Battlefield Modding Tutorials BFMODS

Yesterday I fooled around with 3DSMax until I hit the jackpot in terms of lightmapping buildings/interiors! I'm still in shock as to what I can actually do now. I not only found how to make a object light map in 3DSMax (instead of ingame) but also found how how the DC devs made the neat lighting tricks on Basrah's Nights and the interiors of the DC Sea Rigs!

They simply did the lighting in 3DSMax with a host of light objects at their disposal.

3DSMax can do a hundred times better light maps then the game engine could EVER make. I also found out how to make 3DSMax do a automatic flatten of the UV map so that it will make a channel 3 taht the game will apply the light map on. However it's a bit messy and I'm sure it wouldn't come out as good as if I did it the right way. (aka, do the channel 3 map manually)

But none the less, I am extremely happy with what I can do now. I can now place "light" objects into a scene and render them onto the light map. Now I can have lamps, wall lights, and ceiling lights cast light and shadow on object interiors. (and exteriors if I wanted).

Here is the interior to the LHD2 I converted from BF2. This is what it currenly looks like in 3DSMax: (some images are thumbnails, click them to enlarge)




I render them with the render tool and can see what the final light map would look like ingame (if the channel 3 uv map had been optimized that is):




Isn't that simply beautiful?

Max does lighting so much better then the game does. Makes me never to want to go back to using the game for lightmap rendering.

Here's what it now looks like ingame. As you can see it still needs adjustments (and a new channel 3 light map channel as the one Max makes is kinda crappy)







This corridor came out the best ingame:


I'm close to making it look perfect. I just need to tweak the light objects some more and get someone to make a new chl3 uv map for this object.

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I have cameras in your head!

Wow, it almost looks weird, with the nice lights and just plain one color walls.
But the lighting looks awesome!

Yeah the bland wall textures is do to BF2's newer uv mapping stuff. It doesn't translate fully when ported to BF1942. So hence ,the bland textures.

But I'm doing lighting for some building in my El Alamein night map. Thus far its look really great.

EDIT:

Here's what one of the buldings looks like in my night map now that I finished one Now with a light object on the roof lamp.

(click to enlarge)


I plan to do a few more buildings that have light fixtures in them.

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I have cameras in your head!

Yup, its a good technique, good to see someone else who knows how to enjoy it, I sure did.

Indeed it is. I wasn't aware you could do this too.


Finished the factories. I put lighting in the vents/windows/whatever the hell they are:





The factory now looks like it's actually occupied now.

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I have cameras in your head!

Did DICE not know this, or did they just not care?

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I would go with they didn't care. Since if they did, they would have make the light object functional and we wouldn't have to use 3DSMax for lightmaps.

They left a unused object class called a Light.

ObjectTemplate.create Light TestLight
ObjectTemplate.setAmbient 1/1/1

But I guess they didn't care enough to make it work.

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I have cameras in your head!

it sure look awesome. do this mean you can have lamps on moving things to? like on cars for example? or searchlights to probe after enemys?