First time using UDK landscape and world machine

Dave3d

Edit latest screen:


Hi guys heres some of my recent work which started of with me experimenting but I am quite happy with the results. I plan to integrate with my previous ruins project, but I am looking for some crits before I take it any further. everything apart from particles and skydome is a made by me.
thanks to wenda111287 on youtube for the tuts and LoTekK for the flow map painter

Dave3d

I have a quick question, how would i go about creating a dense forest for this terrain considering its miles in size without a considerable performance hit

ZacD

draw distances, you wouldn't have it pop in until you get close, first have them render as billboards, and then load the mesh. The foliage tool has a lot of good features for this kind of thing.

Dave3d

heres a little update just added some trees. having a issue at the moment with lod at long distances, as you can see in the second image there's a strange white outline which i cant get rid of.

btw is there any way i can paint grass and trees on my landscape or will i have to do it by hand

Fingus

I remember reading somewhere that you could randomly populate trees using a texture map as a mask. Not sure if it was UDK or Unity. I'll try to look it up.

EDIT: I think this is what I was thinking of: http://udkc.info/index.php?title=Tutorials:Foliage_Factory
But it seems like it was removed when they introduced their new landscape system. Also, not sure where I got the idea that you could control it with a mask, perhaps someone was discussing a script.

ParoXum

Your white outline problem is probably the texture mips bleeding your texture bg color over the rest. Can you post your foliage texture? It seems to do a pretty bad job because of the global density your leaves produce here too, on another note.

Dave3d

Hi thanks for the reply, I have changed the leaves as the previous ones looked bad however I am still getting this white outline but only with speedtree models not standard static meshs. Here is the texture and alpha map

Xendance

Fingus wrote: »

I remember reading somewhere that you could randomly populate trees using a texture map as a mask. Not sure if it was UDK or Unity. I'll try to look it up.

EDIT: I think this is what I was thinking of: http://udkc.info/index.php?title=Tutorials:Foliage_Factory
But it seems like it was removed when they introduced their new landscape system. Also, not sure where I got the idea that you could control it with a mask, perhaps someone was discussing a script.

The official documentation site is really better than most of those fan made ones.

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Foliage.html

Dave3d

thank you!!! that exactly what I was looking for cant believe I didn't notice the leaf icon haha. just need to sort out this white outline round my speedtree models then I can get to work

Dave3d

here an update still needs loads of optimisation but its starting to come together


please comment and crit it really helps

Dave3d

Heres a quick fly-through of the environment which shows some materials and meshs I used

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_gfH8yZUoc&feature=plcp"]udk forest landscape - YouTube[/ame]

Dave3d

update: added new plants and large rock forms


I haven't received many comments at all on the scene itself, please let me know what you think to help me improve

Santewi

Looking pretty good now that it has some trees and grass.

How big is the whole landscape (in WM and UDK)? And at what resolution did you export the heightmap?

Dave3d

thankyou santewi
the landscape use a 4096* height map not sure on the size but its pretty huge, which is why it takes so long to paint textures and mesh on to.
Update on rock material used one already in UDK as a reference

Santewi

Ok. I'm working on some pretty huge terrains myself as well, that is the reason I was asking. Are you painting the textures inside UDK? I'm thinking about generating the colormaps in WM and then using masks to add detailmaps into certain parts of the landscape inside UDK.

Btw, have you had the problem where your landscape doesn't cast shadows? Sometimes I've noticed that with the baked lighting I sometimes don't have shadows from the mountains in my landscape but with dynamic lighting they are there... Could be a setting or something though.

Dave3d

I use a large colour map that overlays the whole terrain and then i use small tiling textures that are painted onto the terrain in udk.
I had the opposite problem with my terrains lighting, the terrain was casting huge shadows all over lower parts of the scene hovever that is now solved.

Dave3d

update: completely redone the lighting and added a large hut, getting ready to call this one finished any last min crits would be much appreciated

Dave3d

edit post deleted (video removed due to low quality)

proximity

Hey man lighting looks so much better in the video it looks like alot of your tress are floating?

Dave3d

thankyou proximity yea some trees are floating i imported the wrong tree model so its not much of a problem. im gunna remake that video in higher quality, if anyone knows of any good free screen capture programs please let me know

Santewi

Dave3d wrote: »

thankyou proximity yea some trees are floating i imported the wrong tree model so its not much of a problem. im gunna remake that video in higher quality, if anyone knows of any good free screen capture programs please let me know

You can render videos in UDK, but if you don't want to use that, MSI Afterburner is an amazing program for recording videos.


About the scene: why are there strange brighter spots around the terrain? Are they just pointlights or something? Also, the fog particles in the distance are a bit too bright.

Dave3d

thankyou santewi i will give msi afterburner a go tomorrow, the light spots are point lights i haven't gotten round to making the light source yet.
i agree the particles are too bright at the moment i will tweak them tommorow.

Dave3d

heres an updated video its a little laggy but thats the capture program causing it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI1S99GnQ3g&feature=youtu.be

King Mango

That looks really good. What kind of build times are you seeing with such a huge landscape? On my dual core system it's many hours for a comparable terrain.

Also, I was wondering if you would be willing to do a tutorial on foliage meshes? Everything I try and the meshes never light properly. I've been working on this problem for months and it's driving me bananas.

I've checked all the relevant special use flags in material and mesh and have hand tweaked the vertex normals but still to no avail. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Dave3d

thanks king mango the production quality build takes about a hour however i have a i7 quad core 8 thead cpu, however when changing the lighting alot i set udks lightmass importance volume to a smaller area so that my builds don't take long which allows me to change and rebuild multiple times.
unfortunatelyI dont have time to do a full tutorial however i can post some screenshots of the process later on this week. for follage i make sure that the geometry is the same shape as the plant and that the plant is slightly curved (the same way it would in real life/exagerated) to get rid of any flat lighting, also make sure you have decent lightmap UVs and light map resolution.
I haven't even touched the vertex normals however i want too give it a go in a future project to see if there is any improvement

King Mango

Yeah I also set my importance volume very small as well because I frankly don't see much difference outside of it. My poor little dual core is just a bit behind the times I suppose.
Maybe I'm just not exporting correctly because everyone who has had no problems always seems to say the same thing. :cheers:

Makkon

Massive jump in quality and detail, man. Keep at it, I want to see where this goes.