Overview 

Lightmaps are not textures. They are containers of the AO data and can store it in either vertices or textures.

After you have assigned lightmaps to files with geometry, you can try building your map. It’s not necessary to rebuild the whole map every time – you can check lightmaps that require that and click Build Checked Only or build everything from the ground up, with the Build Map. You can gather a few sectors in one lightmap and vice versa – use one lightmap for a few sectors. You should keep in mind that the lightmap's size is 512x512 but you can increase this.

Placement and Setup

Properties

• Build Geom: self-explanatory.
• Geom Quality: the draft will turn off checks for invalid geometry and UVs.
• Calculate AO: self-explanatory.
• AO Quality: normal (362 rays) – normal AO detail; draft (16 rays) – this casts only 16 rays for every pixel of the AO texture which speeds up the process significantly but degrades the quality.
• Other Sectors Influence: influence of the geometry from other sectors on the lightmap.
  • Note: only static props and geometry of the sectors assigned to this lightmap will influence the AO map.
  • Adjacent (by portals): everything from the assigned sectors + neighbor sectors which are defined by portals.
  • All: all static props and all geometry on the level will influence the AO map.
  • Adjacent is recommended for most cases.