The Galactic Senate Part 5: Rows And Lighting.

So in this section we are going to be making a few rows, and the first section of our rows the goal is to make so we can create and bake a basic light and shadow map, apply it to our current models and make it tilable so the rest of the senate can be made with just some simple duplication.

so first I started by duplicating the wall I made in the last part and rotated it 20 degrees then lined up the bottom of the wall with the bottom of the first wall.

I repeated that same duplication process until I had a complete ring of walls.

I then used the weld point tool and welded the sides of the wall together (I chose to weld to right side to the left sides)

next after the entire wall was complete I duplicated the base I created in the last part.

I simply repeated the same process as above, rotated each base by 20 degrees until I had all them added to the ring.

and finally I did the same thing with the pods. we actually dont need all of these pods for the shadow and lighting map, but I duplicated them to make sure my ring looked proper before I started (this way im not moving around polys last minute).

next I repeated this duplication process for the next two rows, However I only left 3 pods in the second row and 2 in the third row. The Middle pod of the second row is our template for our light and shadow map. when we bake our texture itll fake the lighting to the rest of the pods.

first I installed this cylindrical shape behind the pod this will be the light bar behind the pod.

and then I put this above the door to mark the red light in the centre of the door.

I created a single spot light in the scene and placed it 60 units above all the pods, then adjusted its cone until all the pods were hit evenly by its light. I then turned on its shadows, and adjusted its shadow map values until I had these nice soft shadows under the pods.

this is another rendered veiw of what the soft shadows look like inside the pod.

next for the lights behind the pod I placed a spot light and softened its intensity until I got what I thought the light should look like.

finally I repeated the spot light process for the middle light on the door. I removed my original spot light to show how the lights look.

Finally with all that in place I baked my shadow map. First to do this I simply change every object in the scene to have a plain white texture. Then I go Render > propertie > render map and simply bake my surface colors, this gives me my texture for my detail map (I used render type 28 (normal map with gloss) and in texture slot 2 I placed the shadow map to give soft shadows to the objects via texture) for the lights itself with shadows disabled I simply rendered another render map with the regular texture and surface color and illumination.

with our soft shadows and light map in game this is how the pods look.

With our pods and walls now tilable and just needing to be placed its time to move onto designing the floor.

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