"Easiest" lightmap baking tool?

I'm pulling my hair out trying to get a nice, clean lightmap baked in Blender. Has anyone found an extremely easy lightmap baking tool? I looked at Gile, but it didn't seem powerful enough to handle models in the "thousands of polys" range. Anything else someone would recommend? I'm gonna give Modo a try next...

 

i've heard they are working on an integrated lightmapper but i've been using this in the meantime:

http://www.alienhelpdesk.com/index.php?id=22

its a PITA to use and i've never gotten a baked map i didn't have to clean up in photoshop but it works at least.

 

Yeah, I've used BRrayBaker and "Bake Textures", and you're right, it's a PITA. In a complex model with lot's of seams, it's a nightmare... argh... Isn't there an easier way?

I'm also trying a script by "Cambo" which bakes the lightmap to vertices. That works very nicely, but baking it to a texture is the weak link.

 

If you turn off oversampling(OSA in the render panel,) you wont get seams...or at least much less pronounced ones.

 

Ohhh... I've gotta give that a try. Not a day goes by that I don't learn something new. Thanks!

 

I mainly use Modo for baking textures and lightmaps - works well (and has global illumination).

Richard.

 

Hnnhnn... where have you heard that? Thread/Source/Info please! Is it already christmas?

 

letterrip's post @ bottom of page:

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=2659&start=0

i tried looking for progress regarding it in the developer wiki but couldn't find it yet, so who knows what release it'll be in.

 

Thank you, but i got it wrong Thought, Unity would get its own lightmapper... but blender will be helpful anyway.

Has anybody heard of C4D R10 supporting Lightmapping?

 

Then its time to get R10. Thanks for the Info!

 

they have mentioned interest in it:

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=2482

but i'm not sure what the current thoughts are. joachim?

 

Consider this:
If i dont need to upgrade to C4D R10 for lightmapping, i could give those thousands of Euros (hmhm) to you Otee-guyz and get Unity PRO instead...

What about R10 Support for Unity? Is there something in the making already?

(Demands demands and stupid questions... throwing rocks can make a mountain sometimes... yes, i hate that myself )

 

I worked out a pretty easy way to bake procedural textures and AO (Ambient Occlusion) in Blender yesterday, took probably half a dozen mouse clicks, that worked very nicely. I'll test it with shadows and if it works I hope to post a tutorial. It was the easiest process I've found so far.

 

That would be very interesting!

 

that's been one of my arguments for blender animation support - though its not really OTEE's responsibility its nevertheless a very frustrating situation.

inquiring minds want to know...

; )

 

Does anyone know of any tuts for C4D? I got AO working fine, but I would like to learn a bit more beyond the manual. For instance baking GI, not sure I'm doing this right.

Any info would be great!

Cheers

 

You set up the GI lighting in your scene as normal, then in the object's baking tag click the 'illumination' check box and bake it. That will convert all the illumination on the object to a texture map which is your lightmap in Unity.
However, I've been conducting ongoing experiments with this and am baking Colour, Surface Colour, Illumination, Shadows and AO so that I can blend some/all of them to varying degrees in photoshop to use as a lightmap depending on what looks best. It may be that just illumination map works best, or at least a combination of shadows and illumination maps.
Cheers
Boxy

 

Ah thx, I guess not seeing the "Global" in front on Illumination thru me off

And yeah I would prefer using PS to blend channels myself, and I would say just using shadows and illumination.
I have to experiment with this in Unity also.

Cheers!

 

I am the same, its the little things that throw me until I've done it a few times
To be honest, I am currently leaning towards a workflow where I'm just baking low res maps for positional guides, and then res them up in photoshop and hand paint shadows and light etc on the model in Bodypaint. There have been a few occasions where I've waited so long for the GI to render pre-pass, then render fully that I just thought, no, I pretty much know what the mood is, where the shadows and AO should be, so its much quicker just to paint it by hand
Cheers
Boxy

 

any chance to see the result? i'm moving towards baking phase in my project (on trial version) and would like to see other's results.

 

I think Zerofractal's baked examples are easily the most stunning

http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=20588#20588

Mine are definitely experimental wips:

http://www.savbox.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/posts/Test/Test.html

The terrain, viaduct and tower/buttresses are lightmapped (although the tower and viaduct brick textures will probably become something tiled to get a better quality).
Haven't got it right yet but I have quite literally painted blobs where local light sources are projected onto the terrain.

Lightmaps-