Photon Mapping

[Roostervier]

It is becoming my arch rival, and quick. I think it is ridiculous to have to wait 6 hours for some decent lighting that covers the entire bsp. Is there anyway possible to speed it up just a little? The part that takes the longest is rasterizing.

If not, :(. That is completely stupid. I mean, I leave my computer for 3 hours to see if I can't make some progress, to find that when rasterizing has gone from a rate of 1 % a minute, to a rate of 1 % every 4 minutes. Again, it is simply ridiculous, to me.

[Elite Killa]

Maybe it's your computer?

[solofortne]

What quality setting are you running it at? If it's not your final build of the map I'd try bumping it down a couple notches since the quality won't matter as much if it's just for your own purposes.

[Roostervier]

My computer isn't high end, nor low end. I still think that it is ridiculous to have to wait that long. I read in another topic that, yes, it really does take long. I guess I am just angry at the fact that I could get a decent lightmaps from CE in about 1 minute, and now I have to wait 6 hours.

[edit] I did this one at draft high. It looks like total crap. You can't see hardly anything. That's why the photon mapping system isn't practical in my eyes. You can't knock the quality down much without most of the map going black.

[jahrain]

Relax, I will soon get my bsp extractor for halo 2 to work on h2v bsp tags and have it extract the bsp Lightmap UVs so you can bake lighting onto the map in mental ray which is 20x faster, with 20x better quality. I have other things for h2v to work on first though.

[Roostervier]

Jahrain, I sent you a PM. Hope you respond.

[blazedelite]

srry dude i dont know what to do

[Nick]

Photon mapping is awesome, your box just sucks :P

The lighting in Halo 2 is far better than in Halo 1, so that just might explain why it takes longer. Also, when you're a company making tools for your own internal use (which is what the tools were originally made for), you don't worry about how long it's going to take on a mid-range PC to run lighting; you have high-end machines dedicated to that task.

Nick

[Roostervier]

I had never asked why it takes so long (sorry if it sounded like I did). I had simply asked if there was a way to make the process go just a little bit quicker.

[Lightning]

Just use Example's lightmaps.

It's all even brightness, but your map is there.

[Roostervier]

That shows the bsp, but my Sapien freezes shortly afterward.

[Kornman00]

you have high-end machines dedicated to that task.
They have a photo mapping farm that I hear also grows corn and rice :-3

[ejburke]

Yeah, Bungie has a lightmapping farm, so their version of Tool must allow for the operation to be split up geometrically to make use of multiple machines. Our version of photon mapping can't even utilize a dual core processor, apparently.

[TheGhost]

The lightning method in Halo 2 is far superior to that of Halo 1. I've found I've had to run it for longer to get decent looking light maps, but the lighting is so much more accurate than it was in Halo 1 that it's worth it. The draft settings should give you a decent idea of what the map will look like when it's light well, so you should never have to run it on a very high setting until you're ready to release. That being said, I've never had to wait more than 15 minutes to light a map, even on Draft High.

[legionaire45]

Get a Core 2 Duo. That will make things faster. Your P4 is ancient now.

[Roostervier]

Yeah, I know. It is the one that came with my computer, =p. To tell the truth though, I'm strapped for cash.

[Syuusuke]

wait, frooster, how's your FPS in H2V at what settings?

[Roostervier]

Medium = constant 40 - 70 fps, on MP. SP varies... lots.

[jahrain]

Well I'm stuck again, this damn limited Guerrilla prevents me from modifying hardly any data in the structure_bsp_lightmap tags so its making it 10x more difficult to map out the tag structure for reverse engineering...

[kenney001]

wait...can somene explain the lightmap baking in mental ray? Is this possible in haloce? Maybe Pm me if you know so we don't spam up this topic

*sorry for the offtopic*

[jahrain]

^Yes it's possible. And soon to be 100% possible in h2ek once the size limit bug is fixed with the bitmap compiler. Right now I have to compile the baked lightmap bitmaps in h1ek and convert them to h2 using a small but buggy app I quickly wrote.

Ask someone who has a build of my old lightmap UV BSP tag converter, don't want to make an official release until I worked out the problems, but anyone I gave it too is free to share it with anyone who asks for it.

[DaneO'Roo]

Jahrain, can the mental ray lightmapping like..permanently bake bump maps?
say If I put a lolmassive hi res normal map that tiles like 5 times on my cliffs, on a map intended for CE, would it like, make them look perma bump mapped? I've always wondered if theres a way to get my nice cliff bumps to show off without making a lolhuge dynamic light.

[jahrain]

Jahrain, can the mental ray lightmapping like..permanently bake bump maps?
say If I put a lolmassive hi res normal map that tiles like 5 times on my cliffs, on a map intended for CE, would it like, make them look perma bump mapped? I've always wondered if theres a way to get my nice cliff bumps to show off without making a lolhuge dynamic light.
Yes, you can bake normal maps onto textures. I actually used that technique to not bump, but just render smoothened lighting onto my lightmaps so it won't look so low poly in the baked lightmaps. But you can't make too lolmassive sized bitmaps or else they won't compile as there is a restriction in the size a bitmap tag can be. So trying to bake a detailed 16384 x 16384 bump baked terrain lightmap bitmap just won't work. But as for baking large normal maps onto the textures for things like cliff details, it would work on a average sized lightmap bitmap. But the thing is, you need to custom make the normal map first to fit the preset lightmap UVs, you can't just bake a tiled bumpmap from the original texture layout onto it without a hell of a lot of hassles.

You would have an easier time trying to get pseudo dynamic bump maps just baking the bump map onto the original texture itself. Look at some of my textures in Prime for example.