Lightmass and Deco Layers

lewist

Hey everyone,

I've been playing around with terrain in UDK trying to create a small environment. It's still pretty early along but I've already hit a snag. I'm using deco layers to quickly place trees on my terrain, but it seems that lightmass doesn't work on these meshes. I've double checked the mesh to make sure it wasn't a lightmap problem, but I keep getting stark black shadows when I build lighting. Oh, I'm also still using the Sept 2010 build so I have access to foliage layers in case that matters.

BenHenry

from what I see, it looks like its working. if you want to have blurry shadows, add some counter acting lights.

lewist

Sorry, I should have been more clear. The shadows that are being cast on the terrain are fine, it's the lighting on the mesh itself that is the problem.



This is a better shot of the problem. A regular static mesh manually placed on a terrain builds fine (well, it doesn't cast shadows but that's another issue). The same mesh placed inside a deco layer doesn't pick up any bounced lighting at all.

Snight

The last I checked Deco Layers are broken and have been for awhile now. They don't bake lighting properly. You may just have to hand place your meshes. For me deco layers are a bit of nuisance anyway, because they snap to verts on your terrain...limiting your placement.

Gilgamesh

select the mesh in the browser and hold down S then click where you want them rather than deco layers, they are currently fubar (where is my foliage volume ffs).

knak47

I am wanting to start on a outdoor/forest scene soon. Is it true that foliage is gone from UDK and deco layers are broken? Also there is talk about a new terrain system. Is the terrain system done yet.

ultramedia

The foliage system was removed a few moons ago, and the deco stuff snaps to vertices in your terrain mesh. Basically if you want to do natural environments in UDK you're a bit screwed.

There's always some ninny prepared to tell you to just place individual clumps of grass manually though, after all it's not like UDK is supposed to be some sort of cutting edge engine that let's you do realistic looking scenes in less time with less work...

Snight

I'll be that ninny. You aren't screwed at all. Epic added some great static mesh placement tools that make foliage placement a breeze. Setting up some scale/rotate values in the advanced mesh placement tool and using alt s click which aligns meshes to the surface of the object you're placing them on makes it really easy and fast to place organic objects around the world.