Goodbye CE3, Hello UDK !

repete

Hello guys

Been working with CE3 from about February and I am getting my head melted with the workflow. I am a modo user and using the RC Pipline works but very limiting as I just found out that models over 10k lose the collision proxy and this after days of cleaning up my meshes to resolve the RC errors. It seems no one is using modo effectively with CE3 and I just can’t help but thinking if there was an export plugin for modo to ce3 it would be fantastic but sadly it’s not going to happen.

I like working in the CE3 editor but not with these limitations as I want to decide how many polys my model has (within the 64k limit of course) and not the 10k collision limit. There are scenes imo that need that extra detail and I don’t want to cut up a landing gear into 15 parts and rebuild it in the editor just because of the limited collision proxy.

I am now turning my attention to UDK as I have seen some of Tor Frick’s work made in modo for UDK and it looks very tight indeed.

So a question for the UDK modo users, what are the cons in the workflow regarding assets and UDK?

thanks
pete

[HP]

I'm going through this "transition" at the moment and as an artist the way you do things don't change that much, you just need to get used to the tools and the diferent material editor and you're good to go.

There's plenty of little diferences between one engine and the other, part of the fun will be figuring all them out but I reckon the only major difference in my opinion is that your assets must have a second UV channel for the lightmaps.

repete

Thanks HP

I have been reading up on UDK for most of the day and I know my workflow will change, not too worried about that but the fact that there is so much info regarding the modo & UDK workflow it gives me peace of mind. I just want to build the bloody levels and get them optimised without converting this to that and back again.

A second UV channel for the lightmaps wont be a problem.

Good luck with your "transition" :thumbup:

ParoXum

I've exported meshes over 10k plenty of time and never had any issues with it.

Now if the issue is that you are using a collision mesh of that size, then you will need to re-think how you approach collisions for games.

Or other possibility is that you only get this because you work from modo? Although that sounds unlikely.

There's a cvar to increase collision trimesh limits as far as I know. Just not sure if it is available in the FreeSDK.

repete

The collision issue is specific to the RC frontend / Pipline, max users use a collision proxy by default with zero issues, I can't do this with modo. So my only option is the cry-ruan FBX converter which adds a basic collision proxy, that is the problem as I don't have any control over it.

ParoXum

Yeah, it definitely doesn't look like there'll be a solution to that anytime soon. Sorry not being able to help then!

Brygelsmack

I can ask tomorrow if there's a chance of a Modo exporter in the fututre as well as the possibility of doing anything about the collision proxies. It sounds pretty limiting indeed. Hang tight!

Snefer

Modo to UDK workflow is pretty painless, only a few things I havent got to work properly, and that is exporting vertexcolors from modo, but I havent dug really deeply on that yet, might be a better fbx-exporter that will work, or it might even work in Modo 701, I havent tried that. Other than that the only big downside is modos lack of of cage baking, but I'm so used to that so I've worked around it most of the time. It's a very very fast pipeline.

Mathew O

Yeah I have the same issues out of Maya wit the 10k collision mesh thing which is a shame. Obviously exporting a single mesh of up to ~70k polys is fine though.

Bek

701sp2 is supposed to come with improved fbx export I believe, which might help? Won't know for certain until it's out though.

repete

I don't get it why they cannot add a simple collision function inside the editor just like unity has, it can't be that difficult to implement and would even speed up max users workflow.

Collision options look like a breeze to work with in UDK:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRPS811G8t8"]How to do Per-Poly Collision with Imported Meshes in UDK - YouTube[/ame]

Mathew O wrote: »

Yeah I have the same issues out of Maya wit the 10k collision mesh thing which is a shame. Obviously exporting a single mesh of up to ~70k polys is fine though.