Lightmass worse for textures? *UDK bug?

[puuusianka]

Ok this topic consists of 2 parts:

1. Lightmass issue in UDK
2. UDK water bug.

So I am playin around with UDK and I decided to put some 3D textures on walls. I import the tga texture and then map of normals for the texture. I put them together as new material. I link texture to diffuse and normals to normal. I save it. I place the texture on the wall and build lightning. My texture doesn't look 3D at all. I am lurkin around the editor to do something with it but I am to darn dumb. I get to the light setting and decided to Untick lightmass use. Eureka!!! The textures look much more 3d like then before.

Can someone explain me why it is so? And if possible - turn me to some good (video) tutorial on that so I could learn how to make 3d textures even with lightmass. Thank you

*UDK bug

I was playing around my small corridors admiring the new textures and finally thought that it would be fun to have full freedom of movement. I place the water volume in corridor and open the game. It works fine. I like to play with "f" button which makes the player lose control over the body and fall to the ground. I used it in the water while heading towards ceiling and to my astonishment I died every time I was touching the ceiling when not having control over body. I could just slightly bounce with my thumb on it and I was dead. So wtf?

I can post pics tomorrow since Im not on comp right now.

[LennardF1989]

Do you actually run the in-editor game/game itself to view how it looks? Because the editor viewport has toned down graphics as otherwise it would be a performance hell - this can be disabled by modifying the configs though.

In-game, we had the same issue on an older UDK version. After some research it appeared we messed up some settings in the config.

I don't understand your bug explanation, sorry.

[puuusianka]

Imagine you have a closed corridor. You place a water volume that fills the whole corridor. Now you know ''f'' button thingy? so When I touch the ceiling and click ''f'' I will die totally and that makes no sense.

[DreadStunLock]

Push, create some screenshots dude, of every thing you used, and you will get an answer faster, even better idea on UDK.com, there are so many people that can help you with that. (I am only saying UDK is best bet cause you are digging yourself out of the "Novice" area of UDK) (I think)

[B1nArY_001]

Lightmass simulates photon bounces found in real life. For example - a light source outside of a doorway will project a bright spot into a room that is roughly the shape of the doorway (how precise this is, is determined by your lightmap resolution). In real life you would get more illumination inside the room due to photons bouncing of the floor, off walls and all over inside the room adding a slight ambient lighting to the room. Lightmass does exactly the same thing by calculating how photon emissions would bounce around providing this secondary illumination. This has an impact on how much your normal maps "pop" because it gives the lighting an omnidirectional quality and normal maps require directional light to create the illusion of depth where there is actually none. There is another type of mapping that can provide self occlusion based on a height map called parallax mapping that does not require directional lighting to create its' effect. Parallax mapping does however use more resources and has a few quirks of its' own such as distortion when viewed from certain angles and texture stretching on "extrusions" making its' uses very situational.

Here is a good example of parallax mapping. All the surfaces you see in this video are perfectly flat. There is no geometry being used to create these effects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01owTezYC-w

Edit: If you have a particular reason to want lightmass enabled you can always tweak the lightmass settings either in a Post Process Chain for the area or globally in the World Properties.

[DreadStunLock]

So in other words, those Lightmass photons are the reason why when we create windows in a room and have light going through it also illuminates a bit of the room overall?

Like why our room is still quite lit when we have curtains over the windows?

Also, is that Pharalanx mapping rendered with DX11 or is it similiar?

[B1nArY_001]

Parallax Mapping I think has been supported since DX8 or DX9, I don't remember which. It does not require DX10 or DX11.

As for the window question yes. For the curtains it's a bit more complicated in that the amount of illumination is determined by more factors such as the cloth and the volume of photons reflected and how much it disperses (scatters) the photons that pass through the material.

[puuusianka]

I know what lightmass is. The thing is that the textres I use are not prepared for it. They look much better in normal lightning. It actually is beneficial since it's building faster and probably it's not affecting fps as much. However I'll never achieve such effect that you showed in a vid. I saw the paralax lightning earlier in doom3. I understand that the main issue with it is that when you throw a stone at it or sth then you'll see that it's just totally flat.

[B1nArY_001]

You shouldn't have to "prepare" a texture for lightmass. If your texture source was jpg converted to a TGA or something like that then you risk posterization. Tweaking your lightmass settings and setting your lightmap resolution should keep it looking nice. Something is wrong with your lightmap settings, your lightmass settings or you are pulling your textures from a low quality source. Lightmass itself does not make your textures look bad if everything is configured properly and yes, build times are much much longer with lightmass enabled.

Edit: Configuring your lights' settings is also going to make a huge difference. Falloff, radius and brightness need to be set a little different when using lightmass, especially indoors.

[DreadStunLock]

I think Pusianka's dream is screwed then :P Allthough his UDK runs at 70 FPS while empty.

[puuusianka]

Well, I dont know why my dream is screwed. You'll see the effects when I'll finish my project. I'll tell you the name: The Inn. :)