Shadow calculation and lightmaps explained

[HaagseSmurf]

Code: Select all

ManiaPlanet.exe /computeallshadows /useronly /LmQuality=High

it works!

Hahha i told you that Tmarc allready, other commands dont seem to work at all.

If you put the maps on High it takes ages, but if you put it on Default its taking less time.
We had to convert 140 maps on our Royal Server otherwise it didnt start and really, default or high it doesnt make that much difference besides the speed of the recalculation. So if you want to do it in a normal amount of time, just use Default, it really doesnt make to much difference

Further on we have 800 tracks on our Canyon server and we didnt recalculate a single map. Its way to much to recalculate all of them and i checked a lot of maps today and isnt really needed to recalculate them. Maybe some exceptions but as long as there are no new blocks its a bit a waste of time to do it on all 800 maps in Canyon.

Anyway gl

Greetz,

[TMarc]

hehe yes Haagse
Thanks for your feedback about calculation time.

[Fix]

There are really differences between quality calculations, but default is set to be acceptable quality.
High will lower a lot of lightmap artifacts and will be a lot better on dark maps, because light will bounce more and ther will be more smoothing.
Day light open map will be already ok with default, especially Trackmania because there are often less vertical and complex shapes in the maps, excepted for terrain.
As soon as you start making complex indoors, or sunset/sunrise maps, rising calcualtion quality will make a difference.

The recompute will check if there are blocks more recent than previous lightmap.
A very little bug fix in a block can change the date of the block, but not the lightmap coordinates. So the map won't have bugged shadows, but the engine will detect it as "changed" and will recompute it. We try to keep lightmap coordinates as consistent as possible, by keeping old versions whenever possible.
For shootmania, there has been so many changes (mixmapping asked rework of a lot of blocks), that keeping backward compatibility was impossible.

I dream of a cloud computing service for mappers/servers/Mx and a quality über-Ultra 10x times longer and better than Ultra

[HaagseSmurf]

I dream of a cloud computing service for mappers/servers/Mx and a quality über-Ultra 10x times longer and better than Ultra

That would be awesome indeed!!!

It would also help sites as mx exchange, because all the MP2 shootmania royal maps that are stored there are not directly usuable anymore or directly downloaded at a server.

A cloud computing would also be handy for recomputing big serverlists, because its undo-able to convert 800 maps

I also got a question how to convert old tmnf maps, because in MP2 it was possible to convert them into TM2 stadium 2 maps. It seems not to work anymore. Maybe you have a proper commandline for it Fix Thx in advance!!

Greetz,

[Fix]

No I don't have any special command line =)
Maybe it's a bug, or related to the new editor. I don't know :/

[TMarc]

well, the conversion is still working, but as reported above, not buy using the /title=Stadium in the commandline.
And there must be a regular ManiaPlanet Map.Gbx in the folders, or the conversion won't happen if there are only Challenges.Gbx there.

[frode]

ManiaPlanet.exe /computeallshadows /useronly /LmQuality=Default


It takes 40-50 secs pr map.
You must have 1 map made with Mp2 in your folders, otherwise it won't start compiling.

Thank you everybody.

[niarfman]

I dream of a cloud computing service for mappers/servers/Mx and a quality über-Ultra 10x times longer and better than Ultra

Can be possible using a service working in background on each of our dedicated servers. Using only CPU when load is low.

This kind of project already exists, using a HPC with many nodes.

Linking it to ManiaExchange, which can optimize all maps hosted ...

But, if I remeber well, you said it's not possible to use dedicated server for Lightmap calculation. I don't rember why (3D Graphic Card needed ?)

[weerwolf]

Moin

what is the info "1.85 texel/m" really mean which so see when calculating a map?

What adjustsments can u make on the computer to make the calculation faster?
or what is the most important? (cpu,gpu?)

Weerwolf

[Fix]

For what I know (but luckyboy is the magician who knows all the secrets here ), it's the gpu that computes the lightmap. I believe the dedicated server is a version of thegame without visuals, so it can't compute the lightmaps.

1.85 texel per meter is the texel ratio of the lightmap (one texel = 1 pixel of a lightmap).
This value depends on the size of the map and the size of the lightmap.
It means you can't have a detail in the shadow smaller than 1.85m; you will have big 1.85m pixels of lighting on the floor. Small parts of blocks will share lighting of their neighborhood.
The lightmap stored in the .map.Gbx is 1024x1024.
If you use a 32x32 empty map of 32mx32m blocks, that gives you a real surface of 1024x1024 m.
so here you have 1 texel/m.
On you own pc you can compute higher qualities : 2048 or even 4096 for ultra... that will rise it to 4 texel per meter (so you can see details of 25 cm in the shadow).
-Canyon is the worst with its 64x64m blocks.
-Storm is the best with its 8x8m blocs (48x48 decoration = 384x384m : 10 texel per meter)

But we have some improvements here and there : for example, flat "unused" land blocks are using smaller parts of the lightmap when far from the other blocks maps, enabling small maps in the center of an empty grass field to have even higher texel ratio.

The higher the price of the map, the more blocks, the lower the texel ratio.