So I am aware there have been a lot of talk about this and people talking but still can’t figure out why I am having issues so if someone mind helping me figuring this out I’d be very happy. 
Issue is that I am getting some really dark lines in some corners (like a line (to the left in the image below)) as well as them being kind of smudgy. How can I make them more even? (The light leaking through I have already fixed).
Hi,
just a little questionaire for some more details:
-Is the geometry made of brushes or meshes?
-If mesh, is it all one mesh, or are the walls etc separate actors?
-How are your lightmap UVs set up?
-What are your AO settings?
Cheers,
Klaus
The AO contrast settings may be too high in the Lightmass settings.
Also setting the light build to production lighting may fix the light leaking as well. In preview build I tend to get light that leaks in corners.
Thanks for the response, it is made out of meshes. Walls are one mesh (but floor and ceiling are their own). It just has one UV channel which is set up as I will show in the image below. AO is set as default but it seems it doesn’t really do much difference for me.
@TheAgent see response above, default settings for AO but tried changing them around a bit without any success. Also have the lighting set to production helped with light leaking but that I managed to get sorted earlier already.
Also ran into a new issue, the baseboard is really dark (kind of black at some points and I really do not know why. Tried changing the lighting and putting light in different ways to affect it but no difference pretty much. Also there is some light patches in the middle of it which I cannot figure out either.
Wall UV:
Baseboard in engine:
Baseboard UV:
You have a really bad UV’s. Here you can find information about lightmapping.
http://worldofleveldesign.com/categories/cat_udk.php#lightmapping
Hi,
The first UV set looks a bit dense in terms of island spacing… What lightmap resolution are you using?
Maybe you get better results if you split the wall from the first screenshot into 7 separate segments (or at least 4).
This gives you a lightmap per mesh, thus more lightmap space in total, thus better quality…
Your floor UVVs also look a bit weird. I can clearly see the side faces, but where are top/bottom…?
If they fill out the entire UV [0…1] plane, then you have overlapping, which might explain the observed lighting artefacts…
Its best to use a dedicated UV set for lighting. Using the texture UV channel is only feasable in some cases… here it isnt…:o
A little example: http://youtu.be/homulNbrD-8
Cheers,
Klaus
Okay so I read both of your comments and I understand now that a 2nd UV map is needed for the lightmap, so I now have two sets of UV’s in maya but how do I assign the different UVs for texture or lightmap in the engine? The documentation I read was from UDK so I assume it is vastly different here.
Thanks for all the help so far, greatly appreciate it.
EDIT: Nvm, suppose it is in the video KVogler sent. Cool.
EDIT2: So far it’s looking good now.
For something long like the baseboard you might need to add a loop in the middle of the longer sections, that way you can split it off and then it can take up more of the UV space, otherwise you have to set the lightmap resolution high to get good enough quality which wastes memory. I’ve had to do that for things like that or long walls and railings.
As far as setting the UV’s correctly, by default the materials will use the first UV channel, unless you specifically change the UV channel for a texture. As for the lightmaps, if the mesh has two UV channels it will automatically use the second channel, if it only has one then it will use that. However, if it doesn’t have the second channel and you add one, it will not automatically update to set the lightmap to use that channel, you have to change the properties so that it uses the second channel.
Alright, thanks for the advice viper!
Lightmap UV channel is specified as ‘LightmapCoordinateIndex’ on the static mesh, it’s in the advanced section. (double click the static mesh in the content browser to open the static mesh editor) Usually you set it to 1, since UV 0 is for your tiling diffuse texture.
In that last screenshot, there’s still a lot of leaking on the top, I would guess that’s because your walls are too thin, or maybe the outside part is missing altogether.
Well it is one sided geometry which I haven’t fixed yet in maya so as a workaround I put boxes on the outside to cut off any light coming in through walls and such but it ain’t working very well in some places, in most it is just fine though. Not sure why. I am hoping it won’t be an issue as soon as I get it properly fixed though. We will see, anyway thanks for telling me about the channels.
Another question: Is there any way to see how much of the GPUs memory is currently being used by the project (memory profiling)? Trying to use the documentation but the search function isn’t working (it’s stuck at “Loading” forever). The project I am working at won’t be a big thing with lots of objects, just a simple smaller apartment so I am trying to figure out how much I have to optimize the (GPUs) memory usage.
One of the best tips to eliminate leakage like that is if your 3D package has a “Snap to pixels” option in your UV editor, use it. It’s always fixed the issue for me.
