Hey guys, recently been getting back to work on my long belated project, The Supplies Outpost. Since Ande's tools make this so easy I've been trying to get some sharper visuals in my textures. One thing that's been bugging me a lot is I really don't know what on earth I'm doing when it comes to adding/editing different shaders. I can't even really tell if my bumpmaps are working (or just not working that well!).

Right now my sites are set on getting glow patterns (throb on timer), lightmaps and just getting my bump/specmaps to work correctly.

So lets start with lightmaps. Since BF1 (which is my primary aim for this map) has the worst lighting know to man, I've been really keen on getting custom lightmaps working on models. I tried getting the render type working as set in XSI, but I don't really know what to do (or how to set it) as there's no real documentation on how to do that (so yeah it didn't work ). I also tried adding a sublayer/decal over top a surface but that just ended up getting this odd segmented alpha channel that wasn't smooth at all. Now I feel like my bumpmaps and specs seem to go hand in hand with two problems. Firstly I still think between my option files and (again) the stuff I'm setting in XSI is botching it somehow. Bumpmaps just are non-existant no matter what my -bumpscale is set to. The referenced bump tgas are just grey shaded height maps (although they probably could be a bit cleaner). Hard to tell since old fashion heightmaps aren't really noticeable like the modern normal map variant. One that I hear helps a ton (but doesn't work for me either ) are specular maps. Either I just don't see them or they make my textures translucent.

The one thing I can see to use well, are glow/emissive options but that's the simple part. If someone had some direction for me as to how they'd setup either of these render types (from editor to finish) that would be so appreciated. Not even sure which of the render types that can be flagged on export even work in BF1, but any tips would be appreciated. I don't exactly "need them" but I really wanna pack as much good looks into this map as possible.

re: lightmaps, I'd recommend taking a look at this thread: http://www.gametoast.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=26013

re: your jagged-looking texture, Put -format A8R8G8B8 in the texture's .option file.

Oh man thanks for the format tip, that cleans that right up. Giving a look at that old lightmaps topic I'm wondering if he actually was able to layer that stuff or if he just ended up duplicating the meshes to simulate lightmaps? I don't think the poly count will be an issue as long as it doesn't crash anything outright. I know I have a 6k+ turbolaser tower in my map that requires a lowres "editor friendly" version just to work in ZE.

When I tried using the render types flags with Ande's tool it didn't seem to work with my test lightmap. Since that would constrict me to using very direct lightmaps I feel like I don't have much of a choice. Just bugs me that I can't seem to get much to work in the flags besides glow and transparency.

re: lightmaps, I'm pretty sure he duped the mesh to simulate the lightmaps. In the case of high-poly models, you'll probably want to bake the lighting into the vertices instead of duping the meshes.

Marth8880 wrote:re: lightmaps, I'm pretty sure he duped the mesh to simulate the lightmaps. In the case of high-poly models, you'll probably want to bake the lighting into the vertices instead of duping the meshes.

Wait, like burning it in as a sort of vertex weight map? Nearly all my work has been based off of high to low poly bakes at this point. I knew of layer painting textures (for terrain and such) but didn't even think that was supported for the .msh exporter. I'd definitely be willing to give it a go, but I still am having a heck of a time figuring out how to use most these render types.

I only have one thing that just lists very vague specifications for the 31 different types. Like I said I can't even really get spec maps working properly (probably for small dumb reason too). I hadn't had much luck in the tutorials section, as that related more to the different design techniques rather than shader usage. I never used the Pandemic addon, which most the old topics seem to relate to but I didn't think Ande's exporter worked all that differently.