Lightmaps for Lightmass?

G3L

For whatever reason, I was under the assumption that you no longer needed to map out a 2nd UV channel when using lightmass. But I've read through some threads on the forum and I'm seeing that people are indeed manually laying out their lightmap UV on channel 2 for meshes.

For some of the stuff I've worked on recently in UDK, I haven't made a 2nd UV channel and when I bake lighting, it doesn't seem off or anything.

Have I been assuming the wrong thing this whole time though and been limiting myself from even better lighting or have I been right? I always thought lightmass made lightmaps a foregone conclusion for whatever reason.

Oniram

lightmass will create a baked lightmap for your entire scene. it will determine where light/shadow is defined.. thats the baking part of it. for individual assets, say you have a wall.. and both sides of the wall share UVs, if one side gets hit by shadow, it will reflect on the other side. thats why for modularity's sake, you need lightmaps in your second UV channel.

G3L

So regardless of whether or not I'm using lightmass, I will need to lightmap my asset(s) manually on another UV channel, correct? Thanks for the reply by the way!

Xendance

G3L wrote: »

So regardless of whether or not I'm using lightmass, I will need to lightmap my asset(s) manually on another UV channel, correct? Thanks for the reply by the way!

Correct way would be to say that you unwrap UVs for the lightmap texture (the texture which lightmass produces) on another channel.
But that's just me being pedantic :P

Oniram

unless you plan to use 100% dynamic lighting (not recommended. ever. lol) then you'll always need lightmaps. thats one of the pluses about cryengine over udk (i know there's more but this is the only relevant one) is that all lighting is realtime. no baking required, meaning no lightmaps required.

Xendance

Oniram wrote: »

unless you plan to use 100% dynamic lighting (not recommended. ever. lol) then you'll always need lightmaps. thats one of the pluses about cryengine over udk (i know there's more but this is the only relevant one) is that all lighting is realtime. no baking required, meaning no lightmaps required.

Actually you can (and should) bake lighting in Cry Engine 2 (don't know about 3). It bakes a "sky accessibility" texture for terrain, an AO map from what I've seen.

G3L

Good info guys, thanks a lot! As much of an odd question this was, better for me to ask than to never know and stay wondering.