Overview 

All basic geometry levels have to be made by Superstatic. Superstatic is the key to proper AO. Proper AO is the key to the readability of depths and volumes.

Static Baked is a type of a standalone static prop that is baked into one superstatic geometry by the Lightmapper Tool.

Static Baked objects can be instantly "unbaked", if needed, and manipulated as usual static props.

Placement and Setup

1. Choose a static prop that you want to convert to baked. 
2. Click the necessary static prop by RMB, select Utils → Change Type.

3. Choose static baked.

4. In Object Properties, set the sector and lightmap to the correct object.

5. Go to the Lightmapper Tool.

6. Build the lightmap.

Properties

Baked

Parts

Item 0000, 0001,...

Creation of a Superstatic in the Editor

How to use:

• The top level in a structure is a Lightmap. It contains sectors. Sectors contain objects. Usually we have one lightmap for the outdoor sector. If one is not enough, we can have more lightmaps.
• Every object placed on a level can be converted to "static baked" with the Change Type utility in RMB menu → Utils.
• These baked static objects have two specific properties – lightmap, sector. Choose where they belong.
• You can also find new properties on each material that the object has – and set lightmap-specific settings.
• A static portal is a typical game object that you can add to the scene, give it a name and move as you want:
• There is an Edit button in properties that allows you to draw the portal shape.
• When editing portals, the vertex snap should be enabled.
• After you are done creating static bakeds and static portals, and you have returned to the Superstatic tool, check the build settings by pressing Build Map.

Additional information

Benefits

 A unique AO from all objects in the world (unlike AO models which see only yourself while the AO is calculating). 

 A texture AO which doesn't depend on density vertexes, does not suffer from black vertices inserted into the geometry. 

 The separation of geometry for culling is managed by the engine, not an Artist. Long meshes of stations can be painful for culling and optimizing, so the engine divides this up into superstatics.

 Volumes of the superstatic are rendering faster than instances or skeleton instances. Because it doesn't have real-time transformations, so the render pipeline of the frame is shorter.

 The Superstatic can do pre-culling with its polygons. For example, it can cut off invisible polygons very early in the rendering process.

 Sectors and portals. 

Disadvantages 

 The tool is fragile. 

 There are problems with mapping breaks AO at places where an Artist utilized smoothing.

Restrictions

• The geometry should not be very detailed because this becomes unique in the memory. 
• After conversion, you can't do anything real-time. For example, you can't change presets.
• There is no instance aux, they are located in texture aux. And you can change this in real-time. 

Tips 

• Use "baked" instead of old export geometry from Maya. Also, you can move baked objects. 
• Use modules at the level as baked. As opposed to having hundreds of instances of buildings (each column, wall, corner, foundation).
• The Superstatic might have texture instances and aux parameters which you can change using a script. For example, if you need to burn a house with a burn shader, you can make the house superstatic.