God Damnation!

[Inferno]

That would be annoying to do. There are so many possible combinations.

There has to be some order.

[Inferno]

For fucks sake. This new light map method takes ages to do.

Also it's messed up in some places. I'll post a pic in a bit.

[Phopojijo]

Yeah you're not going to get Purelight... they're charging 500$ a seat for it...

[Inferno]

Must be some nice shit then. Isn't that what mirrors edge used or something.

[Phopojijo]

No, Mirror's Edge used an in-engine variety that's integrated with Unreal Engine (From Illuminate Labs... Purelight on the other hand is a small ~3-4 person company from Calgary). It still only operates on the lightmaps... but it does all the backend stuff for you.

This guy is a stand-alone program that sits between Maya/Max and Unreal Engine. You export to Purelight... set up your scene... use Purelight to automatically generate the most appropriate Lightmap UVs for you... then light the scene using those lightmaps... then export the objects to ASE and import to the UnrealEngine.

Once in the UnrealEngine, the objects have all the new UV layouts and such... you then mix in the lightmaps that Purelight spits out into the shaders for the objects you create.

[Inferno]

Sounds like a bitch to do for every static mesh.

Also. How fucking long does it take to lightmap 5k polys in UE3. Jeez. I've been waiting for 15 minutes.

-edit
30 minutes....

-edit 2
So bored I'm editing this post again.

[Inferno]

Does the lightmap size make it take longer to run. I have them set at 2048 for final lightmaps and it's taking a lot longer than the 512's I think.

[Phopojijo]

Yes!

Most meshes can make do with like a 64 or 128 lightmap... depending on how large it is. I think the max I needed to go to was like -- 256.

[neuro]

you'd be amazed at how much difference a 16x16 lightmap can make over vertexlighting.

[p0lar_bear]

I made a test cubemap ages ago when I was decompiling Halo models and trying to set up the materials in 3ds to match the game's shaders.