Light and Shadow

Light and Shadow Panel

Shade Object

Shades a mesh by baking light to the vertex color layer.

Orientation:
Sets the orientation of the lights. The following options are available:

  • Z (Vertical): Places lights above and beneath the selected object.
  • Y (Horizontal): Places lights in the front and the back of the selected object
  • X (Horizontal): Places lights on the left and right of the selected object.

Direction:
Shows where the lights will be placed, depending on the chosen orientation.

Light:
Three options: Hard (sun, more contrast), Soft (hemisphere, smoother) and None.

  • The hard option emits light in a distinct direction (Blender docs).
  • The soft option emits light from a hemisphere which makes the model evenly lit (Blender docs).

Intensity:
This defines the intensity of the light sources. This is the same setting as the lamp's energy.

Generate Shadow Texture

With this feature you can create shadows that are ready for use in-game. The shadows are negative which is a requirement by the game.

The add-on creates the shadows with ray-tracing and then baking them to an automatically sized textured plane (takes child objects into account).

To save the shadows, go into the UV/Image Editor, select the shadow (most recenty try has the highest number, e.g. Shadow.420) and then click Image -> Save as Image.

Warning: Start with low-quality settings first as Blender might hang a while during the creation of a shadow. If it appears to freeze, wait a few minutes. Depending on the settings you chose, it might take a while.

Method:
There are two options:

  • Default (Adaptive QMC), which is the faster option. I recommend this for testing the shadow settings.
  • High Quality (Constant QMC), which is the slower and less-grainy option. I recommend using this when you're done tweaking your shadow settings.

Quality:
The amount of samples the shadow is rendered with (number of samples taken extra).

Softness:
Light size for ray shadow sampling.

Resolution:
The resolution of the resulting texture (height and width).

Table:
Shadow coordinates for use in parameters.txt of cars. Click to select all, then CTRL C to copy.

Batch Bake Lights

This feature allows you to bake lights in the current scene to instance objects.

Bake to Model RGB:
Whether to bake the color to the Model RGB value. This can be used to darken or tint the instance.

Bake to Model Env:
Whether to bake the color to the Model Env value. This can be used to alter the reflection color of the instance.

Bake all selected
Bakes a full render to all selected objects. This usually takes a long time, Blender freezes until the action is done. A popup will show up when the baking process is complete.