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Okay the last few days I have been getting a few emails asking lots of questions about light mapping. Well I see fit to answer a few of them today on the forum instead of sending 20 emails.

The two questions I received the most was how do you do light mapping and how do you get shadows to cast on entities.

Well the first one first:
How do you do light mapping?.

Well I don’t see my light mapping as great or perfect but I seem to get positive feed back from it. So for the people that wants to know.

There is no specific guide line that I follow however light mapping should look realistic or at least believable. From this screenshots one can see the main focus point in this scene is the floor that leads you down the room while the red catches your eyes on the side.

Nothing special was done except for the custom media. All lights used in this room has been altered to a much lighter colour.

Why lighter light mapping? This depends greatly on what type of textures and scenery you have in your room lighter textures requires lighter light mapping this normal.

I normally refrain from using extremely dark colours because it is very seldom that it fits well with in a scene. Rather use tweaked light mapping than dark colours besides the dark colours not fitting in well with the scene is that the colours don’t blend well with other colours. Lighter light mapping like mixing light blue with light red works wonders as the two colours compliments each other without the other one being overly brighter than the other one and has a kind of neutral colour. However it’s also not wise to use dark and light colours at the same time, as they don’t go well together. Blending of the colours is another problem that simply doesn’t look good either.

What is the difference between the two.? Besides being lighter in colour darker lights tend to be one colour where lighter lights tends to get lighter almost white near the edges, visually it gives better realistic light mapping.

This is my personal choice.

The second question was how did I cast the shadows on the barrels?

And pretty straight forward reason the grate segment on the ceiling allows for light to travel past the segment on the see through part of the texture while the visible part on the texture blocks light it has to do with the transparency setting of the texture and the engine the light has also been set with a much bigger range to allow the light to cast further It's also requires light mapping on full.How it’s done that would be some thing you need to find out on your own

Do you work at ID?

Lol should I??

Could I include your tut in my guide WOI?

Well I always wonder wether your name refers to ID software? Anyhow full lighmapping is pretty time consuming for the engine so I don't think many people will use it in there games.
*Slayer_2

It's sad but that is the only way you will be getting that grate to cast shadows...time consuming it might be but that few extra shadows are worth it...

@Nickydude sure please adds the pics as well.

Done

lol well I'll stick with my trusty high-poly grate that you can actually shoot thorough as well which is an added plus
*Slayer_2

Every one does it there way."High-poly" grate and you wonder why you get low frame rates....

The idea is not to have high poly grates the lower the polys the more you can add before you hit a frame drop...And it would still look as good...

that not necessarily true the amount of polys would effect how good the lightmaps were