DeleD Community Edition

[Daaark]

Would be nice to be able to set an override option on objects for the lightmapper. Maybe the lightmapper will decide to give it a 64x64 map, but you know it the shadows you need look good with a 128x128 map, so you can set it to use that resolution always on that object.
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[Paul-Jan]

Good point! I originally had this in mind when I designed the 'dynamic resolution' min-max scheme for the lightmapper, but even now we've come to the conclusion that a constant density lightmap might be a better choice, the proposed extension (local override ) might still be very valuable.

I had in mind the setting should be per face, not per object. Not all faces might be equally visible, and specifying it per face would both be more efficient, as well as more straightforward (you simply specify the resolution for that face). Then again, once we introduce a global 'density' setting, setting that single number to a higher level for a single primitive would be straightforward as well.

Any thoughts on this face v.s. object thing?

[Daaark]

[Daaark]

'None' would be a good option to go in here too.
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[Paul-Jan]

Or you could use a non-lightmapped version of the material on that face.

Currently, our options to implement the 'not affected by light maps' thing are
1) as a material setting
2) as a primitive setting
3) as a face setting

(1) will definitely be implemented. Either (2) or (3) could be implemented, but I think having all three would be too much. That would make it pretty complex to figure out why a lightmap on a particular set of face doesn't show up

[Daaark]

[jwatte]

I would like two separate settings for "receives shadows" and "casts shadows." Those should probably be available both per-material, and per-object, where the per-object settings start out as "don't care," and when set to either off or on, override the per-material settings. There must be a way to set it back to "don't care," of course :-)

I also think that a global world-unit-to-texels scale is the way to go in general. If there's an override, I would want it per object, or per material. Per-face seems like too much data to lug around, and would be cumbersome to set/clear consistently in a larger scene. Again, the chain should be "global value," "material value," "object value," with an ability to set "don't care" for either of the material or object value.

[Daaark]

Per face is preferable to me, because I hate having to split objects apart to give them different settings.

As long as it's understood that an object's settings overides a material, it should be fine.

One more byte per face won't hurt.

-1 none <-- put at -1 so that the list than always increase upwards without changing anything
00 auto (default)
01 8x8
02 16x16
03 32x32
04 64x64
05 128x128
06 256x256

Something I've been wondering is how auto currently works. All the faces in my xmas scene are overly large, does that mean they all get high values if the lowest is 8x8? Or is there some kind of relativity that comes into effect? eg, size of face vs size of total scene
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[Paul-Jan]

It's relative, 'size of the face' v.s. 'size of the largest/smallest face in the scene'. In other words, nowhere near as practical as a constant density, but that's how it is...

[jwatte]

[Daaark]

[Jeroen]

[Paul-Jan]

I'd say there are two common situations in which you want to turn off lightmapping for a single face:

1. The face is 'hidden'. Not sure why you wouldn't simply remove the face then, but still. In this case you could have a separate 'null' (solid grey or whatever) non-lightmapped material to apply to such faces, that can be clearly distinguished from the other materials

2. The face truely has different lighting properties from the rest of the object. In this case, the face (for example, the actual 'light' face of a lamp) usually looks like a different material, and technically the renderer will have to treat it as a separate material, so why not actually use a different material?

One reason why I have my doubts is probably that I haven't actually worked with any modeler that works like this, they usually consider lighting/lightmapping properties a material property, right? Even then, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't implement it if it's really convenient, I'm just a bit hesistant introducing 'face properties' in the first place.