Thankfully unreal's lightmap tools have made things a bit easier but there is still a TON of really relevant info in this vid. thanks for sharing your workflow :)
I've seen a lot of videos and I would say this is actually one of the best when it comes to showing a broad overview of successful 3DS to UE4 import even though its focused on lightmaps.
I remember sitting in on a second years class to learn this because I just couldn't get them right. This explains it all even better than back even :) good job! More please.
I'm a blender user starting to dig deeper into ue4 game development and honestly your video gave me just enough info to fix my models for better ue4 lighting. I've heard about lightmaps before but struggled with how to use them in ue4, not anymore ;) thank you sir for your tips on how to get things working
Great video, just for people that didn't get it or don't understand 3dsmax and unreal use different uv channel numbers, 3dsmax uv channel 1 represents uv channel 0 in unreal and channel 2 in 3ds max represents channel 1 in unreal
Hi! great tutorial! James thanks!. The ENVIRONMENT INTENSITY should be set to 0 in the world settings tab in order to get the same lighting conditions as your proyect. I am using v4.14 and appears UE4 later versions start with a default lighting intensity of 1.
I'm a little confused. I use Blender and Modo for Architectural rendering and wanted to learn Unreal for animation because it's quicker I understand to do a movie. So, I typically use GI in Modo and Cycles in Blender. Do I need light maps in Unreal V4.8 for Architecture? Is there GI in Unreal? Thanks!
Thanks for the tutorial, The Lightmaps in my game are doing my head in. They almost seem to have a stripey shadow effect across them, I'm using Maya LT for my project, so following this video was a bit different. Definitely contained some useful tips that apply universally though.
So you basically created a second UV channel on 3dsmax for the lightmap channel in UE4, but so i haven't a custom lightmap, i have the auto-generated lightmap from UE4 that automatically create during the import of the mesh, right? For my studies, i wish to learn how to correctly bake a lightmap from 3ds max with the render to texture and correctly place it into UE4. Any suggestion?
Terrific tutorial, just what I was looking for! Just one very minor thing, I had an hard time understanding some of the spoken parts due to the volume being a little bit too low.
Great Tut James very useful! I just had a quick question regarding the "Generate Lightmap UV's" function under the Main mesh section in UE4. Is the auto tool of "Generate Lightmap UV's" in UE4 not very good compared to creating them yourself like in this tutorial? or is "Generate Lightmap UV's" function in UE4 worth a use? It seems that creating the lightmap UV's on you own custom may take more time but proves more valuable for the finalized look in the end. Look forward to hearing from you soon, thanks again for an awesome tutorial!
Hi James. Quick question that nobody seems to have been able to tell me when taking classes, and how frustrating it's been. I don't quite understand how the standard UV mapping relates to the Lightmap UV mapping. F0r example, as a class project, I made a large and complex building, with multiple assets, eventually combined into one object, for export to Unreal, per my instructor's preference. He never explained to me how to make a lightmap UV set, so, of course when I got it into Unreal, i was unable to bake the lighting. My question, is, when combining all the separate assets of the building, (Roof, walls, windows, etc), everything in the UV space piles on top of each other and of course, things became overlapped, So... at THAT point, should I just select the whole, textured mesh, create the lightmap and simply unfold the mesh into a Lightmap island? Doesn't the lightmap UV map have to line up with the Albedo UV map shapes? Looking at this, it does not, and this seems to have simplified the whole thing for me. I'd really love to fix my class project because as of now, I've been unable to show it to anyone because without good light baking, it looks like crap. Thanks, and hopefully I've asked my question clearly. The video is great, thank you! -Trish.
I thought that Global Illumination is enabled when the Spotlight is set to Static or Stationary. So why do you want to have bouncelighting by setting up those PointLights? Global Illumination provides indirect lighting. Ar am I wrong here? Can anyone answer this?
The part where your cylinder meets the box on the pillar is connected. If the box just had 2 tris as its top and the cylinder intersected it to save polys, would this have a negative impact on the lightmap?
Hi, I'm working on a project in UE4. I'm a beginner at UE4 and I'm having trouble with materials. So basically I unwrapped my uvs like you did in this video but I keep getting black spots/bleeds on my model. How do I fix this? I thought it would have something to do with my unwrapping but I had almost no trouble on the unwrapping process.
I'm confused at the method you use as you ended up creating all of the sides of the top of the pillar as individual islands which would result in poor lightmap seams according to the documentation you referenced even though your results look good. Quoted from the documentation "...contiguous lightmap UVs ... eradicate seams and promote efficient lightmaps"
Question - for your pillar, couldn'y you have just done nothing with the pillar and let it use the initial uv layout for the lightmap? Why create another one for this model - There were no overlapping UVs or anything out of the initial UV space??
Nice tutorial but I'm wondering about something. Is it necessary to reorganize the UV map in the second channel or is it just optional? If it's not necessary then I just use Flatten Mapping right?
im still a bit confused. The lightmap doesnt look much different from the UV map. Your lightmap utilized the uv space better, so why not use that for the UV as well? I guess my question is, why isnt the first uv channel enough?
Great tutorial, but the shadows are really really ugly and pixelated. Can we fix this somehow? I dont need some crazy archviz with 10hours of render. But i can't get nice shadows from my own models. :(
suppose I have a set 1 UV for texturing, can I apply the same uv in set 2 (also adjusting the padding area) for lightmap baking? I am quite confused between normal uv and lightmap uv? :/
Late reply but for whoever reads, UV is meant for skinning textures onto meshes, skipped over mostly here as it is out of scope, lightmaps is a UE4 concept that utilizes a UV space but it is not really a UV map. Its like skinning light onto a mesh. See forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/content-creation/69399-what-is-a-lightmap-and-how-is-it-different-from-a-texture-map
You have to put the model at 0,0,0 coordinates which sets the unreal pivot i also remember setting up your modelling software to metres for perfect scaling
Hi John Butcher, I understand that making it manually will give us more controls but wht is wrong in automatically, unreal generating light map ?? can we change the resolution to 128 ??? What is the use, sir ??? Does game Industries do like this, sir ???
The reason you want to generate the lightmaps manually is because the engine doesn't understand the shape of the mesh that it's generating the lightmaps for. What I mean is that it doesn't know if it's unwrapping a pillar, a car, a door. It just takes the texture UVs and then generates a workable lightmap UV based on that. If you want to get the best results, you need to unwrap your models manually so that you have control over how the shadows and lighting are applied.
Late reply but no see forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/content-creation/69399-what-is-a-lightmap-and-how-is-it-different-from-a-texture-map
You have a very good voice, but please kindly avoid mumbling ;) I would be able to say it more nicely if English was my 1st language. Good video, otherwise I wouldn't bother commenting ;)
I am 3 years into my BA for GameDev and I have struggled a little with lightmaps in unreal and this has totaled cleared things up. Thank you.
Shawn Puckett no problem! I struggled with this myself for a long time, really glad I could help you out!
Hey John! Really glad to hear that this has helped! I will be making more tutorials soon so keep an eye out!
Thankfully unreal's lightmap tools have made things a bit easier but there is still a TON of really relevant info in this vid. thanks for sharing your workflow :)
Hi, Tim
I've seen a lot of videos and I would say this is actually one of the best when it comes to showing a broad overview of successful 3DS to UE4 import even though its focused on lightmaps.
I remember sitting in on a second years class to learn this because I just couldn't get them right. This explains it all even better than back even :) good job! More please.
I'm a blender user starting to dig deeper into ue4 game development and honestly your video gave me just enough info to fix my models for better ue4 lighting. I've heard about lightmaps before but struggled with how to use them in ue4, not anymore ;) thank you sir for your tips on how to get things working
Thank you James !
You made my life easier, I've been using unreal engine 4 without using custom lightmaps for a long time.
Great Tutorial.
Really loved this James, been following this tutorial whilst using Maya and it's easily transferable. :)
@JustinTheEnd that's great to hear! Really glad you enjoyed it and that you managed to use it with Maya. Thanks for watching!
nice! just one suggestion for your vids is to stop mumbling! other wise very good!
Great video, just for people that didn't get it or don't understand 3dsmax and unreal use different uv channel numbers, 3dsmax uv channel 1 represents uv channel 0 in unreal and channel 2 in 3ds max represents channel 1 in unreal
Hi! great tutorial! James thanks!. The ENVIRONMENT INTENSITY should be set to 0 in the world settings tab in order to get the same lighting conditions as your proyect. I am using v4.14 and appears UE4 later versions start with a default lighting intensity of 1.
that was actually super helpful for the noob hat I am, you got yourself a new follower !
Spot on Tutorial! really useful info. Thanks mate!
Thanks! Really glad that you enjoyed it and found it useful!
Insanely useful james, thanks!
Helder Pinto No problem man, really glad you like it :) I have used your tutorials in the past mate, they have been great.
I'm a little confused. I use Blender and Modo for Architectural rendering and wanted to learn Unreal for animation because it's quicker I understand to do a movie. So, I typically use GI in Modo and Cycles in Blender. Do I need light maps in Unreal V4.8 for Architecture? Is there GI in Unreal? Thanks!
+Pulse2AM yeah there is
Thanks for the tutorial, The Lightmaps in my game are doing my head in. They almost seem to have a stripey shadow effect across them, I'm using Maya LT for my project, so following this video was a bit different. Definitely contained some useful tips that apply universally though.
So you basically created a second UV channel on 3dsmax for the lightmap channel in UE4, but so i haven't a custom lightmap, i have the auto-generated lightmap from UE4 that automatically create during the import of the mesh, right? For my studies, i wish to learn how to correctly bake a lightmap from 3ds max with the render to texture and correctly place it into UE4. Any suggestion?
Hey mate, thanks for this. A lot of useful information here.
+Tzur Hoch no problem! im glad you found it useful!
Terrific tutorial, just what I was looking for! Just one very minor thing, I had an hard time understanding some of the spoken parts due to the volume being a little bit too low.
glad you found it useful! Sorry about that my mic was playing up but replaced now!
Very helpful. Thanks a lot James.
Should you snap the UV shell to the edge of the uv grid？and I think don't get enough space between the uv islands.
Superb tutorial! thank you.
Great Tut James very useful! I just had a quick question regarding the "Generate Lightmap UV's" function under the Main mesh section in UE4. Is the auto tool of "Generate Lightmap UV's" in UE4 not very good compared to creating them yourself like in this tutorial? or is "Generate Lightmap UV's" function in UE4 worth a use? It seems that creating the lightmap UV's on you own custom may take more time but proves more valuable for the finalized look in the end. Look forward to hearing from you soon, thanks again for an awesome tutorial!
You sound like the male voice on the headspace app! :) Btw this video helped me out cheers
Hi James. Quick question that nobody seems to have been able to tell me when taking classes, and how frustrating it's been. I don't quite understand how the standard UV mapping relates to the Lightmap UV mapping. F0r example, as a class project, I made a large and complex building, with multiple assets, eventually combined into one object, for export to Unreal, per my instructor's preference. He never explained to me how to make a lightmap UV set, so, of course when I got it into Unreal, i was unable to bake the lighting.
My question, is, when combining all the separate assets of the building, (Roof, walls, windows, etc), everything in the UV space piles on top of each other and of course, things became overlapped, So... at THAT point, should I just select the whole, textured mesh, create the lightmap and simply unfold the mesh into a Lightmap island?
Doesn't the lightmap UV map have to line up with the Albedo UV map shapes? Looking at this, it does not, and this seems to have simplified the whole thing for me. I'd really love to fix my class project because as of now, I've been unable to show it to anyone because without good light baking, it looks like crap. Thanks, and hopefully I've asked my question clearly. The video is great, thank you!
-Trish.
what do you do if you have flip faces? I tried flipping them back with the poly but it didn't work? any fix?
I thought that Global Illumination is enabled when the Spotlight is set to Static or Stationary. So why do you want to have bouncelighting by setting up those PointLights? Global Illumination provides indirect lighting. Ar am I wrong here? Can anyone answer this?
The part where your cylinder meets the box on the pillar is connected. If the box just had 2 tris as its top and the cylinder intersected it to save polys, would this have a negative impact on the lightmap?
Hi, I'm working on a project in UE4. I'm a beginner at UE4 and I'm having trouble with materials. So basically I unwrapped my uvs like you did in this video but I keep getting black spots/bleeds on my model. How do I fix this? I thought it would have something to do with my unwrapping but I had almost no trouble on the unwrapping process.
I'm confused at the method you use as you ended up creating all of the sides of the top of the pillar as individual islands which would result in poor lightmap seams according to the documentation you referenced even though your results look good. Quoted from the documentation "...contiguous lightmap UVs ... eradicate seams and promote efficient lightmaps"
For some reason i got black spots in my mesh and my UVs are not overlaping each other...This is so strange!
Question - for your pillar, couldn'y you have just done nothing with the pillar and let it use the initial uv layout for the lightmap? Why create another one for this model - There were no overlapping UVs or anything out of the initial UV space??
that makes sense thanks
Nice tutorial but I'm wondering about something. Is it necessary to reorganize the UV map in the second channel or is it just optional? If it's not necessary then I just use Flatten Mapping right?
How did you get the objects to snap, when you placed them next to each other (The Pillars) thanks :)
hi ! I dont have Mapping => flatten mapping.
locked .... why ?
I have trouble understanding English, I apologize if you explained in the video.
+elemremy at 3:52 tick the red square, the 3rd one. :) That will enable flatten mapping.
+Armand Gönczöl big thank ! :)
+Armand Gönczöl which red square are you talking about?
I see you use 3D Coat. Any way of doing this tutorial in that application?
im still a bit confused.
The lightmap doesnt look much different from the UV map.
Your lightmap utilized the uv space better, so why not use that for the UV as well?
I guess my question is, why isnt the first uv channel enough?
Great tutorial, but the shadows are really really ugly and pixelated. Can we fix this somehow? I dont need some crazy archviz with 10hours of render. But i can't get nice shadows from my own models. :(
Great tutorial , thanks a lot, Cheers.
what about a lightmass importance volume?
suppose I have a set 1 UV for texturing, can I apply the same uv in set 2 (also adjusting the padding area) for lightmap baking? I am quite confused between normal uv and lightmap uv? :/
Late reply but for whoever reads, UV is meant for skinning textures onto meshes, skipped over mostly here as it is out of scope, lightmaps is a UE4 concept that utilizes a UV space but it is not really a UV map. Its like skinning light onto a mesh. See forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/content-creation/69399-what-is-a-lightmap-and-how-is-it-different-from-a-texture-map
How do you make your environment dark like yours? Something really simple but I just can't seem to figure it out? Having a noob moment here lol
It's simply a new blank level :)
Just make sure your map doesn't have a skylight and you don't have you auto exposure too high
Hello my friend, i have a noobie question - when you put the pillars together, how to they align automatically ? Thank you for the video :)
You have to put the model at 0,0,0 coordinates which sets the unreal pivot i also remember setting up your modelling software to metres for perfect scaling
amazing thank you so much this helped me a ton
Hi John Butcher,
I understand that making it manually will give us more controls but wht is wrong in automatically, unreal generating light map ?? can we change the resolution to 128 ??? What is the use, sir ??? Does game Industries do like this, sir ???
I also want to know!! my shadows always look low resolution even if I set lightmap resolution to 512 .....
The reason you want to generate the lightmaps manually is because the engine doesn't understand the shape of the mesh that it's generating the lightmaps for. What I mean is that it doesn't know if it's unwrapping a pillar, a car, a door. It just takes the texture UVs and then generates a workable lightmap UV based on that. If you want to get the best results, you need to unwrap your models manually so that you have control over how the shadows and lighting are applied.
If i have a 1024x1024 UV should i use 1024 lightmap res?
Late reply but no see forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/content-creation/69399-what-is-a-lightmap-and-how-is-it-different-from-a-texture-map
excellent tutorial, thanks!
Geez. You have to mess with the texcoords ("UVs") manually to render optimal light maps? Is this like from 1992?
This helped a lot thank you
Do I need a lightmap for outdoor environment?
+FPstyle1 LOL, of course dude
Found it what i'm doing wrong.. SO MANY THANKS!
very good info thanks a lot
I get a dark line along my pillar, not sure what I'm doing wrong with the UV map.
what is lightmap used for?
ABowlOfAwesome for baking static and stationary light information into the small texture (lightmap) to save on performance
Can you do this is Maya?
+Arturo Toledo por supuesto! it's a technic not software oriented
what about maya?
Thx, it helps a lot !
Lightmaps and textures are so painfully unnatural and difficult to grasp, sigh. :( That's why so many indies go for 2D.
Uh that is not the reason most indies go for 2D.
Thanks James!!!
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
You have a very good voice, but please kindly avoid mumbling ;) I would be able to say it more nicely if English was my 1st language. Good video, otherwise I wouldn't bother commenting ;)
Great tutorial! Stop mumbling!
*Last corridor...*
Good tutorial, but man do you mumble a lot :P
er
Whenever I import an FBX file with 2 UV channels it just crashes the program, any suggestions?