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Followed THIS tutorial for LM'ing the objects, but i have some questions:
After lightmapped one enterable building, inside walls, not directly exposed to the sun have the same brightness as the outside walls facing the sun.
Also, the window frame doesnt cast any shadow towards the interior, like it should be.
I have to mention I didnt placed any omni lights because the building I have used for testing has lots of windows, and , in theory, it wouldnt require any omnilight in the interior.. or is it?





Now, in the first screen, those small towers cast nice shadows on the roof(although needs some more tweaking to make them more intense).
If you look in the second SS, inside the room, the wall is as bright as the outside wall, and the window shadow, which should be coming from the middle left, is not present. Same situation in the 3rd SS.

sounds like you haven't set the shadow intensity of the sunlight

For sun pass(sky light off): multiplier 0.7
shadow density 0.9
For sky pass(sun light off) : multiplier 0.6
shadow density 0.9

Your Sun Shadow Intensity needs to be 1.

Take a look at this posting from Rhino:
Advanced Lightmapping Tutorial (using 3dsmax) - Official BF Editor Forums - Page 2

After you read his post, you might also want to read the original tutorial. I used the one you posted and this one when I first learned how to lightmap in 3dsmax.

for sun pass, cranked shadow density(in shadow parameters) up to 1. Shadows are now more intense than in the first SS, but interior walls facing sun direction are still bright.
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Keep playing with your settings then and go back through both tutorials. I've never had this problem and I followed the tutorials. I also never change the shadow density. I just change the sun's intensity and the ambient intensity.

maybe screenies of your 3dsmax setup would help too, heaven knows that I spent a good amount of time screwing up my settings before they worked

I suggest reading post #38 onwards to #42 at the very least: Advanced Lightmapping Tutorial (using 3dsmax) - Official BF Editor Forums - Page 3.4666666666667

This is mainly about skylighting where it looks like your main problems are in sun lighting however, but still something you should read up, although tbh you should read though that entire topic (mainly my posts ) as the OP has a few mistakes in it, like shadow intensity which should always be set to 1 for w/e light when LMing as basically if you don't set it to 1, it basically means light can pass though solid objects.... It is btw possible to make some light pass though semi or fully transparent surfaces even with a shadow intensity of 1 but that's another story and not something you really need to know, at least not at this point although one day "I hope" to make a tutorial on how to do that for advanced overgrowth shadows etc but dunno if I'll ever get round to that.

Anyways for your sunlight settings I would recommend the following (how bright/dark your sunlight and shadows are you can and should change by your map light colour settings, not though your lightmap)

(note this is "The Falklands" sun which is why it has extreme directional settings etc but still no harm in using those settings on smaller maps)

I would also check that you have LMed all the lods and got the most up to date, complied versions in your map's lightmaps/objects/ folder as that last screen you posted looks like you almost have no lightmap on the interior (is the interior also a separate object from the exterior, if so, needs to be LMed as well) and if you don't LM all the lods then if you see a lod (or geom) without LMs in the editor then it will stop displaying the LMs for even the lods (or geoms) for all of them. Ingame also if you don't have a LM for every single lod and geom (note only multiple geoms in destructible statics, or statics that where made to be dest but are coded not to be, excluding vehicles/weapons etc) it won't show the LMs for lods even if you start off in visual range of a lod with a LM (which in the editor it will show for then, until you switch to a lod/geom that doesn't have one).

Static Im using for testing 3dsmax lightmapping has 4 parts(exterior, interior, windows and arches) and each part has 4 LODs. Now, when Ive opened the lightmap size text file(the one generated with the lightmap tools in max) Ive noticed that my static had only one lightmap size for each component instead of four.


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The ones in the above screen has been edited and settings highlighted(before it had only one size after each line). Dunno if this could be the issue. Also, every part of the static should be LMed separately?

Ye above img looks good now, providing there are 4 lods for each part (you might want to double check that) and no, you can LM them all in bulk together, and once the settings are final, the entire map.

strange thing
junst unhided all objects in my map and noticed the following:
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geom 0 - no lightmap.
now, im lost. Help?

ignore it, its an export setting rather than a LM setting.

Ok, I think I have to post all steps, in order to make sure its right, because Ive spend 2 days on this bloody static, trying to get it right and no avail (and the problem is only with the interior part of the static: no matter what I do, interior doesn't change. Walls facing the sun remain as bright as before ).

1. Imported static object as per tut and hid all LODS except for LOD 0 (manageable framerate)
2. Imported sky.con
3. Edited BF2 SunLight ( primary light) to match properties posted above by Rhino

4. Selected all 4 parts of my static and rendered the sun pass lightmaps for all lods.
5. Cloned bf2sunlight as a copy(for the sky pass), and the settings are as follows:

6. Turned off sun light and rendered static using sky option in bf2 tools with the cloned sky light turned on
7 Merged all files using the provided bat file and copied the resulted dds files to my map.
8. Result(in editor)

The pic in the editor looks dark because Ive experimented with a negative multiplier for interior part of the static on the sky pass. Idea is that walls facing the sun are still much brighter that the walls which are not facing the sun direction, and this is the main issue

pr|Zer0 wrote:1. Imported static object as per tut and hid all LODS except for LOD 0 (manageable framerate)

Every static's LOD0 needs to be showing, not just the one your LMing at that point. My guess is that you have hidden all the objects, other than your interior's lod0, which means the exterior is not casting any shadow onto the interior, because its hidden and as such, there is nothing to stop the sun light going into the interior of the building as there are no exterior walls for it to fall against.

pr|Zer0 wrote:5. Cloned bf2sunlight as a copy(for the sky pass), and the settings are as follows:
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umm no, sky light is a different light setup to sun light... For (almost) best skylight results, download my GI Light setup as per here which I posted above (download link at the bottom of post #42): Advanced Lightmapping Tutorial (using 3dsmax) - Official BF Editor Forums - Page 3.4666666666667

No mate, Ive hid every LOD except for LOD0, meaning that all objects have only LOD0 in the scene. Ill give a try with your lights setup. Cheers.
LE I assume you are talking about this

Yes, that's it.

Have you solved the interior shadowing problem? Only other thing I can think of just going off your screens etc is that maybe your building has been setup not to cast shadows on other objects, but you would need to manually change its object properties for that to happen afaik

Im rendering sky pass using your template. Thing is this interior brightness issue occurs on every static Im lightmapping, so I assume Im doing something wrong.
Ill post back some results after Im done using the new light toys.
Noticed you have a _Ambient_Fill_light as OMNI type.
As per your template
6 GI lights and 1 GI toplight - enabled during sky pass
1 Ambient fill light - enabled only during point pass???
BF2Sunlight - enabled only during sun pass.
Think this time I might win

Managed to get some acceptable lighting and also tweaked level light color and setting in the editor and Ive got this:









So, does it look ok, or am I missing something?

it looks ok, I personally prefer stronger shadows, but what you have there is nice and does work with teh sky texture your using (sunny but with some cloud, creating diffused light).

As long as your light settings ingame work with it, then it's fine

Think you may want to darken your sky colour a bit in your map light settings but other than that, looks good to me from your screens. Is your palace interior shadows fixed too?