External lightmaps

[divVerent]

By default, lightmaps are limited to a size of 128x128 pixels, so at -samplesize 8, any surface larger than 1024 units cannot have full lightmap detail.

However, I added a feature to the engine to load external lightmaps as written by q3map2 when using -lightmapsize 512 (or even 1024).

To see how much visual difference it can make, see the following screenshots:

current:


future:


Also, as the lightmaps then are external image files, one could JPEG compress them, at the cost of some slight lightmap bleeding...

[tZork]

holy f... that´s nice, i wanted this for some time now. gj divVerent!

On a side note, will not this make deluxemaps more detailed too? and would it be safe to resize deluxemaps to say 256 while keeping lightmaps 512?

[torus]

Brilliant! I was thinking about this the other day! Now all we need is animated lightmaps

[tZork]

to make it a bit clearer just how much this can mean for visual quality:

Both images compiled with identical settings except for -lightmapsize

with default 128x128 lightmaps:


with 512x512 lightmaps:




and with pimped tweakge:

[Strahlemann]

!!!!!!!
/me needs to shake div's hand.
/me needs to get back to mapping
/me is happy

[esteel]

Thats very cool. I just hope there is a way to get those black spots fixed, they look really ugly. But the new sharp shadows are very cool. Almost makes me wish someone would redo all lightmaps

[motorsep]

So how does the workflow look like? (to use external lightmaps with q3bsp)

[esteel]

Just add the parameter -lightmapsize 512 (or 1024...) when compiling

[divVerent]

The black spots are not visible in game this is gl_lightmaps 1

[motorsep]

By external lightmaps I meant something like they describe in following interview: http://katsbits.com/htm/articles/age_of_conan/age_of_conan_making_of.htm