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Well "lightmap size" should really be called luxel size as far as I'm concerned (as in setting your lightmap size in hammer to "4" means that each luxel is 4 units in size - the size of the overall lightmap depends on the size of the surface surely) but I guess you are right - bringing in another term isn't gonna help cut down on the confusion! As luxels are the individual components of a lightmap, however, it isn't always possible to use the two interchangeably.

CJ you are right, small luxels = more memory = more lightmap details. So using a lightmap size of 4 is a lot more detailed than a lightmap size of 16, but it also uses 16x as much memory to store. When you get down to using a lightmap size of 1, you are using 256x as much memory as you would with a lightmap size of 16.

Thing is, does that 256x as large really matter? After all, if something is tiny in the first place, it might still be tiny after making it 256x as large. It's something I planned on looking into a while back when I was writing a fairly in depth article/tutorial about lightmaps in Source, but I never ended up finishing it. Another thought is that with HDR, each luxel requires more memory, so that should also be a concern.

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