Strange stepped shadows (Ue3)
Hi everyone
I've been trying to solve this problem for almost a week now with little success, as far as I can tell something must be occurring with the Unreal editor that causes me to have stepped shadows in my lightmaps & I think it must be happening during the import process:
The only time I'm seeing a sphere such as this actually generate the correct lightmaps is when I used a skysphere from a fella called DGunreal. The mesh had been imported into mypackage a very long time ago, it has roughly the same UV setup as anything I've tried to export from Maya 7/8.5 or XSI 7 and it shadows in smooth gradients (the sphere furthest to the right):
I have tried the same import operation with other meshes aswell, with varying degrees of success. As far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be a noticeable issue when working with sharp edged objects but when I try to generate a lightmap for smooth curvy objects I get these terrible blocky shadows. I would go through all the different things I've tried so far but it might make this post rather long, but here are two links to the forums that I previously posted on:
1. http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=656316
followed by:-
2. http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?p=2247400#post2247400
At this stage I'm trying to localise where things are going wrong. It's possible that I'm doing something odd UV-wise, but I reckon thats unlikely because even if my UV's are slightly off I should end up with odd artifacts or distortions rather than blocky shadows.
It would be a great help to me if someone here could try a couple of simple operations for me to find out if something is wrong with my Ue3 setup. The first and simplest would be if someone could try rebuilding the lighting in my simple unreal scene:
http://www.alexhighland.com/DM-0shadow.rar (331kb)
Just extract it to: My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Unpublished\CookedPC\CustomMaps & do a 'build all' from Ue3. Report back here with results
If it still shadows bad on this rather helpful person's computer then we go to step 2. Which is importing the .ase model into a simple scene created by the heroic person mentioned above:
http://www.alexhighland.com/simple_sphere.rar (17.1kb)
If it still shadows badly after step 2 then It's something to do with my model/UV. Which would really dissapoint me at this stage I have to admit.
I don't ask much considering this is my first post here do I
On the other hand someone here may take one look at the above screenshots and know immediatly what the problem is. God I'd really love that to happen
I've been trying to solve this problem for almost a week now with little success, as far as I can tell something must be occurring with the Unreal editor that causes me to have stepped shadows in my lightmaps & I think it must be happening during the import process:
The only time I'm seeing a sphere such as this actually generate the correct lightmaps is when I used a skysphere from a fella called DGunreal. The mesh had been imported into mypackage a very long time ago, it has roughly the same UV setup as anything I've tried to export from Maya 7/8.5 or XSI 7 and it shadows in smooth gradients (the sphere furthest to the right):
I have tried the same import operation with other meshes aswell, with varying degrees of success. As far as I can tell there doesn't seem to be a noticeable issue when working with sharp edged objects but when I try to generate a lightmap for smooth curvy objects I get these terrible blocky shadows. I would go through all the different things I've tried so far but it might make this post rather long, but here are two links to the forums that I previously posted on:
1. http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=656316
followed by:-
2. http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?p=2247400#post2247400
At this stage I'm trying to localise where things are going wrong. It's possible that I'm doing something odd UV-wise, but I reckon thats unlikely because even if my UV's are slightly off I should end up with odd artifacts or distortions rather than blocky shadows.
It would be a great help to me if someone here could try a couple of simple operations for me to find out if something is wrong with my Ue3 setup. The first and simplest would be if someone could try rebuilding the lighting in my simple unreal scene:
http://www.alexhighland.com/DM-0shadow.rar (331kb)
Just extract it to: My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Unpublished\CookedPC\CustomMaps & do a 'build all' from Ue3. Report back here with results
If it still shadows bad on this rather helpful person's computer then we go to step 2. Which is importing the .ase model into a simple scene created by the heroic person mentioned above:
http://www.alexhighland.com/simple_sphere.rar (17.1kb)
If it still shadows badly after step 2 then It's something to do with my model/UV. Which would really dissapoint me at this stage I have to admit.
I don't ask much considering this is my first post here do I
On the other hand someone here may take one look at the above screenshots and know immediatly what the problem is. God I'd really love that to happen