v0.2.1

Lightmaps are now more accurate, CPU-only bakes are about six times faster, and the app warns before a bake that may run out of memory.

Download

OpenTool-v0.2.1-windows-x64.zip holds OpenTool.exe and OpenTool-cli.exe. Unzip it and run OpenTool.exe. The only thing to install is Blender 5.2 or newer. The zip is 187.8 MB.

New

• Static lights attached to scenery (like torches) now light the level. They bake as Cycles lights calibrated against tool's own bakes, but with bounces. Lighting changes on maps with static scenery lights, which among the stock maps are b40 and c40.
• Shaders flagged "ignore normals" get their own lighting. Advanced has an "Ignore-normals lighting" choice. Traditional matches tool's method. Enhanced lights flagged surfaces from both sides and lets them pass light on to their neighbours.
• The per-vertex pass runs as compiled code on the CPU when there is no GPU available. Without a GPU, Rat Race now bakes in 31 s instead of 181 s, and Putput in 69 s instead of 394 s. The first CPU bake compiles it once, which takes about a minute. GPU bakes are unchanged.
• The app shows how much memory a bake needs and warns if it may not fit.
• Page bake, vertex pass & denoiser show which device will be used (cpu or gpu)
• Texel density is a dropdown from 1 to 32.
• Added 32-bit lightmaps option, visible under Advanced.

Fixes

• Cut-outs on environment shaders read the bump map's alpha instead of the base map alpha (which was wrong).
• Scenery with an origin offset now shadows in the right place.
• Tag references are always written with backslashes.
• A finished bake could fail while removing the denoiser's temporary folder ("file in use").

Known limits

• On my AMD integrated graphics the denoiser runs on the CPU, but the app shows this before the bake.
• The memory figure is an estimate.

v0.2.0

Bakes now run on the GPU, on NVIDIA and AMD cards, and are several times faster.

Download

OpenTool-v0.2.0-windows-x64.zip holds OpenTool.exe and OpenTool-cli.exe, as in 0.1.0. Unzip it and run OpenTool.exe. The only thing to install is Blender 5.2 or newer. The zip is 187.6 MB, up from 159.7 MB, because it now carries SlangPy, which runs the per-vertex pass on the GPU. THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md lists its parts.

Faster bakes

• The per-vertex light, which took most of a bake's time, now runs on the GPU. Putput took 438.6 s in 0.1.0 and about 31 s on an RTX 4060 laptop GPU.
• On the same laptop's AMD Radeon 680M, Blood Gulch, Rat Race and Putput take about 40 to 60 s. The results match the NVIDIA ones: the correlation with tool's lightmaps is the same to four digits on all three maps, and Putput's light direction differs by 0.04 degrees.
• Blood Gulch on the RTX 4060 takes 19 s at Draft, 29 s at Normal and 67 s at High, against 24, 70 and 220 s in 0.1.0.
• With the CPU only, Rat Race takes 181 s at the default settings and 57 s at Normal.

Device choice

• A Device row in the app shows the GPU it found and lets you pick Auto, NVIDIA, AMD or CPU only. Auto uses a GPU with Vulkan ray queries, NVIDIA before AMD, and otherwise the CPU. NVIDIA and AMD stop the bake with a message when no such GPU is found.
• In a settings file, device takes auto, nvidia, amd or cpu. The 0.1.0 names still load: OPTIX, CUDA and HIP mean a required NVIDIA or AMD, and ONEAPI means auto.
• After a bake the app shows what ran on what: pages, vertex pass and denoiser. summary.json records the same under devices, plus any warnings.

Ray counts

• With a GPU the presets use more rays: Draft 256 per texel and 1024 per vertex, Normal 1024 and 4096, High 2048 and 16384.
• A stage that runs on the CPU uses 0.1.0's counts instead: Draft 64 and 256, Normal 256 and 1024, High 512 and 4096. The app notes this under the preset. Custom values are used as typed.
• New settings cpu_samples and cpu_vertex_rays set the CPU counts in a settings file. Left out, they follow samples and vertex_rays.

Fixes and settings

• Two-sided sheets, where two faces sit exactly on top of each other, no longer shadow each other. Lighting on such surfaces changes in existing levels.
• A new seed setting (0 to 999) changes the bake's noise without changing the lighting.

Known limits

• Windows only.
• Tested on an NVIDIA RTX 4060 laptop GPU and an AMD Radeon 680M. Intel GPUs are untested.
• The denoiser runs on the CPU on AMD, because Open Image Denoise's HIP device did not open on the Radeon 680M. The app shows a warning.
• The app is not signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn the first time. Choose More info, then Run anyway.

v0.1.0

The first OpenTool release with a Windows app.

Download

OpenTool-v0.1.0-windows-x64.zip holds OpenTool.exe, a window for baking a level's lightmaps, and OpenTool-cli.exe, which takes the same commands as python lightmap.py. Unzip it and run OpenTool.exe. The only thing to install is Blender 5.2 or newer.

Lightmapper

• Bakes a structure BSP's lightmaps with Blender Cycles and writes them in the stock format tool writes. The results stay close to tool's.
• Quality presets Draft, Normal and High, or your own values under Advanced. On an RTX 4060 laptop GPU, Blood Gulch takes about 24 seconds at Draft, 70 at Normal and 220 at High.
• Writes the lit level under new tag names, or replaces your tags after asking. Replaced tags are kept in a backups folder next to them unless you turn that off (--no-backups on the command line).
• Finds Blender on its own and bakes on OptiX, CUDA, HIP or oneAPI, falling back to the CPU.
• Reads and writes tag paths byte for byte, so paths with characters such as · or accented letters work.
• On the command line, -v shows the progress lines.

Known limits

• Windows only.
• Tested on one PC with an NVIDIA GPU. AMD and Intel GPUs are untested.
• The app is not signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn the first time. Choose More info, then Run anyway.