so I'm brand new to forging and I'm putting the finishing touches on my first map. It so happens in way over my light budget - 123%. When I load the map in a custom game it looks crazy, textures won't load, colors are off, playing on it is glitchy and it's just not good. I've deleted pretty much every unnecessary little Boulder but that's not making a dent. I'm down to 118% and all issues remain. I've heard large items hurt the budget so I deleted the one big rock column I had just to see what would happen and it didn't do a thing. What am I missing?! I'm not using a ton of lights either at least I don't think I am. I have the map moderately well light, it's still fairly dusky. I do have a roof over my building (single building map) but I also have a ton of Windows so I'm getting a lot of light from the sun. I've put an embarrassing amount of time into this thing and I'm totally bummed. I'd be grateful for any help at all. Thanks for taking the time!
Can I ask what turning baked lights off does visually to the object? I can never really tell the difference.
That's a good question. I've read about what it means in 3D modeling but I'm not sure how that translates to forge.
When you turn light baking off on an object, that object will not generate shadows from the canvases natural lighting.
Oh cool that's really helpful actually. So I can save light budget by turning that off and I can also keep certain areas from being too dark from all the shadows. Sick this is so helpful.
Well, that's how it's supposed to work. I haven't tried it myself yet since I haven't made it that far along on any maps. I've heard mixed reviews from other people. It sounds like it's somewhat inconsistent. At the very least you should be able to turn off light bake on the flooring of your lowest level, and the outside wall opposite the natural light source. That should save you a fair amount on your lightmap. From there you'll just have to experiment on additional pieces if you're still experiencing issues.
As an example of what the baked lighting does: I did some tests, and if you have an object that is half in the sun, half in the shade, baking the lighting will create a nice half shade/sun effect. With the option turned off, that object becomes as though the entire thing is in the sun. So if objects are fully exposed or fully within the shade, turn off light baking for those objects.
As far as I've seen, although I haven't researched or tested thoroughly, point lights light objects that have lightbake ON really pixelated-like. When you turn the lightbake to OFF on the object that's being affected the point light then has a smooth transition from light to dark. This could possibly only happen when the lightbake percentage is above the 100% threshold though.
Really appreciate all the feedback. Who would have thought- a friendly and helpful halo community... Anyway I'm headed home to play with the light bake options and hopefully that does the trick Thanks again
So I turned off the light bake on a bunch of stuff - actually spent the better part of the night experimenting and for pretty solid results- better textures and such. Since my map is basically a large box with a bunch of windows in the ceiling it turned out to be pretty important to keep the light bake ON for those blocks. Most of the other things in the map look fine with it OFF, with a few notable exceptions. When I turned light bake off on the ceiling pieces the shadow texture down below would turn into big weird squares with lighter and garner shadows- looked like ****. So it appears that the light bake function on an item controls the shadow it casts as opposed to controlling how shadows behave on it. Short version: my light budget is back under 100%, textures look much better, and I was able to put back some of the items I had taken out when I first tried to solve the problem. I'm still having one last super frustrating issue but I'll put that in a new thread.
Tbh I'm not sure anymore. Might have been clouds. That map had so many problems at the time I posted this it's hard to say what was what.
This post help me so much.i have a map called preinfection.check it out.i was 188% on lighting.crazy i know.it because i built wooden bases out of tree trunks causing the light issue . I unbaked alot off items and all that were in shadows and items that didnt see the shadows at side off map.seriously i didnt notice a big difference.untill i went to the bottom layer in map as there a run around down the well i have made.before all these item were ok looking with a few green lights.but now were i didnt have green lights the ice walls were totally black.so i added more green lights and light baked the three items were totally black.so i hope this helps.i think it will only really affect under ground or complete items hidden from the sun/moon in night mode.