Lightmapping in Maya

Time for lightmapping the pesky meshes. The guides I'm going for are:

  • 128 maps for the bigger environmental pieces
  • 64 maps for the bigger props, maybe 128 in some
  • 32 maps for the tiny props
  • New set of UV for light map, copying from original texture UV then cutting them up more
  • 2 to 3 pixel padding or spacing between each UV island, I'll go into more detail on how I do this automatically later
  • If neighbouring faces is angled around 60 degrees or more, the UV edge between the faces will be split
  • All islands fit in the UV space from 0 to 1 in U and V axis
Video series I used by WorldofLevelDesign for light mapping principles, simple and short. He uses Maya too but I have my own twists on things 
My personal, more intuitive setup for the UV grid for
64px lightmap resolution (right click on the UV grid icon)
Mainly use edge selection in the UV to cut rather than
rumbling about with the mesh trying to cut edges

After all the islands are cut up for the light map UV set, select all UV, shift right click, Layout UV option box.
I used this to quickly get the islands spaced out. Then I may line up the islands so they fit the pixels better.
Was also messing around with the settings to get a better result.

Done, I think...

Edit: Just found this, interesting...

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