Bluring cube map in UDK?

vemadesign

Is there a way to blur a cube map in UDK? I've looked everywhere and can't find a method that works. Thanks!

James Ordner

Blur it in photoshop.

Ace-Angel

Nope, you can't do it in the material editor. Capture your scene, export each side, use ATiCubeGen to blur them, export it back in UDK and call it a day.

LoTekK

I swear I saw a post a little while ago that managed to solve this via some odd hacks to trick the custom texture node. Or something along those lines. My google-fu hasn't turned anything up yet, though, but I'm sure I'm not hallucinating...

And right after I post, I manage to find the right combination of search terms to get it on the first returned hit...

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=108188

Ace-Angel

Yeah, but it shows seams all over the cubemap, it's barely usable at Mip 2 or 3, anything more and you're pretty much getting what looks like cracked diamonds.

Also, this method cannot be used for RT reflections.

LoTekK

Yeah, true, I just gave it a try.

Good point on the RT reflections, though. Shame.

Ace-Angel

Forgot to totally mention that RT cubemap has it's own Mip system (select the Actor and you should have access to the said option) but you need to have 512 or 1K cube map res. to get the most out of it (since it mips them non-linearly).

Also, in my case (maybe it's the July version issue) they only work for some of the faces, not all. Hopefully that helps?

System

you can also use a post processing chain with the blur node, and capture that with a scene capture actor so it blurs it as it captures it

System

dat shit is old skewl though

Ace-Angel

ChrisPerr wrote: »

dat shit is old skewl though

Hahahahah! Yeah, it is, but for some people, it's the only solution since even the Mipping system for the actor cube sometimes doesn't work :P

Oniram

actually something cool ive done is put a post process volume over my scenecapturecubemapactor and messed with the DOF. then when rendering the cubemap its blurred.

JamesWild

I think you can reference a post process object from inside the scene capture actor, no volume needed!

sprunghunt

JamesWild wrote: »

I think you can reference a post process object from inside the scene capture actor, no volume needed!

I've tried this and it still creates seams where the individual cube faces are on the cubemap as the post process isn't applied in 3D. The seams may not be noticeable though.

vemadesign

I tried blurring in Photoshop but it creates seams (i'm assuming its blurring pixels at edges differently for each image and they create seam). It looks like all the methods create some sort of artifacts that are very noticeable. I'll try the post processing see if that does the trick. It interesting that UDK does not have a parameter that can switch between mip levels. essentially that's all i would need. We have it here at Cryptic and it works really well.

I made a material that has real time reflections (screen capture actor with render to texture)on it and is distorted by normal map. It looks great but unnatural (unless its water or mirror) since it reflect everything 100% so i've been trying to figure out a way to fade, or, control a fade strength of how "deep" reflection goes and its blurriness.

Example:

This is what i get now. Mirror reflection distorted by normal map. (Image is random for demonstrating purposes)

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/30000/nahled/reflections-1345933646JAt.jpg

Essentialy this is what i want to get (glossy reflections, i realize this is still out of reach for real time, but some sort of cheap way of cheating this)

http://graphics.ucsd.edu/courses/rendering/2010/cdominguez_hfutrell/images/gallery/gloss.jpg

Hopefully i'm explaining things correctly.

i'm reading up on everything UDK material related so maybe i'll get something to work in that fashion...haha...or someone will beat me to it.

Thanks for all the replies, guys!

ambershee

If your surface is effectively planar, you could probably get away without using a cube map and just using a regular scene capture?

passerby

@vemadesign your 2nd exemple looks like your better off with image based reflection, which take into account the materials spec and gloss map iirc

sprunghunt

vemadesign wrote: »

I tried blurring in Photoshop but it creates seams (i'm assuming its blurring pixels at edges differently for each image and they create seam). It looks like all the methods create some sort of artifacts that are very noticeable. I'll try the post processing see if that does the trick. It interesting that UDK does not have a parameter that can switch between mip levels. essentially that's all i would need. We have it here at Cryptic and it works really well.

To blur a cubemap without seams you should try using the NVIDIA cubemap tool.

http://developer.amd.com/resources/archive/archived-tools/gpu-tools-archive/cubemapgen/