Dead Rising lightmaps?

malcolm · Aug 2006

Anyone know how they are unwrapping the world for lightmapping in dead rising? The light map resolution in that game is excellent, I am wondering if they are doing an auto unwrap and wasting tonnes of uv space or are they unwrapping by hand?

MoP · Aug 2006

hmm i have no idea, but i also noticed that, and it seems to be unique to everything, i'd imagine they hand-unwrapped it... it works really well though, makes fairly bland textures look a LOT more realistic.

malcolm · Aug 2006

Yes I think baked lighting with one or two bounces is key if you want your game to look next gen and different than what is currently out there. I think we are going to see developers drop normal mapped shiny town for realistic baked lighting on environments in the near future. Only draw back is the second normalized uv set that needs to exist, which can be quite time consuming to create. Lost Planet is using lightmaps as well but just on terrain, the props cast a depth map so they can interact with the player, I think Capcom is doing a good job with the blending of the two.

CrazyButcher · Aug 2006

automatic unwrapping for lightmaps might be better than you think

http://www.blitzcode.net/3d_1.shtml#Lightmap_Compiler

the guy worked for crytek and now mental-ray

developers go on with using lightmaps, there is no need for a "drop" imo, as they never really left it. The projectors used in doom3 could be seen as lightmaps as well (actually shadowmaps) and they make intensive use of them. I am just experimenting with blending lightmaps for a day/night cycle, however just for terrain as well. Also will neglect the horizontal sun movement, just vertical to use less lightmaps.

Jeff Parrott · Aug 2006

I was actually just wondering this yesterday malcolm when I was running around the rooftop. The other thing I've notice is that they don't over do the spec like a lot of games seem to be doing lately.

Toomas · Aug 2006

Maybe they "cut corners" to render that many zombies and if ones in the back dont have any spec and stuff it would be very obvious.
But its just a guess since i havnt even played the game..

ScoobyDoofus · Aug 2006

Well, also dynamic specularity doesnt look as good when virtually all your textures are obviously just photos slapped onto models. The photos already have plenty of spec...Ala Jesse's lips/face.

malcolm · Aug 2006

Crazy butcher thanks for the link I will check that out. The auto unwrapper in Maya is not so hot, that is why I am asking if anyone has solved this problem, I've looked into the microsoft uv lattice but it is the same as automatic map in Maya. Dead rising cycles from day to night using baked lighting, so maybe check out how they are doing it? I think it's just a linear blend between them, shadow length does not change which is a limitation if you are hardcore about the time of day thing.

CrazyButcher · Aug 2006

well I would bake shadows and blend between them, but do lighting still dynamic (per vertex). I can pack up to 4 time of day shadows into one lightmap (one in each color channel). question is how good it will look when the shadows fade from one step to another, as it is not very accurate, but given I let not the sun move too much it could still look fine.

that unwrapper I linked to is not free or ready to use, it is the tool the guy coded for farcry, just saying that better unwrapp exists. and as world geometry mostly is rather "simple" shaped, compared to complex characters, it is still somewhat doable automatically. Also lightmaps typically are rather low-res so a few errors in stretched uvs and such wouldnt hurt so bad.

malcolm · Aug 2006

Checked it out, his unwrapper isn't any different than the standard Maya. All it does is planar map from 6 sides and pack uv's. The problem I'm running into is all the uv seams auto unwrap makes, also the auto pack is inefficient, it wastes tonnes of texture ram. Still looking for something better but it seems like everyone is at the same stage with auto generating lightmap uv's. If you're storing a shadow in each channel I'm guessing you're using grey scale maps? How would you do bounce colour transfer and night time scenes? Although lightmaps are typically lower res then diffuse textures I don't think they are all that low res in the xbox360 games I have examined. I'd like to get a lot more visual quality out of my lightmaps but without the time consuming manual pack and sew.

arshlevon · Aug 2006

i have not nor probably ever will be an environment artist, but if i am not mistaken i think back at mythic they used a seperate map channel for lightmaps, if i am wrong tell me to shut up.

CrazyButcher · Aug 2006

I have just greyscale but its sufficient for my needs. I am not aspiring too complex setup and effects such as bouncing...

And about the unwrapping, well its the same issue we have to unwrap most of our models manually to get the most out of it. It is a tricky problem and there is no real good automatic process for arbitrary geometry yet. For the box type level geometry the auto-stuff does work fine enough I guess. I guess its also a matter of focus. You dont focus on every edge in the world and check if lightmap seams come up, as their filtering and the base texture make it a bit harder to spot errors. Story telling / movement all distract from you wanting to haunt all errors in a level.

adam · Aug 2006

[ QUOTE ]
i have not nor probably ever will be an environment artist, but if i am not mistaken i think back at mythic they used a seperate map channel for lightmaps, if i am wrong tell me to shut up.

[/ QUOTE ]

That sounds about right.

I just played about 4 hours of Dead Rising. Beautiful game; the lighting is awesome! My favourite looking part out of what I had seen of the game is where the main chick and the old man hang out (near the vent you climb in and out of to save/rest. That whole office area.... *drool*.

Ninjas · Aug 2006

What program are you guys using to bake lightmaps? I'm using Mental Ray (in Max) with area lights and final gather, but it takes almost 6 hours to do a single room.

MoP · Aug 2006

Hmm, Ninjas, why not just use Max's default global illumination (turn on advanced lighting, add a Sky light, get bakin')?

Ninjas · Aug 2006

I'll see about using the sky lights. Thanks for the tip Mop!

Slum · Aug 2006

Ninjas: In my experience, mental ray renders much faster than the Max skylight using the standard renderer, so that option might be even worse.

You could try the E-Light script for an effect similar to the standard skylight. Its just a dome of directional spots that are generated via a script. Pretty handy, and it renders much quicker in my experience.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/r.j.o/skyraider/e-light.htm

MoP · Aug 2006

Slum: Shouldn't take 6 hours for a single room though... unless I guess it's millions and millions of polys.

Ninjas · Aug 2006

My settings may be slightly off. When I use clusters of lights to simulate soft shadowing in Max (using scanline), and then turn on regathering for reflected light I am getting render times that are about the same in each program, although MR has fewer artifacts. Anyone use gile?

Xenobond · Aug 2006

When I was doing some dungeons for the last DAoC expansion, we used a combination of max's radiosity solution as well as a standard, non-light tracered render with just lights. Once they got baked down, they were taken into photoshop and combined together all fancy like. That would get us the ambient bounced lighting and colors that we wanted, and we could get the sharper shadows coming out from the light sources themselves.

And yeah arsh, they'd get applied to a separate map channel. Usually it'd just be the default max auto-unwrap with some tweaking for areas that'd need more resolution (floor/roof).

malcolm · Aug 2006

My experience, Mentalray is slow as shit. You will need a render farm if you're going to bake any soft directional shadows, bounce light, or ambient occlusion on any kind of development schedule. The number of rays you use is the biggest time killer. Six hours doesn't seem abnormal, I've had environment bakes take up to 48 hours without a render farm.

FatAssasin · Aug 2006

At a recent Gamefest talk, a technical artist from Neversoft was talking about this for Tony Hawk 8. He mentioned that they used radiosity and render to texture in Max for their environment lighting maps. But they actually used an extra Ambient Occlusion map along with the light map. The AO map was lower res than the light map by half, I think it they were 2048 and 4096 if I remember right. I'll look at my notes when I get to work.

malcolm · Aug 2006

I'm interested in those notes! I'm looking at the latest project 8 screenshots and I don't see any ao, bounce or direction soft shadows, also a lot of the environment appears to be vertex lit? I'm a wrong?

http://media.xbox360.gamespy.com/media/803/803274/img_3876001.html

poopinmymouth · Aug 2006

Those are older shots, and the game looks much better than that currently.

Actually FatAssasin (I could be wrong) but I was under the assumption that Gamesfest is exclusive to the developers invited, and information spread therein is not for public consumption. My lead is under this impression as well, and I'm sure everyone at Neversoft would appreciate it if no notes from that lecture are posted, in summary or in whole.

adam · Aug 2006

I just read them and I must say that is some juicy information!

Jeff Parrott · Aug 2006

Watch out or Poop will unlesh Joel on you.

malcolm · Aug 2006

Poop, when will neversoft be supplying any good screenshots of the game?

cman2k · Sep 2006

dude, who needs screenshots when there are awesome HD-resolution gameplay videos available;

http://www.planettonyhawk.com/thp8/downloads/movies/

but anyway....there are also some pretty nice screenshots here;

http://www.planettonyhawk.com/thp8/downloads/screenshots/nextgen/

malcolm · Sep 2006

Yeah I've seen all those and linked to them above, poop is saying those are old and not the same quality of the current state of the game.

Joseph Silverman · Sep 2006

[ QUOTE ]
Poop, when will neversoft be supplying any good screenshots of the game?

[/ QUOTE ]

I ran across http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?type=mov&id=12856 today. Seems modern.

malcolm · Sep 2006

Saw that one too, it does appear to look better but I can't really get a good look at the environment lighting quality due to the constant monster trick slow mo and blur.

FatAssasin · Sep 2006

[ QUOTE ]
Actually FatAssasin (I could be wrong) but I was under the assumption that Gamesfest is exclusive to the developers invited, and information spread therein is not for public consumption. My lead is under this impression as well, and I'm sure everyone at Neversoft would appreciate it if no notes from that lecture are posted, in summary or in whole.

[/ QUOTE ]

Didn't mean to step on anyone's toes. But to your point, I know I didn't sign any kind of general NDA stating that information presented at the conference was to kept under wraps. As far as I could tell, nothing talked about there could be considered proprietary information (like the fact that LucasArts is working on a Star Wars title. Oops! I did it again). And I never planned on posting your technical artist's entire presentation, just a couple bits of info pertinent to this discussion. I'm a big believer in sharing information, but in the future I'll refrain from mentioning any names in the interest of protecting the guilty.

Pedro Amorim · Sep 2006

i wanted to read those notes as well:\

Joshua Stubbles · Sep 2006

Well, I think it's a bit BS that it's "assumed" to be confidential information. As you said, there was no NDA that you signed at the event. The information therefore, is public domain. If someone spoke about something they didn't want public, that's their fault.

tremulant · Sep 2006

People need to keep things to PM's if they have a problem with someone else.

Dead Rising lightmaps?

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