Any1 experienced with baked lighting using Advanced Maya sculpt exporter?

Any1 experienced with baked lighting using Advanced Maya sculpt exporter?

Do people bother with baked lighting or should I just ignore it seeing that SL has its own real time lighting ?
What is a good lighting setup in maya to achieve decent baked lighting for sculpties?

Hopefully Linden will fix the script so it works properly. my objects end up in the wrong positions.

Yes.


Baking textures is almost a must for sculpties. First, SL's lighting is not very good. Second, even in games with lighting systems far superior to what SL has, textures are still very often baked. It's the only way to ensure that surfaces will look exactly the way you want them to, regardless of surrounding lighting conditions.

So yes, learn to bake. It's very, very, very important.


There's no single answer to that. It all depends on what you're making. The possibilities are literally infinite.

That said, there are some general rules of thumb. First, remember that the object is going to be visible from all sides. So make sure it's lit on all sides. Global illumination is often the best way to achieve that. But if you don't (yet) know how to set up GI, a concentric array of low-intensity spotlights can be effective as well.

You'll see a very simple example in this tutorial: http://fromthehill.nl/tutorials/bake/index.html

Second, give some thought to where the particular item you're baking is likely to be placed in-world. If it's going into an enclosed room from which the outdoor environment won't be visible, then you can get as creative as you want with your lighting scheme, and you can (and should) apply the same scheme to every single object in the room. The room itself is a single scene, not just a collection of objects.

But if the item is to be stand-alone, something that might be placed anywhere in the world at any time, then you'll want to keep your lighting scheme far more reserved. Neutrality is key. You want the lighting on the object to be as non-directional as possible, so it will look plausible against the broadest possible range of environmental lighting conditions. Take a look at this post: /109/33/272633/1.html#post2085106 for an example of the difference between directional and non-directional lighting.



For best results, just so you know, I'd recommend not using Qarl's script to do the baking, just so you know. Use it just to get your sculpts in-world, and then re-bake the textures using a better renderer. Qarl's script uses the Maya software renderer, which is not great for this sort of thing. You'll get much better results with Mental Ray.

Or if you want the best, go with Turtle. Turtle is a bit pricey, but if you've got the money to spend, it's worth every penny. It's the only renderer on the market specifically designed for baking, and it does a fantastic job of it. http://www.illuminatelabs.com



Unfortunately, it's not up to LL directly to "fix" the problem. Qarl happens to be a Linden, but neither his sculpty exporter nor his assembly scripts are official Linden products. They're personal projects of Qarl's. That's why they've never been posted directly on any official Linden sites. They're just on the wiki, and on Qarl's own website.

Good Reply Chosen Few, answered my questions and some I was about to ask. You say that the script I am using uses maya software for the baking, so if I select mental Ray as my render engine ....it will still be using maya software for baking....correct?

I will give it a quick try and see if I get different results, I understand that the script may well not care what I select, but worth a test.

I suggest to use PS postprocessing on your baked textured for the final version.

Usually sculpts have pretty annoying UV maps, and it often helps to 'soften' some of your edges of the baked textures and sometimes leveling them to same settings to provide for better viewing in SL under all lighting conditions.

(Of course fixing your uv maps in maya helps too play with the generation settings / default mapping of your nurbs)

Check this out for some fixed/enhanced scene import scripts:

/8/88/276912/1.html#post2111121

Cool, thanks for the heads up Leben. Will have to check it out.