Lighting Planner

The Lighting Planner provides an advanced method for baking the illumination of a scene when using lightmaps. In the simple baking scenario, the layers and the surfaces to light can be selected, but lighting is calculated in a single step. Using the Lighting Planner, lighting can be calculated in as many steps as necessary.

The advantage of multiple-step calculation is the variety of lighting scenarios that can be calculated, which makes it possible to use lightmaps to light scenes containing animations or multiple geometry positions.

Planning a Lighting Sequence

To access the lighting planner, make sure you are in the Lighting tab in the Shaper interface.

  1. Set the rendering Mode to Lightmap.
  2. Modify the Baking scenario: choose the Advanced option.
  3. Click on the button.

Once a sequence has been defined, close the Lighting Planner and calculate the lightmaps normally.

Lighting Layer

Create a step by selecting the lighting layer:

  1. Click the Add Step button.
  2. Select the lighting layer you want to use from the context menu that appears.

You can add as many steps as necessary. You can also:

  • Delete steps that you do not want to keep,
  • Rename steps.

Steps will be calculated one by one starting at the top of the list.

It is possible to modify the layer targeted by a step at a later moment:

  1. Select a step in the list.
  2. Modify the selected layer in the Target layer dropdown list.

Configuration

For the selected step, assign a set of configuration parameters. Lighting, geometry, and position layers will have an influence on the lightmaps that will be calculated.

Button Description
Acquire Apply the configuration that is visible in the active viewport to the active step in the Lighting Planner.
Set Apply the configuration for the active step in the Lighting Planner to the active viewport. This is one way to verify that the chosen configuration parameters correspond to the desired model configuration.

Part Animator

For the selected step, assign a position to the moving parts of the kinematics hierarchy. The sliders available in the Animation Sliders editor are available within the Lightmap Planner. Move the sliders to set kinematics positions.

Button Description
Acquire Apply the kinematics positions that are visible in the active viewport to the active step in the Lighting Planner.
Set Apply the kinematics positions for the active step in the Lighting Planner to the active viewport. This is one way to verify that the chosen kinematics positions correspond to the desired model state.

Selected Surfaces

For the selected step, choose the surfaces that should be lit.

Button Description
Acquire Apply the surface selection that is visible in the active viewport to the active step in the Lighting Planner.
Set Select the surfaces the list in the Lighting Planner in the active viewport. This is one way to verify that the correct surfaces have been selected for this step.
Clear Clear the list of selected surfaces.