Mesh lighting help me

[gunslingor]

Okay, so this is what it looks like in maya.

This is what it looks like in KF UDK:

Why is it doing that crazy corner shading like that?

Also, for a short time, I was able to see the crazy shading in maya but it only appeared that way for a short time. Why? How do I see it again?

Another note, all those edges that go to corner do not appear in maya. However, when i run the cleanup command, they edges are inserted. I need help, i've fixed this problem before but dont recall what I did. I've put like 30 hours into this problemwithout results.

 

[Murphy]

Meshes are lit per vertex in UnrealEd. Only vertices can receive lighting information.
You don't have any vertices anywhere on that wall except in the corner there, so that's where the light information is picked up. Then it's spread over the neighboring triangles to the next vertices who can receive light information and vice versa.

If you want better lighting, break up the surface so there are more vertices in between. Or at least change the edges all coming from that one corner.

 

[gunslingor]

Meshes are lit per vertex in UnrealEd. Only vertices can receive lighting information.
You don't have any vertices anywhere on that wall except in the corner there, so that's where the light information is picked up. Then it's spread over the neighboring triangles to the next vertices who can receive light information and vice versa.

If you want better lighting, break up the surface so there are more vertices in between. Or at least change the edges all coming from that one corner.

Thanks murphy, but thats sort of the problem. in maya, there are no edges going to that corner, when i import into kf, thats when they just magically appear.

I think it is automatically making a line from the top left and bottom right corners to every other vertex. have no idea why though.

 

[J.D.*]

I just had a long discussion with someone about triangulation and optimizing last week, and fanning long thin tris into 1 vert can really hurt performance.

Your mesh is being auto-triangulated on import, and in Maya it looks to be a bunch of ngons. Heres a short article on triangulation and using maximum space http://www.humus.name/index.php?page=News&ID=228

You should try to keep your model in quads or tris, best to triangulate it so you know exactly how the engines going to receive it.

Your mesh could also have been done as a modular set.

 

[J.D.*]

So as an example and what Murphy Mentions, break up the surface and get a good edge flow:

This is what I think you have going

Spoiler!

This is cleaned up

Spoiler!

Triangulated

Spoiler!

This should give you better lighting results.

 

[gunslingor]

Yeah,

Yeah,

I have been trying to triangluate it beter, strange though, when I try to add edges it sometimes covers up the holes.

 

[gunslingor]

well,i think i fixed that

well,i think i fixed that

Now what am i doing wrong? now the edges are red??? wierd.

 

[YoYoBatty]

Do you have any near light sources that are red?

 

[Dregs]

Also be sure to set your polys to smoothing groups; the upper rounded inner section of all the windows should be in the same smoothing group and all the bottom sills in another smoothing group; that would help the appearance.

 

[gunslingor]

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198003642151/screenshot/596932745207504972?tab=public

now the whole freakin map has red. even the standard default meshes show up with red areas, even bsp. wtf?!

 

[PiX]

Look for the TriggerLight you accidently placed somewhere and delete it, or at least change its range a lot.

 

[gunslingor]

wtfs a triggerlight? I tried to 'find' it, no trigger lights. what else could it be. I noticed all the red is acking like a light coming from a single direction, its almost like a sunset on the horizon, but that aint it. I thought perhaps that udk automatically does that to meshes when they have really low lighting, but now its happening with BSPs and that aint it. There are no lights that could be cauing it. I think i fixed it in the past by changing the shadow property, but it aint working now. Its strange to, because it wasnt this bad until recently. its like the red/pink is spreading or something.

It's very strange, i dont think it has to do with any single light. Like even inside a room i see the red seaping into corners.

 

[ro_sauce]

is it just in your editor or do other ppl get that effect too?

 

[gunslingor]

is it just in your editor or do other ppl get that effect too?

I get the effect when i play the map, as well as in the editor. Pretty sure I saw it when a friend hosted the map as well. It is really wierd, for the most part, the red/pink is just coming from a single wall that's fake backdropped. as you get closer to the wall, the red gets brighter, further away it gets dimmer and its casting shadows. The red only shows up on certain static meshes, others are fine as you can probably see in the pictures. Shadows are cast as if the red were just a red light, but again, only for certain meshes and bsps. I know I fixed this problem on some of the meshes by playing with the properties, but i compared line by line to a properly working one and they look the same. dam, one thing after another.

 

[Sambopukka]

I had a similar problem with static meshes on a ut2004 map I was porting for KF. The texture of the static mesh would a appear black the closer I stood to it but when I moved away it appeared normal. I fixed it by changing the texture because I think it was using an overlay that was making it mess up.

 

[gunslingor]

strange though, that its only happening to certain objects, some of which are standard KF meshes from base maps.

 

[YoYoBatty]

Try searching for "Sunlight"

 

[gunslingor]

yep

yep

search for sun, no luck. Here are more pictures to help diagnose:

Overall redness effects:

Inside and out:

north and south:

leaking red:

And yet, when I look back at old screen shots, the problem is not there. I seems to have appear recently, i suspect when I imported the big building from the north/south picture. Tried deleting it, the red is still there. Notice the building in the back is not red in the following picture, but is red now currently in the map. All I changed between screenshots is that I replicated the building and kind of stuck them together.

Damit, I just realized I spent my entire weekend trying to fix this problem.

WTF!!?!?!???!?!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!????!???!???!???!???!???!???!???!???!???!???!

 

[Murphy]

Upload the map and let us have a look.

 

[ro_sauce]

does shadowcast=false, staticlighting=true/false do anything?
maybe turn off dynamiclit