Hi, I do understand the purpose of baking lightmaps and think that it is a great idea. The only irk I have with them that it is not automated and even though engine “knows” how the shading should look like, despite this I still have to do it manually. The process should be fully automated and I should not have to touch it. That’s all.
thread!
It’s a bit like walking in to someone’s house, then go on to tell them that they suck and their kids are ugly, and then “by the way, could you please help me tie my shoelaces?”
Courtesy and respect can go a long way, folks.
Or one button in blender for an acceptable one
But as said, just post another thread with your problems and then we will try to solve them/help you 
It is more like buying something from someone and after some time coming back and voicing positive criticism and suggestions based on negative experience.
Nobody in this thread has been disrespectful to Epic. Some people (including me) voiced their opinions that lightmapping system in UE is of poor quality with regards to workflow.
Open a new thread in the feedback forum and then everything is fine and they will take a look at it and probably do improvements -> they already planned to create a “lightmap” generator 2.0
I could not say it better. Also disappointing that noob’s usually start threads with so offensive tittles, when almost all the time is their own fault for the problem.
This thread should be closed imo.
Hi Probably my acceptable and your acceptable is different. :P, automatic uv and two sided is a wasted of lighmap quality.
I did talking abut put the lights, set the values, and create perfect uvwrapings.
It’s on the lower end of my acceptable rate -> but it works and I get a good light result (the only main difference that I see is that you can make more compact lightmaps when you do it manually -> which is pretty important)
Ok, now I will stop bumping this thread ^^
At the risk of fuelling the most ridiculous thread I’ve ever seen, I’ll bite in the hope it might educate some people. (I’ve never seen a Dev give up on a thread before, if that doesn’t tell you something this is probably pointless, but hey I’m on lunch…)
On a scale of ‘Inexperienced’ to ‘Not A Clue’, just how much experience with Light-mapping and Light baking do you have that isn’t inside a 3D Rendering Package? This goes to OP as well.
Firstly; ALL engines using static lighting require a set of light-map UV’s. That’s common knowledge and impossible to workaround. Secondly and most importantly, have you ever seen a UV-Mapping tool that does the job perfectly for you everytime? Of course not, because said tool does not exist. This is because computers are stupid and only do what humans tell them to do and because humans cannot predict future scenarios, like where your asset might be used, where it will be in a level, what faces are actually seen etc. Generating light-map UV’s is part of the art pipeline, and always has been for any engine using baked lighting. You have to keep edges straight for low-density light maps to avoid strange angular pixelation and aliasing, you have to account for how much eye-time each part of the lightmap is getting for optimization etc. How is the engine supposed to know that? The ONLY way you’ll get completely optimized lightmaps and insane-quality lighting is if you pay attention to those small details. It’s an impossible task for a computer to achieve.
Regardless, Epic is actually working on a tool to generate Lightmap UV’s inside the engine because so many people are apparently clueless on the subject. Whenever I see another thread with “Overlapping UV’s” in the title my brain divides by zero and I engage ‘Ultimate Facepalm’. The engine tells you what you need to do, and there is more than enough guidance out there to explain how to go about it. In regards to the ‘Shadow Biasing’ that is causing the shadows to be cast slightly further away than their casting primitive, if you hover over the advanced lighting options in the engine for each light, it will thoroughly explain why there is not a hard-coded alternative like the one suggested. (It results in self-shadowing artefacts on thin meshes, in case people can’t be bothered to go look).
No perfect UV algorithm exists, and no perfect casting algorithm exists. There will never be a one-size-fits-all solution. These aren’t laziness problems or code issues, they’re fundamental issues with baked lighting practices, it’s not that we’re going to get any better or more efficient at it. When that Engine Lightmap UV generator goes live, you’ll still have artefacts and you’ll never have perfectly optimized results that scale to every kind of environment, lighting style or object. That’s exactly what any of the other engines you mentioned do if you don’t make the effort to do it properly yourself. But I’ll take it if it stops threads like this cropping up every two seconds…
All of the issues posted in this thread sound like bad approaches and/or poor preparation towards level-design, and lack of understanding on the lighting system. Practice makes perfect folks.
Hi,
@ TheJamsh
Actually I didnt intend to respond to this thread anymore, but your post required me to.
Because I have to say: 100% ACK!
Bravo. You absolutely nailed it.
If there would be an option the create something like a lighting-tree, where you could group objects that are supposed to be lit together, I would gladly do it.
Why? Because it improves the quality of the outcome. Sure, I would need to do it manually, but I would get what I want.
Its the same in programming languages. Why do we have keywords or compiler directives? To be better able to tell the machine what we want.
Thus the compiler can apply better optimizations.
I welcome any opportunity to convey my intentions to the system, be it UE4, or the Delphi compiler.
Im working on some ideas to the problem, but I probably post them in a different thread :rolleyes:
Cheers,
You get in editor window perfect preview of shading with multiple meshes placed in the level, even with entire map. That means engine “knows” how the shading is supposed to look, or at least suggest how it might be looking. I have nothing against lightmaps. The only point I’m trying to make that you have to do manually what that stupid computer already “knows” and presents it to you yet you cannot use it and you have to go over the process manually, very often struggling as KVogler admitted himself.
I do understand what lightmaps are, what are they for and how to make them. I only am frustrated that I have to make them despite the fact that engine shows me how my shading should look like.
That’s all.
The engine knows how the things should look but the engine cannot bake good lightmaps when your UV’s are mess, because the engine work with what you give it to him, when you give him badly made stuff you’ll get bad results.
Also every 3d software like , Maya, est. have some sort of way to pack the UV’s without overlaps and distortion but you still need to do some things manualy.The best results you’ll get when you do them manualy.
And btw no software have ‘‘make what i want, exactly how i want it’’ button. Maybe in the future.
If you’re referring to the ‘preview’ shadows, they are cast dynamically, using a different method. No Light baking or useage of lightmaps occurs during preview lighting.
Yes I do refer to ‘preview’ shadows. Yes, I do know that no light baking or useage of lightmaps occurs during preview lighting. Seriously, the only point I’m making is that the engine “knows” the correct shading and should be able to transform this into lightmaps.
Obviously you and others who disagree with me think that this is simply ridiculous idea and it is better to spent time on uv unrapping for lightmaps than let it machine do it which already “knows” how the lighting/shading should look. Of course, how silly of me not to see that!
Why would I want machine to do something if I can do it myself manually? Why? Ridiculous I know.
And the point others are trying to make to you, is that dynamic lighting is processed completely differently to static lightmapping, and one cannot simply take the dynamic information and transform this into lightmaps. I would suggest you do some more research into dynamic vs static lighting and how they are processed.
Unbelievable…
I have simply no words…
Probably time to lock this thread Mods.
Baking lights will give better performance, but it requires UV’s, with dynamic lights you already get the effect of “the engine knows where the shadows should go without lightmap UV’s” but again it’s slow performance.
When baking lighting, you’ll end up with better performance and you can also get bounce lighting, the bounce lighting is what makes it slow when building lights.
Anyways, closing the thread.
Hey everyone, thanks for the feedback on the lightmapping workflow.
To comment to Zeb89’s initial post on the thread - We are aware of some of these workflow issues and are working in a number of enhancements to help out. We just yesterday pushed a commit to that enhances the usability of the auto-lightmap UV functionality in the editor here - https:///EpicGames/UnrealEngine/commit/4bf9c98d543d57cfff40130890ff51e22bea7cdb. Hope this is useful to you all in the meantime.
All - Brian Karis has posed an in depth explanation on how we are making lightmaps rock.