light maps

[rodoneal]

Anyone here ever use there animation/modeling software to generate lightmaps? I'm doing a Rom ATM. I was thinking that it might work better to use light sources to illuminate the bottom (big bird) of the ship, as it will take multiple light sources to illuminate it properly. Plus I'll want the shadow of the warp pylons as well and that might be a bit difficult to pull off in PSP.

any "words of wisdom" on how well this works for SFC light maps. It doesn't seem like anyone does it this way.

[Atolm]

WZ says,"You'd have to render the texture on a basic plane that's the same width and height as the texture, then add the lights and crap in the render.
and then use that as the new texture"

[rodoneal]

No, that's not quite what I mean. It sucks when I don't even know the right way to ask something to get the response that I need. I'll just plod through it and see what happens. I'll post the results and everyone will be, "Oh! That's what you meant." lol

[rodoneal]

Well, I'm aparently "Bravely going where no man has gone before." Here's an updated shot with software generated lightmaps. The effect is different than we typically see when using a 2D program to generate the spot lights. More subtle, in some ways. More ambience to the effect, IMO. I like the way that the light is cut off by the warp pylons. It would have been difficult to calculte that in photoshop. The pylons and the ventral surface of the model are in two seperat places on the texture.
I did the glows in photoshop. I'm going to see if I can do those in 3D too.
The rest of the textures are still a WIP.

Deleted the pics because I've posted the finished model.