Lightmaps to vertex lighting
polycounter lvl 12
Ok so this specifically refers to the port of quake to the DS (http://quake.drunkencoders.com/)
the engine itself creates Vertex lighting based on the original lightmaps that quake itself used.
Problem being that the results are quite fugly.
i'm trying to think of a way to combat this and not produce too much of a preformance hit.
Currently i'm thinking adding more geometry into the map where i want there to be an edge (so lighting is harsh, but result more predictable/controllable). Problem being that will require alot of guestimation and legwork for nice solutions. Also It may not work.
Any Ideas, Suggestions Or Comments?
Any Help is appreciated greatly
the engine itself creates Vertex lighting based on the original lightmaps that quake itself used.
Problem being that the results are quite fugly.
i'm trying to think of a way to combat this and not produce too much of a preformance hit.
Currently i'm thinking adding more geometry into the map where i want there to be an edge (so lighting is harsh, but result more predictable/controllable). Problem being that will require alot of guestimation and legwork for nice solutions. Also It may not work.
Any Ideas, Suggestions Or Comments?
Any Help is appreciated greatly
Replies
you could try to bake a llighting solution to a bitmap an try to match it with this thingie http://www.rpmanager.com/plugins/MapToVColor.htm ... never used it though. but well vertex colours are quite predictable so it wont be too hard to guess where to add some geometry...
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Specifically i'm looking for any thoughts on how to deal with an engine that does this, with this being to only way to get light in the engine.
the way i thought of is strait forward but haven't tested so thought i'd ask to se if anyone has better ideas.
Thanks for the info though.
I don't think you're going to find any kind of automated solution.
Maybe you could write a maxscript to convert the lightmaps into actual lighting, then use the radiosity mesher to add more vertices in high-contrast areas... but then you'd have to decimate that result, which won't be purdy.
This is probably your best bet. I'd just go and add the geo/verts by hand. I can think of a couple ways to automate it, but they would be pretty intense, and slow, and would take a lot of guess work and scripting expertise (some sort of image anaylsis routine to determine where the shadows are and then create surfaces from them, etc.). You could also make polygons for the shadows and make them dark/transparent, instead of carving into the actual geo (not sure about DS specs though, which would be better).
What steps are you looking to do to reproduce / tweak the lightmaps with the current solution?
IE as an example: Export model from game, import in package, add tweak vertices, export, light in engine?