27th January 2010, 04:08 PM | #11 |
Member
Expert member
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 67
|
Re: PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO
If this works, I may have to ask you to marry me.
|
19th May 2010, 12:56 PM | #12 |
Junior Member
Junior member
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 8
|
Re: PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO
I'm a new AC3d user, hoping to use AC3d for the upcoming mesh features for Second Life (yes, they're getting honest to god meshes now, instead of sculpties).
Anyways, when using this renderer, perhaps I'm using it wrong, but the output is either one of three things: 1) A basic texture output (no lighting, shading, or UV mapping) 2) pure black 3) pure white On one shape I was testing on, I did get an interesting half-texture/half black thing going, but that's about it. Lights seem to have no effect on any of it. :/ What am I doing wrong? |
20th May 2010, 03:39 PM | #13 | ||
Senior Member
Professional user
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Posts: 917
|
Re: PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO
Quote:
Quote:
Also, is your object UV mapped? You need a unique atlas. |
||
20th May 2010, 05:55 PM | #14 |
Senior Member
Professional user
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Posts: 917
|
Re: PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO
Oh! Also, are your lights bright enough?
You may need to turn up the intensity, which you can do by adding a color statement to the object properties. Try turning it up to 50 or so, see if that helps. |
21st May 2010, 12:18 AM | #15 | ||
Junior Member
Junior member
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 8
|
Re: PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO
Yeah, i'm pretty excited. There's more immediate reasons I'm trying ac3d that are "future version" related, but unfortunately i'm under NDA. Basically I want to use something lightweight-yet-useful like AC3d instead of say, Maya or Blender, which is total overkill.
Quote:
Quote:
|
||
21st May 2010, 07:49 PM | #16 | |
Senior Member
Professional user
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Posts: 917
|
Re: PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO
Quote:
You need a "unique atlas"... all that means is that each part of the map is used by one and only one face. You can create one yourself with the TCE built into AC3D, or there are some tools that will make one for you. There's a texture tool called Ultimate Unwrap 3D that will make one automatically. There's also a freebie command-line tool from Microsoft called UVAtlas that will do it. It used to come with the DirectX SDK, dunno if you can download it separately. |
|
24th May 2010, 02:34 PM | #17 | |
Junior Member
Junior member
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 8
|
Re: PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO
Quote:
Thus, if this plugin requires unique UV coordinates for every surface it to do it's thing, it's kind of pointless for games, isn't it? Or am I missing something here? I'm sure I am. |
|
25th May 2010, 11:45 AM | #18 | |
Senior Member
Professional user
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: France
Posts: 737
|
Re: PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO
Quote:
Put simply, each UV must not overlap with another one on your UV map. Take a cube, it has 6 faces. If you put all these 6 faces in a unique place on the UV map (and all these UV are not overlapping each other) then it's ok. But if you put for some reasons, let's say the top and bottom faces at the same place on the UV map (or both are overlapping somewhere) then it's wrong (for a proper use of Lisa's plugin).
__________________
OL. Last edited by luuckyy; 25th May 2010 at 11:48 AM. |
|
26th May 2010, 01:38 AM | #19 | |
Junior Member
Junior member
Join Date: May 2010
Posts: 8
|
Re: PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO
Quote:
|
|
26th May 2010, 05:28 PM | #20 | |
Senior Member
Professional user
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Posts: 917
|
Re: PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO
Quote:
The first set of texture coordinates is for the diffuse map, and is as you describe: overlapping as much as possible to use texture space as efficiently as possible. The second set of texture coordinates is specific to the lightmap. It's a unique atlas, and the lightmaps are *extremely* low-resolution. It's not uncommon to pack an entire scene onto a single 1024 lightmap, or small 32x32 or 64x64 textures for individual objects. Shadows are normally a little blurry anyway, so the maps can be pretty tiny and still look great. This keeps this method pretty efficient even though it uses more UV space. AC3D only supports a single set of texture coordinates for a model so if you're building models for a game, you'll want to create two versions of the model file and combine them in your export utility. [Multi-coordinates is definitely on my wish list :-) ] If you're fixed function, keep them as separate models and arrange it as a second pass. e.g. Render the first model as usual, then render the second model with alpha blending and a tiny z-buffer offset to blend the shadows in. |
|
|
|