I want to make a level out of models, but if I had the whole geometry as one level with textures and everything, how would I bake fake lightmaps onto this. Does somebody know the program to use?

Why do you want to fake lightmaps? You have two choices concerning dynamic shadows: z buffer shadows and stencil shadows on 3DGS, dont you like them?

hard edges and large slowdowns, lightmaps are much faster, vartan do a search on google for a program called gile[s], its lightmapping software, pretty good.

And editions below Commercial don't do stencil shadows.

If you use Blender for modeling, there is a plugin called RayBaker that bakes lighting, shadows, materials, everything to a UV map. Quite nifty

Actually i have a question concerning dynamic shadows on animated models. Its a fact that Z buffer shadows doesnt work and stencil shadows kills fps. So, for static models or geometry we can use shadowmaps or some kind of faked lightmaps with relative good results.

My question is: there is a way to fake dynamic shadows with animated models like characters or we are limited to z buffer and stencil shadows, unless buying Sphere Engine for example?
Thanks.

well one of the aum's (i think aum41) has a dynamic shadow thing that will do soft shadowing as well, it doesnt look all that great tho, you might want to check it out.

I searched through AUMs but i didnt found nothing concerning soft shadowing on animated models.
Thanks anyway.

I know this is an old post, but I'd rather post here than make a new post. Does 3ds max have fake lightmapping baking abilities?

About 3ds max thing i can not confirm that, but the soft shadow thing mentioned above, its actually in AUM 51.
Hope it helps.