Yep, it's another UDK static mesh lighting issue

Soul_of_Solace

I know that everyone has seen a ton of these, but I'm honestly stumped because I've gotten my static mesh to look great in the Static Mesh Editor window, but in the level, it's not looking so good when I build the lighting. Yeah, I definitely have two UV channels as well.

Mesh in Static mesh editor:


Mesh in the level:


Is this a Light Map Resolution issue maybe? How much can I up the res before performance becomes an issue?

Here's my lightmap UV set just in case:


Thanks!

osman

Your lightmap resolution is probably too low. Some of those thin islands don't even get 1 pixel if you have 32x32.

This is what UDk has to work with, this is your lightmap:


So the big blotches you see there is half a pixel

So try out a bigger lightmap, oer perhaps vertex lighting( just set resolution to 0 to turn on vertex)

Soul_of_Solace

Hah! Thanks for putting it in perspective with that tiny image, it all makes sense now. Definitely going to need a bigger lightmap then for all the little "thin island UV" parts of the mesh, especially since this mesh is pretty big and prominent in the scene.

ZacD

I believe there is a button for light map resolution density on the view port, use it!

Soul_of_Solace

^^Oh yeah, that too. I just wasn't sure if it was a lightmap res issue at first (thought I was having FBX import issues at first because I was having weird smoothing issues as well, but think I figured that one out occurring due to unnecessary Triangulation on export or the scale of my model (maya default scale is tiny compared to UDK).

osman

I really recommend trying out vertex bake first. Sometimes it's good enough( hell, sometimes it's even better, no compression issues)

GL!

tristamus

There is also a Lightmap Resolution Override that needs to be checked, to make sure that isn't affecting your lightmaps.

Sandro

Yeah vertex lighting gives quite nice results if geometry is constructed accordingly. Unfortunately it can't be streamed in and out of memory, so it's constant overhead.

Soul_of_Solace

Vertex baking is something that can be done entirely within UDK these days right? I ask because the Vertex Color tool is broken on my copy of Maya for some reason. I'll definitely take a look at it because I'll need to try and change up duplicated assets (for instance, the one above will be duplicated a few times in the scene) so they don't look exactly the same.

EDIT: This is the link that explains UDK's paint vertex tools right? http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MeshPaintReference.html

McGreed

There is a good tutorial here from Eat3D you can watch about it:

http://eat3d.com/free/vertex_painting