Lightmaps

[reegad]

yes i have i will probably only use 3dsmax lightmapping with night-maps.
Or on walls inside houses/castles, where there will be torches on the walls.

[Waldek]

Hi
Can I use light /shadow maps for vehicles either?
I'm asking because I found additional subdirectory named ObjectLightMaps in vanilla's texture_001.rfa patch file, which contains shadow maps for hull of large vanilla ships. I imported one of these meshes into 3DS Max to check the 3rd UV channel but it's missing. So I'm not sure if the game really make use of these lightmaps...

[Waldek]

Battle report: It seems like I can alter already existing ship lightmap files well, with very good results (look at the screenshots bellow). However I'm getting troubles with creating them for custom ships like these available in Forgotten Hope 0.7. I've chosen the HMS Hood as a guinea pig and tried various attempts but every time the game can't regonize and blend the lightmap file I made for a custom (non vanilla) ship. Maybe the 3ds max .SM exporter can't generate a proper lightmapped mesh file? Or maybe this is hardcoded so that only the vanilla ships can be lightmapped? I dunno really... Has anyone tried making LMaps for vehicles?




This is all I can reach as for custom ship, game ignores the LMap:

[exe]

It probably works the same like it does for buildings. Did you create a channel 3 UV map with flattened UVs?

Also don't forget to check "Lightmapped" when exporting the model.

Looks pretty good btw.

[Waldek]

I left the HMS Hood. I tried working with it from scratch but still no result, the game doesn't accept the lightmap. Unknown reason.

I took another ship instead, the Bismarck, hull LMap works. However it appears that child objects like turrets can't be lightmapped, the game ignores their LMaps.

[Apache Thunder]

PCOs are handled differently. If you created a custom copy of this ship, you most likely have a different name for the main hull's geometry template. The lightmaps in the main texture rfa for the mod (found in ObjectsLIghtMap folder just like on the map's folder) use just the geometry template name as the file name to pair with the geometry template used on the PCO in question. Unlike staticobjects, there is no additional bit in the file name to specify position (the numbers you see at the end of normal lightmap file names).

Be sure your geometry template used on the main lod of your ship has the same name as the lightmap texture you are trying to use on it. If you altered the geometry and exported it with lightmap channel disabled, lightmaps won't work on it. Assuming you didn't, then it comes down to file name mismatch with the geometry template name.

[Waldek]

You have to name the lightmapped texture what it is called in the Geometries.con of the vehicle.

Example: instead of Bismarck_Turm_A use Bismarck_Turm_A_m1

I can't belive the solution was so simple. Both of you, exe and Apache Thunder, are extremely helpful as usually Thanks!

Another before / after comparison: