I've been playing with UnrealEd, and have taken notice of a number of things they are doing with the Unreal II engine, particularly the use of static meshes and lighting.
Static meshes do not appear to cast shadows, and are only vertex-lit, although many of these are pre-lightmapped and have a shadow texture. First, the complexity of the level is cut down hugely by the use of static meshes, so that the actual brushes that form the shape of the level are less complex than a Half-Life map. Second, all the static meshes are pre-lit, so lightmapping time is cut way down.
I'd really like to see Blitz users collaberate on the creation of packs of these static meshes. I am downloading Unwrap3D right now to see if I can write a quick lightmapper to make single lightmapped meshes with. I'll post the program for download, but I am not shooting for anything too high-quality; just enough to make greyscale lightmaps of small meshes that are already UV-mapped.
Static meshes do not appear to cast shadows, and are only vertex-lit, although many of these are pre-lightmapped and have a shadow texture. First, the complexity of the level is cut down hugely by the use of static meshes, so that the actual brushes that form the shape of the level are less complex than a Half-Life map. Second, all the static meshes are pre-lit, so lightmapping time is cut way down.
I'd really like to see Blitz users collaberate on the creation of packs of these static meshes. I am downloading Unwrap3D right now to see if I can write a quick lightmapper to make single lightmapped meshes with. I'll post the program for download, but I am not shooting for anything too high-quality; just enough to make greyscale lightmaps of small meshes that are already UV-mapped.
