First UDK scene [ Weird light issue ]

EMC3D

Hey all, making the transition from UE3 to UDK and doing a summer project before I start my final year at UNI.

The scene is in early stages, but I want to sort this issue out early so I don't run into it later.

This is the preview I get before baking ( And what I want to achieve, but smoother of course on the bake for the scene )



And this is what I get when it has been baked.



I have lightmaps set up quickly, but there isn't even any sign of the window or the other shadow details coming from the window being projected onto the floor. It seems the light isn't going through the window ;\.

Any tips on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Visceral

I thought the second shot looked much better. But if you want thoose hard light beams i advice you to either make light beam meshes and turn up the lightmap resolution of your floor mesh. If you have CSG brush you have to turn it down.

EMC3D

I'm using all static meshes. And the window shadow is really important for the scene, it's gonna make it pop more, I don't mind about the beam shadows, but the window one is yeah, a must have.

Baking would naturally smooth out the shadows, but at the moment i'm not getting the ones I want from the bake.

Daniel Doerksen

the problem is you lightmap resoution on your floor. if u look at your other shadows on the floor you can see how soft they are, and the window shadows blur out completely, you need a much higher lightmap resolution, or make the main exterior light dynamic.

EMC3D

Daniel Doerksen wrote: »

the problem is you lightmap resoution on your floor. if u look at your other shadows on the floor you can see how soft they are, and the window shadows blur out completely, you need a much higher lightmap resolution, or make the main exterior light dynamic.

Thanks for the info Daniel, I changed it to a Dominant movable light and it's kept the baked in shadows, which is awesome. But they're all jaggy and what not, and this is with a lightmap resolution of around 256 for the floor and walls.

And now i've just lost the left side of setting names in the light propery window omg..

Zack Fowler

You shouldn't need to resort to a dynamic sun light for a scene like this. Not only is it unnecessary, but you will lose the lightmass bounced light from it.

That certainly is an odd problem. Your lightmap looks high enough resolution to at least show some of the highlight considering how well it's showing the shadows from the railing. You were using a DominantDirectionalLight with standard settings before, right?

Are there any settings that differ between your floor actor and the group of objects near the window? Those are showing the sun light correctly.

EMC3D

Zack Fowler wrote: »

You shouldn't need to resort to a dynamic sun light for a scene like this. Not only is it unnecessary, but you will lose the lightmass bounced light from it.

That certainly is an odd problem. Your lightmap looks high enough resolution to at least show some of the highlight considering how well it's showing the shadows from the railing. You were using a DominantDirectionalLight with standard settings before, right?

Are there any settings that differ between your floor actor and the group of objects near the window? Those are showing the sun light correctly.

Hey Zack, true I am losing a bit of bounce quality. I'll go back to the other light, but in all my property windows I can't see the left column with the setting names on, so all I see are tick boxes, do you know the shortcut to show it again? Otherwise i'm a bit stuck on changing any options!

Once I get that sorted I'll put a normal light back in and write some mesh settings down

Zack Fowler

Got a screenshot? The properties window is kind of like a spreadsheet; you can drag the endpoint of the variable names column to the left or right, which is useful as some variables have longer names than others. You probably accidentally dragged it way over to the left at some point. Hover around until your cursor has a resize icon.

EMC3D

Zack Fowler wrote: »

Got a screenshot? The properties window is kind of like a spreadsheet; you can drag the endpoint of the variable names column to the left or right, which is useful as some variables have longer names than others. You probably accidentally dragged it way over to the left at some point. Hover around until your cursor has a resize icon.

Ah, you're a star, thanks!

Some info on the scene.

- The walls, floor and roof are all one mesh for the basic shell.
- Everything else is floating / modulated [ beams, door, tables etc. ]
- Shell is using 256 lightmap resolution, shows everything fine, even shows a highlight of the window on the table mesh.
- Table mesh is using 64 lightmap resolution / floor is using 256
- Pointlight inside the room, dominant standard directional light outside the room
- Baking on production, with AO on.

All I can think of at the moment to remotely battle this weird error is to either,

- Modulate the floor into small square chunks
- Replace the floor with BSP

But i'd like to try and keep it static meshes, and find out why this was happening.


P.S: I tried upping the lightmap resolution to 1024, but it's the same result, so taken it back down to 256.

Xendance

I suppose your scene is additive, and not subtractive?

EMC3D

Xendance wrote: »

I suppose your scene is additive, and not subtractive?

Ok it's all fixed.. it was my stupid mistake of being rusty.


When I started my scene I didn't click new > additive. And we were always warned to click new > additive before dropping stuff into a scene, that's where I went wrong. I just made a quick additive level and dropped the level and window in and it's working now.

Thanks for the help guys, I've got some answers now to other issues!

Will be posting the scene up in a week or two when I've done the other models

Cheers.