Ugh. Good call on unplugging normals for diagnosis. It seems to be a combination of a lightmap and normal issues. And I know how to fix neither Here are my screens in detail lighting mode.
It might just all be lightmap specular issues (which aren't really light map issues ironically). Try just turning off lightmap specular in the material misc rollout > allow lightmap specular and see if that fixes it. I'll explain more if that's the actual issue, could be something with the normals hard to tell still.
Nah it's not a specular issue. I think I'm just going to have to remodel it all and not ever use mirrored geo. Nobody seems to be able to diagnose this.
Did you actually test it cause you might be surprised. Since the UV's are inverted the norms are getting hit with different direction lightmap specular and it makes it look backwards even though the norms are perfectly fine.
Oh man, what you're describing and illustrating appears to be exactly my problem, but the "allow lightmap specular" tick box didn't change it. Just for clarification's sake, it's this guy, right?
It's encouraging to see people recognize this problem. I was JUST about to remodel different parts when I saw you replied. Would it speed the process up if I emailed you the .fbx?
1 The general rule is to not mirror contiguous geo. However if you have to, conceal the seam with more geo.
2 UV seams should be layed out vertically, not horizontally.
3 If neither one or two works, turn the Indirect Normal Influence Boost setting down to 0 in the World Properties
You'll have a lot of bleeding with that UV layout(in fact you do!),unless you are going to use a higher resolution lightmap(above 128 ,which is really expensive...as xen said you need to minimize the number of individual islands by modeling contiguous geo and minimizing the number of seams/breaks in your UV,it's a little bit time consuming but the results are worth it...
1 The general rule is to not mirror contiguous geo. However if you have to, conceal the seam with more geo.
2 UV seams should be layed out vertically, not horizontally.
3 If neither one or two works, turn the Indirect Normal Influence Boost setting down to 0 in the World Properties
While I sort of agree with the don't mirror geo, but it's not entirely correct. The problem is all about UV's and their orientation in relation to each other.
Mirroring does the same thing as rotating, you change the orientation of the UV's so they aren't matching which causes a seam. There are only 2 good fixes for this. A: fix the UV orientation so all UV's are 'pointing' in the same direction or B: turn off lightmap specular.
If your extemely desperate you can add a lightmap spec UV as channel 1 and use UV channel 3 for your diffuse/spec/norm/etc. You REALLY shouldn't do that, but it will work.
The whole UV seams need to be laid out vertically or horizontally is baloney, same goes for the Indirect Normal Influence Boost. Neither of those will do anything to change lightmap specular.
You should also conisder the object itself, things with really low specular values can be mirrored just fine. Something like dry concrete or matte paint, won't have issues because the lightmap specular wont even show up.
Yo Mr. Freeze, thanks a lot. Finally, after 48 hours, I can label my issue "resolved". The room was correct when they all critiqued my light maps. The vertical/horizontal seam orientation does turned out to be a myth (at least it is in my case). But after fixing the light maps and turning off lightmap specular (per your request) I now have a proper looking mesh.
Thanks a lot to everybody who threw in their two cents!
Replies
Throw a pic up so we can give you a better answer.
Sorry, completely forgot to throw the pic up. Here it is in engine:
And here is my lightmap, with the resolution boosted pretty high so I really doubt there's much bleed:
And one more for good measure, showing how it bends the normals:
Lightmap issues:
Funky normals:
It's encouraging to see people recognize this problem. I was JUST about to remodel different parts when I saw you replied. Would it speed the process up if I emailed you the .fbx?
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=93063
tl;dr:
1 The general rule is to not mirror contiguous geo. However if you have to, conceal the seam with more geo.
2 UV seams should be layed out vertically, not horizontally.
3 If neither one or two works, turn the Indirect Normal Influence Boost setting down to 0 in the World Properties
Edit: accidentally a word
While I sort of agree with the don't mirror geo, but it's not entirely correct. The problem is all about UV's and their orientation in relation to each other.
I explained it in this thread:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=98050
Mirroring does the same thing as rotating, you change the orientation of the UV's so they aren't matching which causes a seam. There are only 2 good fixes for this. A: fix the UV orientation so all UV's are 'pointing' in the same direction or B: turn off lightmap specular.
If your extemely desperate you can add a lightmap spec UV as channel 1 and use UV channel 3 for your diffuse/spec/norm/etc. You REALLY shouldn't do that, but it will work.
The whole UV seams need to be laid out vertically or horizontally is baloney, same goes for the Indirect Normal Influence Boost. Neither of those will do anything to change lightmap specular.
You should also conisder the object itself, things with really low specular values can be mirrored just fine. Something like dry concrete or matte paint, won't have issues because the lightmap specular wont even show up.
Thanks a lot to everybody who threw in their two cents!