[UDK] Asturia Environment

Twister3

Latest Progress:

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I'm currently working on my first environment in UDK. I wanted to do foliage and use World Machine with the Landscape system. Any c&c is welcome!

I'm roughly following this overpaint:



Ma ref sheet:



This is my current progress:



Currently I'm working on the last piece of blockout: The stone walls.

ambershee

Looks reasonable, and certainly has a distinct style. It's too early to lay down any real criticism for me, but I would consider drawing in a much more defined road (and using a similar shape/form that was used in the overpaint, as it's pretty good for adding direction to the scene and the winding shape is good for emphasising physical depth.

Twister3

Yes I will keep that in mind! I will add the road as soon as I know what is the best way: I'm going to add it either in the Texture or the landscape shader.
Thanks for the reply!

Beno09

It's looking really good, I especially like background mountains in first picture. However these props and part in front of mountains needs a lot work but you're still working on it, so I expect better results.

It would be nice if you could share some of WM nodes, aswell as UDK Material show off that is Landscape/WM using. Thanks in advance.

Twister3

Beno09 wrote: »

It's looking really good, I especially like background mountains in first picture. However these props and part in front of mountains needs a lot work but you're still working on it, so I expect better results.

It would be nice if you could share some of WM nodes, aswell as UDK Material show off that is Landscape/WM using. Thanks in advance.

Yeah, I'll have to tweak almost all of the assets but now my focus is to create them in the first place. Shading and Lighting are all WIP as well as postprocess effects.

In terms of World Machine and UDK setup I followed chocos Tutorial. Here are the nodes:

Beno09

Many thanks for pictures. Which size of textures are you using for Landscape color map, aswell for detail textures ?

Thanks again.

Twister3

Beno09 wrote: »

Many thanks for pictures. Which size of textures are you using for Landscape color map, aswell for detail textures ?

Thanks again.

I'm using a 4k map for the landscape and my detail textures are 1k. That Is probably too high but it's just one texture with four channels (RGBA). Each channel is used for one Landscape Layer.

Mr Significant

And you paint the textures on terrain by Vertex Paint?

Twister3

Mr Significant wrote: »

And you paint the textures on terrain by Vertex Paint?

No, I painted them using the Landscape Layers of the UDK. Its a really nice way to paint and blend textures.

Obscura

Twister3 wrote: »

No, I painted them using the Landscape Layers of the UDK. Its a really nice way to paint and blend textures.

Its also vertex painting

Twister3

Obscura wrote: »

Its also vertex painting

Oh ok, I didn't know that.. But how is it possible to have more than four textures like in this example?

Mr Significant

+1 to question!

Obscura

How you mean "how is it possible"? haha
Just clicking to the new layer button not?
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LandscapeMaterials.html

Twister3

Obscura wrote: »

How you mean "how is it possible"? haha
Just clicking to the new layer button not?
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LandscapeMaterials.html

I mean, if it's vertex color driven then you just have four channels: R, G, B and A. That is also how my shader is set up. What I don't understand is how it is possible to have more than those channels.

Obscura

I dont think that they are vertex color based. But this is what I also dont know.I can imagine that they work with layer IDs or something similar.Maybe someone else can tell you how its working.But to me, its enough that its working

ambershee

Twister3 wrote: »

I mean, if it's vertex color driven then you just have four channels: R, G, B and A. That is also how my shader is set up. What I don't understand is how it is possible to have more than those channels.

You can have as many layers as you want, but no more than four used on a single component. The landscape system automatically generates shaders on a per-component basis.

Mr Significant

So the only thing to do is to create one component with 4 channels for textures, and then separate some part of the mesh and make another 4 channels.

Nosslak

You could possibly derive the material masks from another source such as directly from World Machine via textures and/or some shader tricks (e.g derive mountains from the world normals). That way you could potentially free up some of the vertex colors for usage for something else.

Johan3043

Woah! mind sharing your workflow on that stone wall? Always wondered how to make those without spending days on it haha.

Looking forward to see the progression of this! Neat concept

Twister3

Johan3043 wrote: »

Woah! mind sharing your workflow on that stone wall? Always wondered how to make those without spending days on it haha.

Looking forward to see the progression of this! Neat concept

Sure, I used some sculpted some bricks that I used for the brick texture as an Insert Multimesh Brush in Zbrush. I have to admit that I haven't thought it through completely.. Would I have to do this again I would experiment with some dynamics simulation techniques in 3ds max or Maya.

Thank you ambershee and Nosslak for your insight for landscape!

Twister3

Okay so... finished the wall and added background and path..






I'm having some problems with the mipmapping or streaming in UDK. They look horrible from a distance and look good only from about a foot away!

Changing the LODGroup to RenderTarget didn't work, setting Mip Gen settings to NoMipmaps or even turn Texture-Streaming off via command line didn't do anything either..

So... I'm kinda bummed about that. But anyway, I'll work on the props and setdessing next!

Enimael

hey man,

looks cool so far. I my opinion it could be more crowded with trees, bushes (especially around the treetrunks) and stones clustered all around. ATM it is a bit empty.

Maybe do one stone and scale it and use it repeatedly. When I am cognitively overwhelmed by your piece, I am happy

Twister3

Enimael wrote: »

hey man,

looks cool so far. I my opinion it could be more crowded with trees, bushes (especially around the treetrunks) and stones clustered all around. ATM it is a bit empty.

Maybe do one stone and scale it and use it repeatedly. When I am cognitively overwhelmed by your piece, I am happy

yeah you are right, it feels very empty. I'll probably add create some bushes and that kind of stuff. Thanks for your feedback!
I can't promise you anything about toe cognitive overwhelming part but I can try for sure!

Vailias

I actually love that the trees are sparse and you have just grasses and small flowers.

I like it for a couple of reasons.
1: I feel like its uncommon.
2: The rest of the presentation appears to be set in a high mountain range, possibly above treeline, or close to it, so having few trees makes sense.

Twister3

Vailias wrote: »

I actually love that the trees are sparse and you have just grasses and small flowers.

I like it for a couple of reasons.
1: I feel like its uncommon.
2: The rest of the presentation appears to be set in a high mountain range, possibly above treeline, or close to it, so having few trees makes sense.

Thanks! I will in no way clutter it but I think some different foliage will break it up a bit.. Maybe something similiar to this.

silkroadgame

Very good progress!
Like the stones you did.

nickzucc

I am looking into something very similar myself. I am exporting a height map from UDK into WorldMachine and then running the filters on that shape. I am also setting up the landmass material like you as well and placing grass cards and flowers using the foliage tool in UDK like you are as well.

The problem that I am running into is the lighting on my grass cards. The is very dark shading on the back of the cards in many cases. I have given all geo a separate UV channel just for light maps and I have tried exporting normals so the are straight up as well.

I was wondering what your options are for your grass cards to get them to render correctly.

Thanks!

Twister3

nickzucc wrote: »

I am looking into something very similar myself. I am exporting a height map from UDK into WorldMachine and then running the filters on that shape. I am also setting up the landmass material like you as well and placing grass cards and flowers using the foliage tool in UDK like you are as well.

The problem that I am running into is the lighting on my grass cards. The is very dark shading on the back of the cards in many cases. I have given all geo a separate UV channel just for light maps and I have tried exporting normals so the are straight up as well.

I was wondering what your options are for your grass cards to get them to render correctly.

Thanks!

Do your Meshes already have a second UV-Channel? Creating one (in UDK) did the trick for me.

Oh and welcome to Polycount!

@silkroadgame: Thank you

nickzucc

Thanks Twister3! I did make a secondary UV set in Maya. So this issue shows before and after I bake lighting. It seems like a normal issue possibly. Do you render your normals straight up?

Twister3

nickzucc wrote: »

Thanks Twister3! I did make a secondary UV set in Maya. So this issue shows before and after I bake lighting. It seems like a normal issue possibly. Do you render your normals straight up?

Yeah I changed the orientation to avoid getting a gradient.

Here's my material setup, I hope it is of some help!

The Archivist

Ah... the beautiful Cantabrian mountains great work! Keep at it!

AbKI

Oh wow, this looks great! I've been working on a similar rural mountain scene too, looking forward to seeing how you polish this up.

nickzucc

Twister3, Thanks for the material breakdown!