Zombies and Light

A two phase day today, with the AM involving a tweak to allow my F9 Entity Placement Mode to work (for my light mapping tests), and then a fix in the animation engine to allow the new Zombie assets we are using to work, and then in the PM run up to 4PM returning to Ambient Occlusion mapping so that my lightmap files can be saved, loaded and used to create standalone games.

As my original one hour Zombie side-task turned into three hours, I decided to commemorate the work with a small video, and a possible hint on our plan to improve the Zombie Pack for Reloaded.

As I increase the number of variety of entities being tested under the light mapper it's great to see old entities gain new life with the extra lighting fidelity. In the Church model you can now see shadows being cast inside the bell tower, the parapet details and even the subtle base relief, bringing out those geometry touches that were previously hidden.

The next chunk of work after light map file saving is GPU Memory exploration, specifically to find out what is being used, the proportions and any waste happening. I can then budget in my requirement for decent light mapping texture space and at the same time tackle the issue of Reloaded crashing out due to lack of video memory.  I consider 1GB of video plenty for what we are doing right now, so there should be no excuses why we are getting anywhere near that number. Will be a fun adventure down the rabbit hole that one!