Custom light maps for DTS files

As this is my first post I should first say Hello and a big thankyou to everyone for all the really useful info and resources that people have taken the time to post on this site.

And so, on to the nitty gritty. I've been creating my first DTS files for TGEA and it seems that since DTS files only have one UV channel, its difficult to create a custom lightmap or AO map for a model unless the light map and diffuse textures share the same UVs. This isn't a problem if the diffuse texture is one big baked skin, but if you're creating a building model for example and you have several tileable diffuse textures and one single baked AO map, then its a problem (or so it seems to me, I'm still a newbie and I may have missed a trick or two here so please let me know if I have).

Anyway, my way of getting around this was to write a "DTS merger", the idea being that in your modelling package of choice you UV map your geometry with your diffuse textures and export as DTS. Then bake an AO map (or whatever kind of lightmap you want), which creates a completeley different set of UVs, and export to a second DTS. Then you run both DTS files through the DTS merger which creates a new file with two UV channels (which I call an ATS file) and shade it with a custom shader.

Here are some screenshots, note that I turned off the default directional gouraud shading to make the lightmaps more obvious.

First DTS file with diffuse textures, tiled textures for the stone, windows, thatch roof etc:


Second DTS file with baked AO map, one single skin:


And finally the merged "ATS" file:


OK the effect in the example is subtle but looks better I think than the standard directional shading applied to DTS files by default. And since the lightmap is pre-baked it can be editted and tweaked to include as much or as little shading as you want and could also be coloured rather than just monochrome.

As well as generating the ATS file, the merger also creates a script for the custom materials, heres a code snippet (the numbering comes from the material indexes in the original DTS files) :

new CustomMaterial( house_mat_7_0 )
{
   texture[0] = "txt_thatchroof09";
   texture[1] = "buildingLightingMap";
   texture[2] = "$fog";
   translucent = true;
   BlendOp = LerpAlpha;
   shader     = AtsShape;
   version    = 2.0;
};
new CustomMaterial( house_mat_8_0 )
{
   texture[0] = "txt_stoneslab04b";
   texture[1] = "buildingLightingMap";
   texture[2] = "$fog";
   shader     = AtsShape;
   version    = 2.0;
};

addMaterialMapping( "house_mat_7_0" , "material: house_mat_7_0" );
addMaterialMapping( "house_mat_8_0" , "material: house_mat_8_0" );

Thanks for reading my first post!