Lets make Lightmass EPIC (and understandable)

I set the lightmaps to 1024 resolution and tried reducing the smoothness with no luck.

Here’s some more spots where that happens

0ER27IK.png

Maybe I would try to use the default ini settings and the default prod quality… instead of using medium preset with a custom ini. I have no problem with with 4.11 with default ini and prod.

Hmm, that reduced the problem a bit, but it’s still there in some places. Well, I think I’m done filling up this page with my issue, I’ll keep experimenting here, thanks for the help y’all :slight_smile:

Am I the only one who is not having proper quality with portals?

Portals help but they really need more controls, at the moment they don’t even appear to have any directionality.

hi,

i have this really strange problem here.

this is how my scene looks like:


i added few more lights under the benches, everything is exactly the same and all my lights are static. but this is the result:


what could be wrong with this? the yellow light doesnt produce any GI all of sudden and the whole scene is very dark and low quality.

if these are emissive materials lights try adding very weak point lights next to them, ive had problems with purely emissive lighting creating blotches and dead areas.

What were the Lightmass settings for this render? I’m talking about the 4.11 Preview Render? and What kind of light setup did you use? The quality of the shadows look spectacular and I am interested, since my studio is planning and working on a huge multiplayer game, in which we want the best of rendering results. Thank you

those are point lights. all static. i have like 40 of those in the scene.

72ed9b509868813849df22688d4f3f4760571b7c.jpeg
these are the settings im using:

its 4.11 preview.
lightmaps are still very low.
(*settings im using for test renders)

Quality: Production (*medium/high)
Static Lighting Level=0.2 (*1)
Num Indirect Lighting=100 (*70)
Indirect Lighting Quality=10 (*1)

IndirectPhotonEmitConeAngle=3
NumHemisphereSamples=128
NumIrradianceCalculationPhotons=4000
DirectIrradiancePhotonDensity=1000
IndirectPhotonDensity=10000
IndirectIrradiancePhotonDensity=7000

I never knew how much that RecordRadiusScale setting in the .ini influenced the shadows. It’s the only thing that has changed between the two screenshots
Especially check out the shadows of the box on the floor towards the camera.

this is 4.11 with portals / medium built / static lighting level scale 1.0 / indirect lighting bounces 70 / indirect lighting quality 1.0 / indirect lighting smoothness 1.0
and a skylight with a hdr map

Thats really cool Sunchaser! Another value to play around with

Reducing the smoothing will have the opposite effect, the shadows will be even harder. You can lower you solution quality for smoother shadows and lower rendering times. Anyway I guess we are all focusing on the wrong aspect, yes the indirect shadows are important but in my opinion the biggest jump in realism is in the post-processing area. Check this gif Moritz Weller made on his article about Koola work. Changing the LUT is what really makes a difference in a room made of boxes. I made this gallery(download them all and view in fullscreen) just pushing around the exposed parameters and I think that a somewhat soft solution with some AO in post can work. Unfortunately seems to me that increasing the solution quality, while giving nice indirect shadows, also increases those pencil drawn edges. It would be beneficial to have a way to paint on the lightmap, like a spot heal brush. But above all a way to dial the indirect illumination smoothness: a buffer where to store the unblurred solution and the option to dial the percentage of filtering before deciding to commit.

[QUOTE=Sunchaser;484947]
I never knew how much that RecordRadiusScale setting in the .ini influenced the shadows. It’s the only thing that has changed between the two screenshots
Especially check out the shadows of the box on the floor towards the camera.

this is 4.11 with portals / medium built / static lighting level scale 1.0 / indirect lighting bounces 70 / indirect lighting quality 1.0 / indirect lighting smoothness 1.0
and a skylight with a hdr map

It looks like it’s getting more bounces in the .8 version.

Hey guys,i did test with 4.11 on my latest project,and i was happy to saw some improvement in new version 4.11(Embree and Protal)
These screenshot below shows difference between 4.9 and 4.11(not include “movable” actor i noted:①②③,and exposure between 2 images)
I used X5660 x2 *8 server to build lightmass in distributed way.
674c5c49cf6ce23131d640c35757a929ef3944b3.jpeg

4.9 settings:
default lightmass.ini
Lighting Quality set to High
Level scale 0.1
Indirect Lighting Bounces 100
Indirect Lighting Quality 10
Indirect Lighting Smoothness 0.5
No AO
Compress Lightmaps On
Build time 5h

4.11 settings:
default lightmass.ini
Lighting Quality set to Medium
Level scale 0.1
Indirect Lighting Bounces 100
Indirect Lighting Quality 10
Indirect Lighting Smoothness 0.5
No AO
Compress Lightmaps On
Build time 1h

4.9
0eec7ae48a53626b3e724ffec493b3232ca97fd6.jpeg
4.11
44d191c2dd8e54348db6fb21e8001e58ec36a0f7.jpeg

4.9
ca278d753b9040fc11382138a23df74ff8460885.jpeg
4.11
81809b8d7e45399635330cb392286bbd707eb628.jpeg

4.9
02e77602f3bb41f04ab78a3a9c906e12d5c67b21.jpeg
4.11
3131cb455427ccd1b7db3c728a6311efe7bcfe7d.jpeg

4.9
53a50048fd2d3eaa7c2fe0a6b6d063086463caf9.jpeg
4.11
e493d7f1348b6584a3b2a9817b0ada52c1b801e1.jpeg

4.9
26d93335235a1ad1ebd1c7b3beacf26208c247ea.jpeg
4.11

4.9
cc8e04aa8134e5e17888fd892a1f87e937bad2ad.jpeg
4.11
6264a8980f84ec2350170309664c8e9571a5d997.jpeg

Two Tips in distributed build:
1:
4.11 need to setup "Net Framework 4.5"on each PCs.

2:
4.11 need to setup "Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable"on each PCs.

hey everyone -

been following this thread for awhile. got an issue.

lighting my scene (haven’t adjusted the lightmass.ini) but regardless, not sure why these walls are black. the lightmap res is 1024.

any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Check the normals for the black walls. Are the walls static or moveable? Which material are you using for the black walls?

@Euromarsul -

thanks for the reply. so my normal were fine - however, in my uv setup - i had planes overlapping (to save space) but the result were the black walls. :slight_smile: so i did an autoflatten on the uv’s and voila! fixed.

thanks again - that was seriously bugging me out!

done!

Hi everyone,
Regarding lightmass, how is a mesh best imported in UE?
Let’s say you use Blender or Max to model an element (a guitar for example).It has multiple surfaces that have different materials.After unwraping, do you import it as 1 object, or separate.
Does this have an impact in performance?guessing it should
Also, does the scale of the objects affect how the lightmap is computed?

Thanks.