Lighting Tool Crash

[Tinker]

I have been tearing my hair out all day, have a crash each time I try to run the lighting tool. All is setup correct as I always do. Came back to the Forums and had a good search. Found in 2 topics is the mention of the lighting tool not liking large flat ground surfaces, both resolved there crash by adding a hill of some sort.

So, all I did to test was raise 1 large poly up by 10 meters, raising the whole ground around, tried again and indeed it worked. However trying it at only 1 meter failed. Anyone have any further info about this, as in I want a flat ground, if I add a hill it needs to be off map, if it is off map and apart of the ground, enemy would spawn there? I don`t want this. Cannot alter ground after lighting tool.

Confused

[Phlookian]

OK, try it this way.

I assume you are using a groundmap with detail texture for your terrain (if not why not?)

Add your hills etc off map, attach together all terrain that uses these textures (whether walkable/ floor poly's or not)

Apply your UVW Mappping modifiers.

Now without touching these modifiers again, detach the non walkable terrain and untick the floor checkbox

Even though they are two seperate items the groundmap should still draw ok (and this may solve your problem)

Also, by using this technique to have as many polys in the groundmap as possible should increase fps as the engine isn't calculating as many shadows

(Nice new maps BTW)

[Tinker]

Ground map is correct.

Tried to separate theses earlier, but I get a uvw mapping error for the detached part? For me here, I have edit poly and 2 uvw`s in the stack. When I select edit poly at the bottom to detach the parts needed, I lose my uvw`s until finished and come out of edit poly. Thus the piece detached thinks it`s not had the uvw map applied? And I assumed when I select the detached part after, it should have the same stack as the main ground, but no uvw`s to be found in there at all.

You know it works with just 1 single vert pulled up 10M behind a tree line, but this is no good. Must have something simple missed out here.

Cheers

*Edit*

Changed ground around perimeter to this:

http://www.ghostrecon.net/fileman/users/tinker/test_01.jpg

Everything is working fine and happy with the small raises in ground. Lighting tool works all fine.

But...I add my trees and crash again in lighting tool. Trees work perfectly fine on a test piece:

http://www.ghostrecon.net/fileman/users/tinker/test_02.JPG

[Phlookian]

Personally I use meshes rather than poly's (just my choice) and I always collapse the stack where possible

I've used this technique myself to overcome a different problem. I wanted to detach a piece of ground under some steps to make it non-walkable/ non floor poly. I collapsed the stack (after adding the 2 x UVW's) to editable mesh and detached what I needed

It did work for me (although I left it 'til last incase I wanted to edit anything). I've done this also with the P2 blackwolf map for fps reasons.

I've never had the lighting tool crash on me though

Best I can offer, sorry

[Tinker]

Began the process of elimination this morning, first I built a new ground with no joy. LOL I was a bit cheesed at this. Luckily the second thing I tried was removing the working spotlights. No more crash!

So after all this, they are causing the issue. How? No idea.

Lighting tool:

works fine with map/spotlights but no trees. However crashes when closed after saving map.

will not even start with map/trees/spotlights.

works fine with map/trees but no spotlights. No crashes at all.

Spotlights look fine in Igor and work in game regardless. So why would the Lighting tool have an issue with a working spotlight?

[Phlookian]

I've never messed with spotlights but I do know that they shouldn't shine on anything but the ground (I think, anyhow )

So the area illuminated by them should be clear (just like in the POW map)

Glad you found the cause anyhow