Need UDK lighting/shadow help

SpawnAgain

Hey!
I am brand new to UDK, and i have just started texturing an environment I'm building for a school assignment and the shadows that join my static meshes are really blotchy. I've only made 2 textures so far, the walls and floor. I have done a bunch of UDK lighting tutorials about light bleeding and distance between UV's on the the second UV set of the mesh & what I should be increasing or decreasing to affect the shadow sharpness, and nothing seem to me working. Its also happening to any UDK assets I have in my environment. I have a feeling its something to do with the UDK AO being built but I'm not sure what to do to fix it. Anybody have any idea why this is still happening???



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Arctemple

Lucky you, easy fix! =P
Assuming your lightmapped uvs (your second uv set) are mapped out correctly, the only problem you are having here is that the ligtmap resolution is too low. I think it defaults at like 64 or something, which is fine for smaller assets.
All you have to do is double click your asset in the content browser and change the 'lightmap resolution size' to something like 128. You don't have to go crazy on the size, you can test that it renders correctly after you bake the lighting again.

SpawnAgain

yeah that's what i thought it was at first but all the static meshes in that shot have a light map res of 128. *shrug*

Arctemple

Hmmmm interesting. Well that was my best guess =(
If you can't figure it out, feel free to send me the scene and the upks and I'll take a look at it. Up to you.

JoshWilkinson

I would boost it to an ungodly amount, something like 2048, just to see how much it affects the scene. If 2048 fixes the lighting, then you know it's a light map/ light bake error. If not, then we know it's something else.

Also, can you take a quick screen of your second UV channel for the light maps?

cdevens

Could be your SSAO settings.

blankslatejoe

if it's not the SSAO (you can toggle that on/off in view>worldproperties or something like that), then it could be that lightmass is just bouncing around your lights too much and washing things out. Try baking without lightmass as a test (build>lighting>uncheck lightmass). If that's the problem, then you can play with the bounce settings either globally or on a light-by-light basis to control the bounce/bleed.

letronrael

It can be so many things. It can bu your second channel that is not properly unwrapped. It can be the fact that you didn't assign the good UV channel to use for the lightmaps in the MESH editor.

IMO it is not a SSAO issue at all cause I see its working in your picture above.

I honestly think you just forgot to inscrease the resolution of your lightmaps.

JamesWild

I think it's the SSAO. Very characteristic of UDK, that "everything that's not convex can have a big black smudge" post process. Most scenes look far better with it off.