Guild of Writers

I've been working on a small office age, planning to lightmap it and put it into URU,
here's a top view:
here's the fireplace:
Now, it looks fine in render, and Lightmaping works... however, it won't export because the panels I use for the wall is each an individual cube, and since I joined all of them so I could lightmap them, it's too much verts for one material to hold, and however much materials I split it into, it never exports correctly!
here's a single panel (I duplicated it to make the walls):
Now, how can I export it without it saying that there's too many verts?
I would just keep them seperate, but then I'd have to lightmap them each individually, which would take forever!
Or, I could just make a texture, making it look 3D (by using the burn tool), but then it wouldn't look 3D from certain perspective, and that would take the realism. Or, I could forget the panels altogether, and just have a regular wall, but it looks so awesome with them!
Anyone know how I could get it to work?

Justin, for starters do you really need the faces on the side? If not... delete them. If it's not visible anywhere, then delete the back of the box too. I suggest you just keep the part on the inside of the office that is visible. At least that's what I'm doing all the time. Deleting all faces and vertices a player can't see anyway.

P.s. de lightmap looks great!

WHy not use Blender to take a "snapshot" of the block, then use that texture and a single face but UV mapped instead.
That'll save you heaps on performance

Since it's a small age; I agree with Marcello. Remove the side and back planes. Then after piecing the panels together; remove duplicate verts. If it was a larger age; I'd go with your second choice of baking the lightmap into a texture and placing it on a flat wall. Add to that a flickering light source from the fireplace and floor reflection and the lack of 'true' 3D wouldn't be much of a detraction. Who's going to put their face against the wall anyway?

Comment on the lightmap. Overall; it looks really good but, your secondary lighting is bit too bright on the walls; the floor looks about right.

Justin, if the panels can only be seen from one side, then delete those faces of the cubes (as has been suggested). There is no reason to have the whole cube if it will never be visable. Think economical. Leave only the mesh that explorers can see, never the part that they can not see. It will help your performace greatly.

And, sometimes you'll just have to bite the bullet and make all those light maps. I feel for you as I've had to do it myself....but it's worth the work once you are done!

Ah, thx guys, I'll try that
Also, about making the lighting right on the walls, how would I do that without changing it on the floor too?

btw, is there a way to make the room look how it does in render, without lightmaping, so I could add flickering lights?

Frankly, even without removing all the superflous side and back faces of the panels, I can't see how they could possibly use up that many vertices -- are you sure you do not use a larger-than-sufficient number of faces for their concave surfaces?

The lightmap is fixed, yes, so if you want dynamic shadows cast, you will have to toss out the lightmap and instead tick the "Shadbuf" buttons, for the materials on any objects you want to cast dynamic shadows in-game. (Hmm, could this be another property that might make the same material-to-object transition that the old ZOffs thing did?)

Jojon wrote:(Hmm, could this be another property that might make the same material-to-object transition that the old ZOffs thing did?)

If there was a button that I could use for per-object shadows, I would make the change, but there isn't one.

Not sure if I committed this to SVN or not, but the next release of the plugin will have a per-object AlcScript option (visual.shadowcast) to allow per-object shadows if you don't want all objects to have shadows when they share a material.

Paradox wrote:If there was a button that I could use for per-object shadows, I would make the change, but there isn't one.

That's why we need to make 'Uru Blender'. (or at least some modern version of 'Uru Properties'/Prp GUI)

Ok, well, I exported it, and it didn't complain about too many verts! Yay! I then linked to it in uru and... nothing, it's all blue, I can't even see my avi! when I link back to relto, relto is all blue too!! I had to quit the game!!!! The only thing the console complained about was something about elasticity which shouldn't apply because I don't have any kickables