Lightmapper

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(Redirected from Lightmapping)

There is a tutorial available about this topic.

DeleD Interface
Create / Edit Panel Geometry Toolbox Primitive Scene Panel Object Inspector Material Editor Material Picker Constructive Solid Geometry Lightmapper Hotkeys Gizmo

Simple scene

Simple scene, lightmapped

The DeleD Lightmapper is used to introduce light and shadow into your scenes. The lightmap is stored in a separate texture layer that is superimposed onto your scene, bringing it to life.

1 Light Types
2 Lightmapper Options
3 Total Lightmap Size
4 Examples

Light Types

Ambient - Ambient light simulates the light that is scattered all over your scene. This type of light does not come from any specific source, and it lights each surface evenly, with the same intensity, no matter what it's orientation. (Unfortunately, scene ambient light currently does not work correctly in DeleD.)

Point - A point light is a light source that shines from a infinitely small point in space, and shines out equally in all directions, creating the effect of a 'ball of light'. This is very useful for emulating any type of light source which can shine in all directions.

Spot - A spot light is a light source that shines from a infinitely small point in space, but only in a specific direction. Like a spotlight in real life, it will shine a cone of light. This is very effective for emulating many man made light sources.

Directional - A directional is a light source that shines from a infinitely far away point in space, and in one constant direction. A directional light will shine light over the entirety of your scene. It is effective for emulating natural light sources, such as the sun or moon.

Lightmapper Options

Lightmap Size - This affects the size of the texture files generated by the light mapper. Each texture file will contain several individual textures set by the following options.

Individual Texture Minimum Size - This will set the smallest size that any polygon can use for it's texture. The selection ranges from 8x8 to 512x512. This option is limited to 32x32 in DeleD Lite.

Individual Texture Maximum Size Size - This will set the largest size that any polygon can use for it's texture. The selection ranges from 8x8 to 512x512. This option is limited to 32x32 in DeleD Lite.

Number of (Blur) Filter Passes - The number of passes that the lightmapper will do over each texture as it is generated. This will give shadows a nice smooth appearance. DeleD Lite is limited to 0 passes.

Generate Shadows - This option toggles whether or not any shadows will be generated.

Consider Non Selected Objects - If this option is not selected, only objects that are in your selection when you generate lightmaps will generate shadows.

Bake Scene Ambient Into Lightmap - Broken for 4 years. Leave it off. ;)

Normal Auto Smooth Crease Angle - This will set the angle that 2 adjacent faces must have before the lightmapper will make a crease between them. The larger this angle, the more objects will appear smooth. DeleD LITE is limited to 0 degrees.

Lightmap File Format - This will toggle which file format the lightmap textures are saved as. Your choices are BMP, JPG, and TGA. This option is limited to BMP in DeleD Lite.

Total Lightmap Size

The total size of your lightmap is determined by two factors

Total number of polygons
Individual Texture Minimum & Maximum Size

A lightmap is made of many individual textures, one per polygon. The size of each texture is determined by the Individual Texture Minimum and Maximum Size settings. When using DeleD LITE, these sizes are fixed at 32x32, meaning that every polygon in your scene will get (32x32x3 =) 3072 bytes of lightmap data. This implies that DeleD LITE is not suitable for lightmapping huge scenes, as your lightmap data will get very big very quickly (taking a long time to calculate).

DeleD PRO uses a dynamic algorithm to determine the best size for each individual texture, interpolating between the minimum and maximum size, depending on polygon size. Combined with the texture filtering, this allows for much better-looking lightmaps at a much smaller size. As a generic rule, a nice default setup for the lightmap settings is: