3D Software being used: Blender 2.78c
So i have literally spent dozens upon dozens of hours fiddling with lightmap creation. I’ve looked through countless tutorials, and NONE of them give me a viable answer for what I’m looking for. I have gotten into modelling the last few months and have taught myself many things. A lot of the models I’ve created thus far have come out to my liking. Then i started making some crates. Though when exported into UE4 (with auto generate lightmaps) they have so much shadow bleeding it’s an eye sore.
So I got to looking around through loads of tutorials, and forum posts here on the unreal forums on creating your own lightmaps. Nothing gives me the correct way to fix the bleeding. I’ve tried so many methods already I somewhat want to bash my head into a large, and very dense boulder. I’ve literally become so desperate I came here to plea for help.
I’ve mostly been trying to produce my lightmaps with 64x64 resolution, due to the desire to want to save overall memory. I mean I could technically push it up to 128 if i had to, but no higher than that. I know how to properly set up a custom lightmap UV and get it working in game when i build my lighting. Though no matter what there is still some (quite noticeable) hints of shadow bleeding. I am also making sure the lightmap uv has enough padding. For the life of me i can’t figure what I’m doing wrong. I have my fbx file with the texture in with the zip file I’ve included below. As well, with both UV channels properly set up and working. If someone could have a look at it, and can give me some advice that’d be great.
Also, PLEASE do not refer me to the lighting troubleshooting page here at unreal, or the lightmap creation page. I’ve looked at both those pages, along with so many youtube videos and none of them are helping me. I’ve posted one of my models below, it’s a lid to one of the crates. If someone could just help me solve the issue for this lid, I can apply the same methods to the rest of the crates and fix their errors. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Messed up Lightmapping
please post a screenshot from the editor. i downloaded the model and took a look at it but the UVs looked ok for the most part.
also, you can upload to this site; you don’t have to use google drive.
Alright, I’ve taken 4 pictures and circled the affected areas in gimp. Now some of the areas may seam minuscule in size, but I plan to sell most of the models i make. So people using first person type games will notice the shadow bleeding much more. Especially when changing the size of said models. I want to ensure only the top most quality for my customers. I’ve played around with the lightmaps dozens of times trying different levels of padding and sizes of lightmap uvs. Though all results end in a decent amount of shadow bleed.
Also, as for the google drive thing. When i tried to upload, it gave me “could not upload, because file format is not supported” so i just used google drive for the time being. I’m not even sure why i kept getting that message to begin with. I’m hoping to find how to solve this, so i can get to fixing the rest of the crates I’ve made. It’s sorta of stunting my production due to me wanting to get past this first.
Anyways, I will not be able to respond until several hours later from now (like half of a day), as I’m catching a flight back home. So i may not even be able to respond until tomorrow my time unfortunately. As well, sorry for pic #2 i probably should of zoomed in a bit more, i just wanted to make sure i got most of the errors in the shot. Thanks again in advance for any assistance you can give.
ok. i took a look at the model, tweaked the UVs, and remade it both similar to how you did and with a completely unified version. what i can tell you is that the lightmaps UVs are not the issue. it seems like the “quality” settings of the build are low. this isn’t an area i’m familiar with and i don’t have time to dig into it tonight but a more precise bake might solve the issue. unfortunately this is far from ideal and isn’t something relating to the models. i also noticed that the dynamic shadows (ie. pre-bake) are much sharper than the baked shadows. you can see the one unbaked mesh on the right of my screenshot casts a sharp shadow and doesn’t have any artifacts. the little bit of fuzz on the far right of its shadow is because i had it baked before and just moved it so there’s still the baked shadow in the level.
there is another guy [here][2] that appears to be having similar issues.
Ok thanks for letting me know. It was driving me insane thinking i was doing something wrong with my lightmap creation. I’ll look into baking the lighting and all that.
i did notice that a lot of the blobbing is happening in areas where meshes overlap. having a single piece mesh didn’t solve the issue though, just changed where the problem is. the two right most tops are all a single element. the selected one is unbaked but the one below it is baked and you can see the weird shadows along the cross boards.
Yeah i noticed that. Also i tried yesterday to bake the lighting at higher quality settings and playing around with world settings. I even slightly adjusted the lightmap resolution. Though still nothing seems to be working and I’m dumbfounded as to why. I’m still actively looking for the solution.
i don’t know. i’ve run into this before but never on finished stuff and so i’ve never worried about it. it’s possible that a normal map would resolve the issue.
edit: i stumbled on the lightmap unwrapping guide again and noticed that epic was having the same issue on the gears of war truss halfway down the page. they said “So I planned on this being a 128by128 lightmap knowing also that it would still not look perfect, there would be some bleed but hopefully not so much as to ruin the object.” so it sounds like it’s an engine limitation…
ok then. I suppose for now I’ll just continue on with making my models. At least i can be way less stressed about it knowing it’s not an issue I’m personally responsible for. Thanks again for all the assistance it has been greatly appreciated.
yeah. i think the best you can do is to avoid having parts overlapping and instead make everything a solid piece. that is going to increase poly count, possibly substantially though.
