hi there! i have beginner questions...

now i have also done a lightmapping for the first time. i did an inside level, i put up lights and did F4 lightmap. the result was really good, i'm happy with this.

are there any helpful tips and information about lightmapping an outside level? i mean outside is actually bright but when i put up a house and do lightmapping it is totally dark inside (logically). so do i have to put up a light in every house? what would be the smartest way for that? with a lamp and a lightsource?
does anybody have an idea what should be remembered / mentioned when performing an outside lightmapping?

the last time i did an outside lightmapping the roof of my wooden hut was missing. inside the houses it was way too dark.
i don't want to put lights i need to light the houses outside in the sun. what happens if i do?

what is the difference between F1 lightmapping and F4 lightmapping?
why couldn't i perform a second lightmapping? i realized the lights were wrong, so i deleted them (exept the first one) and put up new ones, did a lightmap but it didn't work.

thanks for the ideas if you have some

I will let our lighting experts chime in here first.

Decide what mood you want first. Dark, bright, grey, blood red.

Never use full color lights, Turn saturation down on them to prevent them nasty bright spots.
Play with the range of a dim light and start off small like 100 - 200 for a table lamp, 500 for a pourch lamp, 700 for a light pole lamp, even 50 for a candle.

Play with the sliders in the Tab TAb mode of test game. change the skys, and notice the color change in ambient. Makes a difference and can add that just right touch. It effect inside stuff also right now. So its part of the factor to think about.

That will get you started.

We have some really talented people that will chime in and continue this for you.

PM sent back.

Information :- when I was playing with the light mapping.. this was just before the GG release...

1. If you place a dynamic light with default value setting... it lights up quite a big area... You can also see it without light mapping...

2. If you change the light to a static light with default value setting... you do not see it until you do the light mapping...
and it does not light up a very big area.. so I had to increase the value quite a lot to get a good effect...

3. If you change model/texture after you have done light mapping... you will see the old model when restart test game...
you have to press Tab - 2 times and then change the lighting from PRE-BAKE to REALTIME.. to see the new model..
Then you can do light mapping again..

4. If you light map and your model distorts/stretches then try using this in your FPE file..

resetlimbmatrix = 1

If this does not help then you can set your model to be non-static and the light mapper will ignore it...
so the model will only use real time lighting..

Thank you J_C: All very good tips and do work.

thank you guys, this is the kind of information that i needed, i will use this when i do the next lightmapping!!

Thanks. I haven't even tried light mapping yet because I didn't really understand what it was.

Before you lightmap your level, I would advise saving the level as a different name.

For example, if your level is called,

AwesomeLevel.fpm

I would change save another version called

AwesomeLevel_LM.fpm

The reason for this is, once your level is lightmapped, you can't currently undo it. You can change the lightmapping on the level, but, you can't remove it.

It's always good practice to save multiple versions of the same level when changing things, to ensure that you don't lose anything or to avoid levels becoming corrupt for whatever reason.

Cheers

Jay.

Hi,
I added a realistic 3d model in my level and I tried to lightmap it. Anyone knows how much time it takes to lightmap a good 3d model? During operation, during the 23x24 Lightmapping grid, the lightmapping appears like blocked. If I check the task manager I can see that Gameguru lightmapper.exe is taking nearly 30% of cpu and it works but after 1 hour lightmapping doesnt finish. The area of lightmapping appeart to be quite near and good.
Any suggestion? Tnx

It normally takes mine about 20 seconds to lightmap a model house for example ... Scaling the model using the fpe takes much longer and uses more of the grid...