koobas.hobune.stream
Beast Lightmapping - No shadows when doing "Bake Selected"
So this is getting very annoying and I can't find a way around it...my scene is setup with a ground plane, 2 houses, and 4 spot lights. All the objects are marked as 'static', and all the spotlights have hard shadows turned on.
If I bake everything at once, the house cast shadows on the ground plane, but if I only select the ground plane, and do a 'Bake Selected', then the houses don't cast shadows on the ground plane anymore, and no AO is baked in where they meet the ground. I would think that as long as the houses are marked 'static', that Beast would take them into consideration when baking lightmaps even if they're not selected when doing a 'Bake Selected', so that you can still get their shadows and AO!
Is there way around that? If not, then the 'Bake Selected' option seems pretty useless to me...dunno, maybe I'm missing something?
Thanks for your time! Stephane
Yup yur right the bake selected option is pretty stoopid & seems to be only good for a quick preview of how one particular model will looked once your whole scene is baked. Now you would think that being able to bake objects seperately would save a frack load on resources and time!! I feel your pain man I surely do ;)
Well, it's only doing what you're asking it to do. Since you've only selected the ground, that's the only thing that's taken into account. It shouldn't use anything marked static that's not selected, because if it's just going to use everything anyway, that would defeat the purpose of "bake selected" (namely, to do quick test renders on whatever's selected).
Yes you're right, I guess it would be nice to have more control. For example - and I say that with the belief that the most time consu$$anonymous$$g part when baking everything is generating all the lightmaps (and not the calculation of all static objects) - I would like to be able to tell Beast to still include non-selected objects for casting shadows, without generating their lightmaps.
I'm so used to baking lightmaps in 3DS$$anonymous$$ax that I think I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the process Beast uses...maybe I should stick to baking lightmaps in $$anonymous$$ax.
One more thing: I manually create the 2nd UV channel on my static objects, so I can use it for custom AO maps, but I have noticed that even though Beast uses those UVs, it still puts things where ever it wants within that UV template. Is there a way to force it to use the exact same UVs?
"Well, it's only doing what you're asking it to do. "
Same attitude like when I suggested that Blender should ask for saving when someone hits 'QUIT'. Yes, technically it does what you say, but all other apps I used before was able to bake the selection with received shadows, so it is quite logical to make it that way.
