DRAFT - Lightmap Tutorial

[staylor18]

Hello there

I have been working on making a Lightmapping Tutorial aimed at beginners (like myself).

If any experts in Lightmapping could give it a look over and comment that would be appreciated.

Link to PDF from Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t8vv-6yvtEep6ECVxlS_X_foXK3imC-G/view?usp=share_link


Thanks

[Suchar]

1. You may want to link this in 'further reading' as well.

2. This tool might be useful since it has a few nice features, like extracting objects lightmap atlases.

3. You can enable the editor to reload LMs after the process of generating them is finished (tools -> options -> ReloadFileSettings -> ReloadTextures. It is extremely useful for playing with light settings since you see the result instantly without the need to reload the map. With that being said, it doesn't work for everyone (for me I believe it stopped working after I changed my GPU).

4. I wouldn't recommend using light presets, play with light settings and create unique lighting for each map instead.

5. You also might want to disable rendering particles when generating LMs as they may (but don't have to) be affected by smoke with a terrible final result (Renderer -> Toggle Draw Particles).

6. For shadows on overgrowth you use OvergrowthShadowmap.raw file in level/overgrowth, more info here.

7. There are also SimpleShadowmap files, you can read more about them here

Looking at lighting in PR, I'm not sure if any PR mapper ever used the last 2 features correctly (or at all).



Note 1: I think there is still some BF2 Editor lightmapping potential to be researched since not all LM generation commands are present in HUD and can only be modified in console (btw. it is also true for many other features of the BF2 Editor as well as BF2 coding in general).

Note 2: final LMing should be done in 3ds Max.

[staylor18]

Thanks for the great information Suchar!

I have pasted the links into the References section and done a new section on the Shadow Maps. They are not technically lightmapping I guess, but it was pretty simple to do so I thought I would include it.

I also added the ReloadTextures tip to get the shadows to appear after generating the lightmaps.

I think I am getting pretty close to a final version. When it is done I will post it to modDB.

Here is DRAFT - Lightmapping Tutorial - version # 4:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HtPXwxCTnUsY6Y__k87PsU1KIm6lCi_S/view?usp=sharing

Thanks again for you input. I have added your name in the "Special Thanks" section.

[staylor18]

The FINAL version of the light map tutorial is now available as a PDF for download at modDB:

https://www.moddb.com/games/battlefield-2/downloads/beginners-guide-to-lighmapping-v1