Complex room - main walls in bsp or part of the static mesh
polycounter lvl 6
Hello everyone,
I've started using UDK for a few days and I'm planning to make a little personal mod based on the Resident Evil mansion (yeah I've seen that quite a few times too
). I had started it in Source but I felt too limited by the rather poor implementation of models into it.
At the moment I'm still learning the functionalities of UDK. The Unreal engine isn't quite new for me since I used it back in the days of UT99, so I have a basic understanding of it but there's some new stuff in that UDK :poly124:
Anyways, I've modeled the hall, there's about 80% done, it still needs texturing and a lot of detailing. I did try to import it into UDK and it worked properly, just no texture or collision, so poor lightmaps and I could run through the models.
The question is, should I make the main walls in BSP or can I make them part of the models ? I'd prefer them to be part of the models so I have a better control of them.
Preview of the WIP
As it sits right now, I'm close to 64.000 tris on one half. That's gonna make around 150.000 tris finished with the details remaining.
I've started using UDK for a few days and I'm planning to make a little personal mod based on the Resident Evil mansion (yeah I've seen that quite a few times too
). I had started it in Source but I felt too limited by the rather poor implementation of models into it.At the moment I'm still learning the functionalities of UDK. The Unreal engine isn't quite new for me since I used it back in the days of UT99, so I have a basic understanding of it but there's some new stuff in that UDK :poly124:
Anyways, I've modeled the hall, there's about 80% done, it still needs texturing and a lot of detailing. I did try to import it into UDK and it worked properly, just no texture or collision, so poor lightmaps and I could run through the models.
The question is, should I make the main walls in BSP or can I make them part of the models ? I'd prefer them to be part of the models so I have a better control of them.
Preview of the WIP
As it sits right now, I'm close to 64.000 tris on one half. That's gonna make around 150.000 tris finished with the details remaining.
Replies
Overall with UDK there's no reason to use a BSP except for the fact you didn't feel like using a model. With Source there's a lot more pro/con evaluation but the optimization is a lot easier to control and influence. UDK just does its magic and you pray it does it right.
As for Source and models, I feel like it's a pain to get one in the engine, I mean, they never seem to be part of the level, the lighting is always a little bit different than the rest and they stand out in the wrong way. UDK gives the ability to play with the models straight in the editor, with a lot more ease, playing with the materials effects and lighting in real time is so much faster, while in source, there the old radiosity compiling that takes a while and you're never sure it will look the same in Hammer or Model Viewer and in game.
Also, as much as I love the way Hammer works (it's very precise and clean), it's also a problem when I try to get a little further in the details. Those complex brushes that cannot work because the shape is not right...arg, it's been the same thing since Worldcraft 1.6 (and I always work with the grid snap) !
So even though I'm just learning with the UDK at the moment, it seems more promising with what I'm planning than Source.
Here's a very early import of the hall, no materials, no lightmap, nothing else than the straight import of the FBX models from Max2010 :
It took me about four nights to get to this result with UDK (from nothing to the models in UnrealEd), while it took me a week to make a pretty basic hall with brushes and models in Source. But in this situation, it's a little different since I'm reproducing something that exists and has specific dimensions, I felt it was much easier to do this in 3dsMax.
If you ever intend for anything to be a complex shape and world brush it probably shouldn't be a world brush. But I totally get what your saying about the shape limitations.
The lighting stuff is a pain, but long compile times are usually a sign of not knowing how to optimization the situation. Most of my lighting compiles take 15 minutes. Granted I can understand how you'd have no way of knowing how to optimize it.
The work is looking pretty good, and while not impossible for Source I can totally see how UDK makes it much easier to sit down and do it. You've got to be trained in Source for it to be powerful