Vertex lighting

How to create models in XSI and other 3D applications and make them work in Battlefront 1 & 2. Post models, tips for application usage and share anything XSI, 3DMax, SketchUp, etc.

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Oceans14
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Vertex lighting

Post by Oceans14 »

I am attempting to bake vertex colors into a model, however I have a few questions. After setting up my lights in xsi and "regenerating" the map, I have something called "RenderMap" in my hierarchy, which seems to mean I'm on the right track. My question is what to do with it? I'm uncertain how to get battlefront to recognize a vertex lit mesh. If somebody has done this and could explain the procedure I would be very grateful!
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Re: Vertex lighting

Post by Marth8880 »

The RenderMap property simply stores the settings that its parent object uses to generate the lighting. What you want is called a Color At Vertices map. See here: http://softimage.wiki.softimage.com/xsi ... AVMaps.htm
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Oceans14
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Re: Vertex lighting

Post by Oceans14 »

Ok, I created the CAV map and selected it in the Render Map settings. I'm confused about how Final Gathering plays into all this - I've watched the below video several times but I don't understand the purpose of some of the steps. There's one point where he applies a lambert material, but my materials are all phong... not sure if this matters. (By the way Marth, I was able to load your vertex color preset, so I can confirm it works with modtool 7.5)


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Re: Vertex lighting

Post by Marth8880 »

Oceans14 wrote:There's one point where he applies a lambert material, but my materials are all phong... not sure if this matters.
It doesn't matter. A lambert is just a phong without specular shading, pretty much.
Oceans14 wrote:I'm confused about how Final Gathering plays into all this - I've watched the below video several times but I don't understand the purpose of some of the steps.
Final Gathering is a method used to bounce lighting across surfaces around the scene, much like what light does in real life. See here:

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Oceans14
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Re: Vertex lighting

Post by Oceans14 »

Hmm, okay that makes sense. I'm very confused now though, because I went back and re-read some of the original documentation where it talked about painting the entire model the ambient color of the world or something... so do I have to do this and bake the lights, or are they separate things for different purposes? Also, I did something earlier (couldn't quite say how) that got the model in game with vertex colors, but they were all kinds of iridescent instead of the blue and white I set the lights to (and I know, zero engine apparently swaps rgb channels, but some of those colors should not have been showing up, period). Unfortunately I didn't take a screenshot and have replaced that model with several other iterations since then. I do apologize for having such a hard time understanding this.

Edit: I figured it out. My materials were really messed up. By using clusters I was able to sort it all out. It isn't perfect but at least I know the procedure. Thanks for the help Marth
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