DeleD Community Edition

[Brenner]

I've been putting lightmaps on the FrauenKirche, but when I look at the outputted model (using B3D format) in other programs, the shadow is very pixellated.

What am I doing wrong? Or is this a limitation of something?

I've tried with two different model viewers, in OGL, DirectX and software rendering. Looking at the lightmap files themselves, they seem quite low resolution.

How do I get high-resolution lightmaps?

[harper]

Look at Options -> Lightmapper. There you can increase the size used for lightmaps.

[AWM Mars]

It maybe you are using a setting of lightmaps format = jpg. The default is BMP and give better results, albeit larger file sizes. Jpg's can give artifacts.

I use a range between 128x128 - 256x256 as a light map size, min = 8-32, max = 64 - 128, blur filter passes = 2, normal auto smooth crease angle = dependant on your polygon and output requirements.

The Lightmapper options are in - View - Options (Alt+O), then Lightmapper Tab.
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[Brenner]

Gah! How did I miss that? Thanks!

Is there a hard physical limit to the lightmaps? I think I might need even more resolution.

[AWM Mars]

[Brenner]

I was using TGA, so the problem wasn't lossiness.

Yeah, I'm using 4096 now, and I'm still seeing pixellation, so I'll try upping the blur passes. Thanks for the suggestion!

Maybe I'm just expecting too much.

[AWM Mars]

It depends on whether you are trying to render photo quality static scenes, (there is a seperate ray tracer for that), or lightmapping for a virtual scene.
I've acheived pretty good results with my virtual scene modelling. http://www.delgine.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4089&start=0

Care to share some images?
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[Brenner]

I ran out of memory on my 1GB machine, DelEd crashed. I'll try on a machine with more memory and let you know.

[chronozphere]

The DeleD lightmapper sometimes shows artifacts. Especially when your geometry is not OK. For example: Polygons that are intersecting or non-planar may cause problems.

When using 4096x4096, I'm pretty sure that the problems you are experiencing are not because of a low-resolution.

[Brenner]

You're right, on a 64-bit machine with 4GB RAM, turning everything up to the max, it was fine. I used 3 blur passes.

I think some of the artefacts I was seeing were due to the model.

DelEd just gets better and better!

Thanks for your help!

[Daaark]

Do you have giant polygons in your map?

You have to feed the light mapper a nice grid of evenly sized polygons to keep the size of the lumels consistent. You can't get good results when a tiny patch of lumels has to approximate the shadow of 1 large polygon.

So if you have large surfaces, segment them down. Try to keep your polygons all in a constant size too. Then you'll have crisp, and evenly sized shadow resolution.
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[AWM Mars]

That's useful information, don't know how I missed this post.

It would account for some of the weird results I get with some of my meshes, I always try and reduce polygons to the minimum, so I get better fps rendering in the Immersive Environments I create. Its a balance between slow rendering and quality.
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