Light rendering time through the roof!

[OAPMrTickle]

I hope someone can help with this problem seeing as the BFEditor site has vanished :cry:

I used to be able to compile light maps for my terrain, primary on final settings taking about 80 minutes. Now for some reason it takes over 500 minutes on LOW... and over 4,400 minutes on medium. Something has gone wrong but I can't find any reason for it

Any ideas please?

Thanks in advance

BTW I have 441 objects in my map. It's a 512x512 x2

[Kilrogg]

Re: Light rendering time through the roof!

Are you using the "total" estimate for those numbers? Cause that total isn't actually an estimate of the remaining time, it just goes up and up forever and adds up between the different lightmaps generations. As far as I know it's useless.

Have you actually tried to let the lightmaps render on low? Cause it should only take around 2 minutes.

I've never had that problem but try deleting the Lightmaps folder in your level folder (while the level is closed in the editor) then reopen the level and render the lightmaps. I've always had errors when rendering lightmaps while they were already partially rendered (but none of your kind).

Theres no reason for your map to be doing that though, my latest map is 512 with 3120 objects in it and it only takes 2 minutes to render low terrain lightmaps and 17ish minutes for final terrain lightmaps

[=tGA=Harry]

Re: Light rendering time through the roof!

Kilrogg, could you tell us your lightmap settings then?
And are you using EA: s Lightmap samples when you compile by the way?
Cos I have the same problem as the first guy, it takes way too long (several hours) even on low...

I can't imagine that even DICE blocked every computer at their office doing lightmaps, for a whole week/ map, when they made their vanilla BF2-maps.

[OAPMrTickle]

Re: Light rendering time through the roof!

No I wasn't using the total estimate m8. I started the lightmap rendering before I went to work yesterday on medium settings for terrain and object. 14 hours later it was still rendering object 201 of 421 :cry: I have the EA lightmaps too... I might temporarily move them and then see if it renders any quicker.

I used to do Final render for the terrain but low for the objects. Then I selected the key buildings and did a medium lightmap render on the selected objects. This used to complete within 2 hours. EA must have come across this problem too. I wonder if any of them are knocking around this forum and can offer advice

Thanks for the input, MUCH appreciated. More advice welcomed.

I decided to check in the resources window in the editor section. I looked all through the list and found an ambient light source. I deleted it and my map now renders a LOT quicker.

@Harry It might be worth you checking your resources too.

[TGL|Badlizzard]

Re: Light rendering time through the roof!

lol Killrogg, I have a feeling you didn't d/l the object lightmaps from EA, My Bridge map took 6 days to render final lightmaps, running non-stop day and night.

I initially tried it on my 64bit, 2.5 gig ram, ATI 800PE and it was taking too long so I moved it over to my old machine 2.8ghz with 1 gig ram and it didn't seem to be much faster, so I let it run, and it took 6 days.

My map had many buildings on it, and wall segments, those are the types of things that take a long time to generate. Trees and crates and barrier blocks are items and are counted when doing lightmaps, but they don't take any time to render. It only generates one set of LM for those items, whereas buildings and walls have 4 seperate lightmaps generated, low,medium,high and ultra-high.

The more complex your buildings... such as whether you can enter them or not, the longer the lightmaps take.

[=tGA=Harry]

Re: Light rendering time through the roof!

I decided to check in the resources window in the editor section. I looked all through the list and found an ambient light source. I deleted it and my map now renders a LOT quicker.

@Harry It might be worth you checking your resources too.

Thanks for the tip! Will try it.

This ambient light, does anyone know what it's for?

MrTrickle, have you tested the map on all light-settings, so it doesn't crash or somthing, when this ambient light was removed?

[{HHx}b14ze]

Re: Light rendering time through the roof!

Using the lightmap samples from EA significantly increases rendering time. HAve you used any ambient lights... that was my problem. I put ambient lights for light posts on the streets..

[zuiquan1]

Re: Light rendering time through the roof!

the average time for me to generate light maps is about 3 or 4 days on medium(and my maps a very bare and vacent, not many objects) its not the editors fault, its just I have a crappy computer, heh

[Karate hand]

Re: Light rendering time through the roof!

lighting is all about, 3 things, power of Pc and the number of objects and the size of map,

heres a tip run your lights on final (medium if ya into that) for terrain , then another time run the final on objects. thats if you dont have a spare Pc.