Lightmapping maps in 3DsMax has always had its positive and negative sides, but just a few mins ago I've managed to eliminate one of thous negative points which was Lightmapping with overgrowth. In the past there was no known way of getting Overgrowth into 3DsMax, and there was also no known easy way of getting even static placed trees and bushes to cast proper LMs from there leaves etc.
How ever I've now managed to overcome both of thous issues with some neat tricks and scripts to get the result we want.
As seen in this pic, I've highlighted in red what I've now managed to pull off, shadows casting in the correct way, over the entire type of tree required, thou highlighted in yellow is what it was before. Most of you wont realize this but if you look closely at some buildings trees are casting shadows on in Muttrah and Fallujah, you may notice that the leafs are casting a very solid shadow like shown above in yellow, thou this will now fix that.
Now to some one who knows 3DsMax this may not seem that complicated but the issues are with firstly getting the overgrowth into max, and then after that, getting them the correct UVs etc.
Anyways I wont bore you guys with to much technical detail, but for thous who are interested in this I will get a tut/info up on how to do this later
Main thing is, our maps being LMed in 3DsMax will look better and more maps will have the proportional to be LMed in max where in the past was not a option since there was too much Overgrowth casting shadows onto objects.
Cheers
EDIT: and a few mins later after a lot of tinkering about:
