help with lights and shadows

[Tonybigsan]

Hey, i'm new to UDK, i've barely started to learn. I have created a scene in 3dsmax and exported it .fbx. Every object has a 64x64 lightmap except the whole house which has 256x256. Please check this video up and tell what's wrong and why all the shadows look like crap.
Any help is appreciated.

Here's the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W18OrKinpik&list=HL1328018563&feature=mh_lolz

LE: I've imported the scene into the "midday lighting" template and added a few simple lights, the ones you add by default using the "L" key + clicking, in the house.

Again, any help is appreciated. Thanks.

[Skiz]

I think the lightmaps are a bit of a too low quality. so bump them up. Secondly, You may need to use the 'production' lightmass settings That greatly increases the accuracy of the shadows.

[Tonybigsan]

ok so reimported the house and a chair... house's lightmap is 1024, chair's is 256 and production lighting.
img 1: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/6/shadowshu.jpg/
img 2: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/59/shadows2p.jpg/
img 3: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/268/shadows3.jpg/
shadows still suck :-s. in img1 the shadow near the green line is great yet the shadowed area looks like crap...
the next 2 images are the same, and in my opinion the quality never changed between that in the video and this one in the pictures yet I had higher res lightmaps and production lighting.

[Tonybigsan]

ok so here's another image without the lights on the inside.
http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/5405/shadows4.jpg
I think the shadows look way better but still not exactly smooth...
One question: does the lightmap of an object affect the shadows that it casts, the shadows that it receives or both?

[darthviper107]

The lightmap is just the shadows it recieves

[ambershee]

No, lightmaps are where light hits an object. Shadows are drawn seperately (although lightmaps will also show where light does not hit an object, it is not accurate due to the lower resolution).

[darthviper107]

Yeah, my point is just that the lightmap setting changes just that object, not other objects

[Tonybigsan]

so how do I fix my shadows? :-<

[ambershee]

You don't have shadows ;)

Your lightmap resolution appears to be too low for the fidelity you're going for. This is what causes the issue with blotchyness you can see; pick out the meshes that have blotchiness applied to them, and up their lightmap resolution.

[Tonybigsan]

how much? i got to 2048x2048 on the whole house and the time it takes to build maps is getting up to 30 mins :-<

[ambershee]

If your whole house is one mesh, that would be the immediate root of the problem.

[darthviper107]

A house like that shouldn't be all one object, you need to separate it out into separate meshes.

[Tonybigsan]

ok did that, gonna test it immediately but first, how do I group objects in UDK ? :D

[Boshko Savich]

select all object, kepp -Ctrl- right click - group actors