lightmaps and god rays. Oh my!

3shold

Hi everyone. There are 2 issues I'm having with the september UDK. The first is the red circle. For some reason, all my surfaces look like someone washed them with the same rag they used to rebuild their car engine. I, and my instructors for that matter, are stumped as to what the problem could be. I've tried recreating lightmaps as well increasing their resolutions and I still get the same problem. Any ideas?

The second problem lies in the blue circle. There is a very sharp threshold where the "God Rays" just stop. the area inside the threshold has god rays and such, while the area outside of it does not. I've dotted the threshold inside the blue circle for clarification. I'm sure this an issue within my UDK settings, but I have no idea where that issue lies. This problem does not show up on other computers running UDK. I'm stumped.

thanks.

Adam L. Gray

Well for the first one, I'm not if it's the case, but I also had problems when lighting things with emissive maps. Do you per chance use an emissive texture to light parts of the scene?

As for the second, no idea! Could be a problem with some of the meshes. To get a good shadowcasting, such things as walls etc sometimes need to be air-tight, or at the very least have a backside, or the shadows might come out a bit funky.

3shold

Thanks Adam.

I am not using any emissives in the scene (yet). So far everything uses diffuse, normal, and spec. Backsides, or lack thereof, will be something I look at. The ceiling does not have backsides, but the columns are all airtight.

I was thinking if it had something to do with there not being enough light for those parts? on the right side of the circle you can see where there Dominant Directional light is coming in through a window and perfectly lighting the column in the back. This "dirt rag" shadowing happens even when there are no textures on the objects. I'm not sure if that narrows anything down.

I'll keep at it.

WarrenM

I've had the blue circle and my solution was to upgrade my video drivers and it went away. I'm on an ATI card if that helps...

3shold

video card drivers. That sounds like genius.

SirCalalot

With regards to your red circle problem, do you have Ambient Occlusion on? As it might be one of the AO settings being a bit duff.

You could also try selecting every actor and brush in the scene, copying them and pasting them into a new map. This would keep all placement the same and reset all your map properties.

Failing that, have you tried banging your head repeatedly against the desk? I find that it helps when UDK plays up.