The Pit Preview

[Siliconmaster]

I think I'm one of the only people other than Firescythe who actually uses Aether. It is a bit of a pain in the ass to use, but totally worth it in the long run. Be aware that if you actually want high-res lightmaps you'll have to spend a LONG time manually unwrapping lightmap uvs, since tool sucks so badly at it that once you upres the lightmaps you get to see every bad lightmap seam. That being said, if you're willing to put in the work you get great results from it. It also helps to know how to use 3ds Max's lighting system effectively.

The basic steps are to:

1. Absolutely 100% finish the bsp, because once you begin using Aether any bsp changes will destroy any progress you've made.

2. Light the map in 3ds max, exactly the way you want it, down to the shadow types, the soft exterior lighting, hologram lights, everything.

3. A bunch of technical voodoo that's covered in Firescythe's tutorial

4. ???

5. Profit

But seriously, if you do decide you want to use Aether, either contact Firescythe or myself and assistance will be had.

[t3h m00kz]

Looks great, i would run it on one of my servers.

referring to the halo 3 screenshot?

[ThePlague]

Very good, rated 5 stars, will buy again!

[Higuy]

Part of me really wants to bring this to full completion. But finding the time to do so is just so hard. Maybe I'll push it out as is and if I come across the time to finish it I'll release a final copy. Also anyone remember that program Aether or something for lighting? and anyone have the slightest clue how to use it?

It's not that difficult if I remember correctly, you basically extract lightmaps from tool, do the lighting in max (import all your scenery and place it at same coords, etc). You can also use vray if im not mistaken. You should ask firescythe or deelekgolo, those would be the guys to ask.

[Siliconmaster]

It's not that difficult if I remember correctly, you basically extract lightmaps from tool, do the lighting in max (import all your scenery and place it at same coords, etc). You can also use vray if im not mistaken. You should ask firescythe or deelekgolo, those would be the guys to ask.

Aether will place all the scenery objects automatically, you don't have to do it by hand, that part is definitely pretty easy. And you can use whatever lighting system you want, as long as it casts shadows (though I suppose that's optional) and the bake to texture function recognizes it. It's just the lightmap uvs that are a bit frustrating to iron out.

[PenGuin1362]

Well glad you guys are still interested. I might have some free time soon so I will do my best to get this out quickly as possible. Would appreciate it if you guys are willing to help out with Aether when I get there. Also someone refresh my memory, how does halo handle lightmap uv's again? Can it use a secondary UV set, or does it use whatever your base UV set is?

[Siliconmaster]

Every time you run radiosity tool splits up the level by portalled area (usually, it's pretty random), then scatters the geometry across the uv field, resulting in a series of bitmaps and uv coordinates. Nothing can overlap since it's lightmap information. Since the lightmaps have their own uv data, Aether can pull both the bsp and the lightmap objects out of Halo for modification. At low resolutions tool's terrible uvs are usually alright, but once you increase the resolution all the seams and related garbage become far more visible.

Here's what rendered lightmaps look like with tool's uvs at high resolution. Excuse the poor draft lighting quality itself:
http://www.modacity.net/forums/showt...l=1#post552267

Look to the second pic, with the black edges and splotches. Now if you keep it at the original resolution, it might be ok, but higher resolution shadows are certainly a plus.

But the tl;dr is that lightmaps have their own set of uvs that are completely separate from those of the level itself.