) So I see where you're coming from. Speaking of shading and all that, another problem I've noticed are that the avatar's shadow always looks really deformed on the walls. I could post a picture if it would help, but it basically just doesn't look like it should in game.

[Justintime9]

Ok, nevermind the Shadows problem for now. I'm trying to get the lighting right next to the lamps to look really bright. And for the most part the lightmap is coming out good, but it's just not POWERFUL enough right next to the wall that should be lit up really bright. So I manually added a bit more "flare" to that area... but it didn't exactly show up like I wanted it to.

Here's the modified part of the lightmap:



And here's how it looks in game:



See how all it does is show the gray wall texture? I'm thinking that's just something about the lightmap settings (Multiply vs. Any of the other ones,) But isn't there a way to make that area really pop?

[tachzusamm]

This post might help to understand what the different options do:
viewtopic.php?p=54992#p54992

To make the wall brighter / self-emitting: Try moving the slider. ^^
The Amb-Slider. Under Shaders. In Material buttons. In Shading(F5).
Drag it to the right, export, and compare.
And, as I said in the post mentioned above, don't forget to check the Amb button for the lightmap texture in Map To.