Introduction

Lightmaps are commonly used to improve the rendering performance of complex scenes. Lightmaps can be thought of as texture maps with lighting information pre-baked into the texture. The resulting models appear as if they are shaded by lights in the environment. Since lighting is precomputed, lightmaps are suitable for models that do not move with respect to the pose of the lights in the scene. For example, static buildings, furniture, ground plane, and terrain in an environment with a directional light.

Create a model with lightmap

Lightmaps can be created using popular 3D modeling tools. e.g. Blender. In this tutorial, we'll save you the time by supplying a mesh and a pre-generated lightmap.

In Gazebo, a lightmap is applied to a visual of a model.

Create Table Model

First create a table model. The model will not use the lightmap yet.

mkdir -p ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table

Download the mesh and texture files.

mkdir -p ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table/meshes
cd ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table/meshes
wget http://gazebosim.org/models/table_marble/meshes/table_lightmap.dae

mkdir -p ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table/materials/scripts
mkdir -p ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table/materials/textures
cd ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table/materials/textures
wget http://gazebosim.org/models/table_marble/materials/textures/marble.png
wget http://gazebosim.org/models/table_marble/materials/textures/table_lightmap.png

Create a material script that will be used by the table model:

gedit ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table/materials/scripts/table_lightmap.material

Paste the following contents:

material Table/Marble_Lightmap
{
  technique
  {
    pass
    {
      texture_unit
      {
        texture marble.png
      }
    }
  }
}

Create a model.config file:

gedit ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table/model.config

Paste the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<model>
  <name>Lightmap Table</name>
  <version>1.0</version>
  <sdf version="1.5">model.sdf</sdf>

  <author>
    <name>Joe</name>
    <email>joe@sixpack.org</email>
  </author>

  <description>
    A table with lightmap.
  </description>
</model>

Create a model.sdf file

gedit ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table/model.sdf

Paste the following:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<sdf version="1.5">
  <model name="my_lightmap_table">
    <static>true</static>
    <pose>0 0 0.648 0 0 0</pose>
    <link name="link">
      <collision name="collision">
        <geometry>
          <mesh>
            <uri>model:///my_lightmap_table/meshes/table_lightmap.dae</uri>
            <scale>0.25 0.25 0.25</scale>
          </mesh>
        </geometry>
      </collision>
      <visual name="visual">
        <geometry>
          <mesh>
            <uri>model://my_lightmap_table/meshes/table_lightmap.dae</uri>
            <scale>0.25 0.25 0.25</scale>
          </mesh>
        </geometry>
        <material>
          <script>
            <uri>model://my_lightmap_table/materials/scripts</uri>
            <uri>model://my_lightmap_table/materials/textures</uri>
            <name>Table/Marble_Lightmap</name>
          </script>
        </material>
      </visual>
    </link>
  </model>
</sdf>

Run gazebo:

gazebo

Insert the Lightmap Table model into the scene:

Apply Lightmap

If you pay attention earlier, you will notice that we have not made use of table_lightmap.png yet. This is the lightmap to be applied. But first, we will need to tell Gazebo that dynamic lighting should not be applied to the model since we want to use lightmaps.

Edit the model.sdf file:

gedit ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table/model.sdf

Locate the material SDF element in the model.sdf and set lighting to be false

        <material>
          <script>
            <uri>model://my_lightmap_table/materials/scripts</uri>
            <uri>model://my_lightmap_table/materials/textures</uri>
            <name>Table/Marble_Lightmap</name>
          </script>

          <lighting>false</lighting>

        </material>

If you insert my_lightmap_table into the scene again, you should notice that the model now only has a texture but is no longer shaded.

Then tell the material script to blend the lightmap with the existing texture.

gedit ~/.gazebo/models/my_lightmap_table/materials/scripts/table_lightmap.material

Add a texture_unit that uses the table_lightmap.png texture

material Table/Marble_Lightmap
{
  technique
  {
    pass
    {
      texture_unit
      {
        texture marble.png
      }

      texture_unit
      {
        texture table_lightmap.png
      }

    }
  }
}

Finally, relaunch Gazebo and insert the table model: