Hello folks! I had something to show you today, but I ran into some errors. So instead I will talk about others things.

Some cool things I discovered this past week. First, I figured out a great way to use Vertex Colors to simulate an Unreal Ed system of lightmapping, where the edges of rooms are very dark. This effect really brings out the colors in the textures, and makes for a strong constrast. Combined with raytraced shadows, and ambient occlusion, the final result looks excellent!

The 2nd thing I discovered had to do with ambient occlusion. Initially when baking AO maps, I sometimes had problems with the bake being either muddy gray, or almost black on maps that had a lot of closed spaces. As it turns out, if you intend to bake AO for a room that has no exit to the normal world space, you’ll have to remove the roof. Remove the roof, and the AO bake will work fine! Now, the trouble with this, is that the roof will be white, because it is not connected to the rest of the mesh. Simply bake it without a roof, then bake it without a floor, and combine the two!

Anyway, once I figure out this stupid error, I will post some pictures of my latest lightmapped, uh, map!

Until next time.

Posted by Alexander Smith on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 4:55 pm.