Lighting & Modular Architecture Problem- UE4/3DS Max
polycounter lvl 2
Hi guys,
I’m having some trouble with an environment I’ve been working on. Part of the building uses modular wall pieces but for the life of me I can’t get them all lit seamlessly.
My first assumption would be variance in the vertex normals but for all I can tell they are fine. The walls have adequate light maps that don’t seem to be a problem. Removing the normal maps doesn’t help either so they aren’t part of it.
It’s almost like UE4 is completely shadowing each whole object by distance from the light sources.
Is there a trick to making modular buildings that I am
missing, or a setting in UE4 I don’t know about?
Here's a pic to illustrate, lighting quality set to High.
Replies
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?94478-Lighting-seams-between-modular-environment-pieces
https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?88952-Lets-make-Lightmass-EPIC-(and-understandable)
Looks like in this case I'm going to have to bite the bullet and merge my meshes.
1. Combine your meshes in unreal using their experimental tool, Merge Actors. Turn it on in Editor Preferences>Experimental***. Then it's found hidden in the menu Window>Merge Actors. This might fix your problems most of the way. We believe this happens because each mesh will be lightmass rendered on a separate thread, somehow causing discrepancies.
***As of Unreal 4.12 Merge Actors is no longer experimental. From Epic: "The Merge Actor functionality is no longer an experimental feature of the Engine, and can now be found under Window/Developer/Miscellaneous"
2. In WorldSettings>Lightmass>IndirectLightingSmoothness play with a value between .5 and 1.
3. Pixel Snap your lightmap uvs to the grid. This is time intensive and annoying, but may help.