Quick lightmap trick I learned

[Tomato]

So I learned something when working on my last few skopes that might be old hat for some people, but I at least wasn't aware of it. So for anyone tired of skoping the omni light's lightmap effect to every. single. piece. I discovered a cheap and dirty way of applying the lightmap to the entire skope at once.



Basically, you can just apply the lightmap effect to the Scene Root as though it were any mesh piece, and it will apply to every sub-node as well.

[Podmark]

 

[daglob]

 

[Tomato]

Yeah no, I had attached a bunch of hair pieces for Super Starlet under a "Hair" node so I could move them around in unison, and when I added the effect node to that it affected all the hair pieces. So when I was making Aqualad's skope, I was like "Hey... I wonder if I could just..." and it totally works. Still have to setup the texture files and all that, and it doesn't allow for separate lightmaps for different pieces, but if you're only doing one lightmap it saves a ton of time.

[SickAlice]

Same one here actually. And yeah, if you're parts have individual assignments it gets wonky. Then again why would they? Typically we work from one single lightmap.tga? Also to add for the parts that do have extra maps just delete that assignment, change and update the Effects array and delete the extra blocks that get spit out at the end of the nif. Still faster than assignments. Also makes the nif smaller.

[BentonGrey]

Forgive my ignorance, and I imagine I'm off base here, but are you talking about the same process where you have to brighten individual pieces of a skope?

[Tomato]

No, this has to do with getting the refl textures to work right in Freedom Force... for a skope, you not only have to make sure you have the refl texture added, but you have to tie each to the "_lightmap.tga" that's attached to the omni light.

Or, as I discovered, you can tie the lightmap directly to the scene root and the lightmap will now apply to every piece in the skope.

[BentonGrey]

Okay, cool.  This is something then that I have no truck with in my very limited skoping. 

[SickAlice]

Pretty much as he says if something either shares or could share a property you can assign them all to the same one rather than have separate instances. This saves the trouble of conflicts. Likewise assigning all to the Scene Root does it better because then everything uses the same lighting as it should be. A note I learned is to check the Node itself for a mesh and look at the Effects column and make sure the number matches the one in the Scene Root. Sometimes during copying and or saving Nifskope makes a dupe and gives it a new number. The result is you're piece won't show any reflection when it's animated again due to the conflict that occurs.