@Cremuss haha not really, I do like the controls for creating clusters though. Yes I strongly feel it is a normal issue but only for those parts, there are other identical meshes with the same texture that came out of max exactly the same but have been messed up in Speed Tree somehow.
I am using the Speed Tree default material set up for testing, but I did try a new material (double sided, could not find the proper Foliage labeled one) but it still had the same issue further reinforcing the idea of normals on the mesh.
Yea with the High Resolution Screenshot I get a slightly lighter, flatter washed out image to what I have compared to the viewport. I saw on a thread someone said that there are Post Process options for screen shots, have you seen them?
@Adelphia I am using the material that comes through with Speed Tree but I also tried another simple double sided material but it was obvious it was still happening. Is it possible to export the mesh from ST to max so I can edit the normals?
@Stavaas I think they are static, but I tried painting some with the foliage tool and placing manually, would I have to rebuild lighting after changing to movable?
Thanks a lot for the suggestions guys, I am at work now but ill try all of them when I get home and let you know, cheers!
If you have speed tree for unreal then no there isn't anyway that I'm aware off. You should just place a couple of the planes you export from max around to make a small grass patch in max export and give it the material see if it happens with that mesh and then you will know if it is the normals or material. The speed tree material can be more complex than you actually need you just need a your texture sheet going into the base colour and subsurface and something going into your normals can't remember if you need an AO or not but it wouldn't hurt to just throw in a gradient AO
I have had similar problems in the past with speedtree. I think speedtree resets your vertex normals to defaults. On top of that unfortunately their built in vertex normal editing doesn't do the trick for most things.
Also you probably have but just in case make sure your shader model is set to two sided as well as masked, two sided foliage. Also try multiply your normal map with a two sided node hope some of this helps haha I'll throw something together tomorrow and see if I can recreate the issue for you
@Adelphia Thanks for your help as always. That is a good idea, I will try but I really feel like its the normals opposed to the material. I can't actually see the two sided foliage shader model and I am using 4.12, a I missing something here? And totally agree, I don't want to use the Speed Tree material for the final version. Maybe I can export the SM from Unreal to Max, then fix it myself then replace it in engine? haha
@Jack M. Thanks for the help, I was worried about that too, but the correctly shaded fronds seem to have my max normals (tilted up) so it is as if ST has changed the normals on only some cards but not all?
@Benvox2 i had a look and speedtree does tweak your normals a little with fronds. but not enough to make it like that so i made some grass in speed tree just there and brought it into unreal 4 and this is what mine looks like. the built lighting is set to preview so its not great quality on the ground but you can see that it looks okay. So here is the material that i am using its pretty simple. the two sided foliage has been changed to just two sided as of 4.11 i think maybe 4.10 so that people didnt think they could use it for something other than foliage lol. Hopefully this helps
@Adelphia thanks heaps for the great help man! It's so strange I feel like I have a very similar set up, I really think that Speed Tree has messed with something a little too much and I might be better off doing it again and hoping it doesn't happen! Here is my Material:
The constants in the middle are just experimental, but none of them seem to affect the problem areas anyway, I also have the plants as 'moveable', made sure the light maps are ok and even tried with higher res but no luck. Thanks again and to everyone with input!
Hmm if your sure it's the mesh normals then try putting in the mesh from 3ds max into unreal before it goes through speedtree just to troubleshoot that a little. In speed tree make sure your 'normal bias' option is set to 1 that should help if it's not
@Adelphia hmmm Ok I will check the normal bias option when I get home thanks, I get the same problem with foliage painter and manual placement. Do you know much a bout bi-normals? They were the only thing different on the problem pieces compared to the ok pieces, worst case I will just have to remake the cluster in max.
Not much tbh they are something to do with the coordinates of the uv texture space not sure though. I would remake it in max and see if you get the problem. If you think it will help I could send you my speed tree files to have a look at and compare?
@Adelphia Thanks a lot for the offer, I will see how I go with a few of these suggestions first. Final question, do you make instance materials for your vegetation? I want to make a master foliage material then make instances for the various types, but I am not sure how to make parameters for Speed Tree nodes, vertex paint etc?
You can't make parameters for speedtree nodes so you could make a master material as long as all the materials share the same speed tree settings like you could have a master for grass maybe but would need a different one for trees etc(vertex colour node would be the same anyway)
Finally an update: I did the initial foliage pass on the scene, but to me it seems to contrast a bit too much with the stone props. I feel like part of this is due to the fact that the props have not yet had their dirtiness/variation texture pass yet as they do in the original 'concept'. I am hoping after dirt, damage, moss etc will make the foliage feel more at home.
The foliage was a challenge and a half, I feel like I really have to fight with the engine to get the results I want. Having to use strange things such as emission and denaturation nodes. Does anyone else have a difficult time lighting foliage? I think it is difficult in my case because of the strange angle/contrast of my dark scene lighting, perhaps if it was an open broad daylight scene the foliage would be easier to tweak?
Anyway the foliage is still WIP and any feedback here would be incredibly helpful. The foliage is one of the few areas I am willing to push from the 'concept' and hopefully make it a bit better.
PS @Adelphia thanks again with the help for the grass, I had to send it to max after speed tree to fix the normals, I really wish ST had better normal editing!
Today I started to vertex paint in some moss on the walls. I think its a bit too bright/light but if I make the albedo any darker, it appears black in shadowed areas, might be time to adjust lighting yet again.
I'm loving the foliage and moss! Really helps the 'ruin' feel to the place. I'd add a few low grass boards between the floor tiles towards the centre of the corridor so you get a more natural falloff to the clumps around the edge. You don't need much poking through
@griffiti Thanks for the feedback! I see what you mean, that is a good idea, it is a bit abrupt in that section.
Still a bit of tweaking to do, but considering this material will be 85% hidden by the ground tiles, I am calling this one done.
I thought this would help add to the overgrown/wet kind of feeling of the scene and also add some specularity to an otherwise very rough environment. Just a few roots and puddles poking through the cracks and broken parts of the tiles.
The original scene has a very basic dirt texture under the tiles (with good reason) so I wanted to try and improve a little bit.
There are a few settings for normals that you can change in SpeedTree, they are mostly responsible for averaging normals, which is useful on tree coronas or other 'lush' foliage.
I think the problem you're having has more to do with the material. SpeedTree assets use a 'Default-Lit' shader, make sure to use a two-sided material with some SSS color (probably the same as basecolor would do), also you can adjust the opacity of the material to something low.
Thanks @frmdbl I will definitely have to look into those controls next time. Because I was pushed for time I ended up getting the models from Speed Tree and into max, where I fixed the normals manually using the awesome 'slide normals thief' plugin, and then back into UE4. The UE4 material does have two sided and SSS enabled now, so the problem has been solved, but it would be nicer to do it all in ST instead!
@IlyaIvanovArt Thanks man! Actually most of the textures are done using quixel and photoshop, but the tiling textures such as brick walls, moss, dirt etc are done in Substance Designer.
Ok I have finally moved onto the lighting stage, my goal is to get a similar look to the original.
Still a fair bit of work to do but this is the scene so far with the original for comparison:
Some issues I am having:
All of my dark areas seem way to black, but increasing the sky light/indirect bounces does not seem to help.
Everything on the left side wall is really difficult to light. Right now I only have the stationary sky light, a stationary directional light, and the torch flame up the end as a static point light.
I am wondering if now is the time to implement a post processing volume to possible fix some of these problems? But it could also be the Albedo is too dark for some meshes or light-map issues.
Looking good man really like this. Do you have a post process in the scene already? Try lowering the ambient occlusion with it. Also instead of relying on light bounces try fake some of your own add in some point lights and put them at a low intensity like really low just enough to look like a light bounce and disable shadows on them I'd like to see some more plant growth around the vines though but Its looking good Oh can't remember if I said before or not in speedtree there is a slider called "normal bias" this changes how much of speedtree normals you use or your own
@Adelphia No post process at all, at the time. I have since added one (which I probably should have a long time ago) but reducing AO has not helped an awful lot here, but I think you are right when I just need more fake bounce light manually placed. Would you use static or stationary for these? I hate having to wait for builds for minor adjustments!
You are right, the vines on the left are missing some Ivy clusters that I will add, also I think the vines are a bit thick and too few, so I will adjust that too.
@Stavaas I have not tried LUT yet, I was looking into it though, my understanding is that it restricts the scene lighting to a predefined range of colours? Perhaps I can rely on this to push it closer to the concept after I add some more lights?
Another thing I have noticed is that using the high res screenshot function creates an image that is a bit lighter/blown out than what I am seeing in my darker/more contrasted viewport. I have tried disabling eye adaption on both the post process volume and on the camera settings but no change, anyone else had this problem? @Cremuss I think you mentioned having this problem before earlier in this thread?
The high res screenshot function is awful, if I want to get a better screen grab I use Nvidia's DSR or dynamic super resolution to set my desktop to 4k and then grab a screen shot. There's an AMD alterative as well. You can also change the screen resolution percent to 150-200% in the post processing settings, or do both.
LUT works really well for taking a scene that's lit well to matching a concept or reference. It's not a substitute for good lighting or fixing lighting issues, but it will let you make your scene look exactly how you want it to look if you are the point where everything is close to correct.
The high res screenshot function is awful, if I want to get a better screen grab I use Nvidia's DSR or dynamic super resolution to set my desktop to 4k and then grab a screen shot. There's an AMD alterative as well. You can also change the screen resolution percent to 150-200% in the post processing settings, or do both.
LUT works really well for taking a scene that's lit well to matching a concept or reference. It's not a substitute for good lighting or fixing lighting issues, but it will let you make your scene look exactly how you want it to look if you are the point where everything is close to correct.
Hey Zac, thanks for the input. so after you use DSR to increase your resolution you just use 'Prnt Screen' and paste into photoshop? I am trying to keep a log of my lighting changes in screenshots but the shots I am using and the viewport are quite different. I am not sure which is the real one? Also for using LUT I guess the difference from the screenshot will affect that as the image I will be adjusting won't be an accurate representation of the actual level?
Yeah I just use print screen and paste. You can change the Eye Adaptation or exposure value to something static to keep a consistent log. Doing a LUT change will effect gameplay/walking through the level, but you should fly through the level after making a LUT to make sure it's providing the look you want everywhere. The more extreme the LUT the more likely it will do something you do not want. But you can get away with very drastic LUTs, it's basically color grading like films use, and they get away with pretty drastic changes and it still looks real/natural.
@Stavaas@Adelphia@ZacD@anMori Thanks for all the comments and suggestions guys. I took it all on board and adjusted the lighting, post processing and fog a fair bit, and I think its starting to look somewhat souls-ish.
(Only the above image has had the FOV adjusted)
There is still a bit of tweaking to do (UE4 High-re screenshot function has been driving me mad) but one large difference is that DS3 seems to always have a slightly blown out/bloomy appearance to everything which I am lacking in my scene.
Other things I have noted:
-Unfortunately for me I will have to painfully re-do the ground tiles. Mine only look ok from above, but too flat and sharp/low poly from a player view so I will try make them more damaged and angled like the original.
-The LUT was very helpful, I am wondering if I would like to adjust it again, I have to work from the default image right? I can't somehow build onto my current LUT texture?
Thanks again for the input and any suggestions would be incredibly helpful!
-The LUT was very helpful, I am wondering if I would like to adjust it again, I have to work from the default image right? I can't somehow build onto my current LUT texture?
I think you can, before editing just make sure that it has maximum intensity and edit your LUT as you did. Keep it up, good luck!
I am getting close to calling this done, so it would be very helpful to borrow your eyes and to let me know if there is anything else I can do to push this section closer to the original or just improve upon it in general. Some notable changes include the new floor tiles which I think look much better now from a player view:
This is just preview lighting but I notice the Ivy on the far back wall has some kind of shading error, almost looks like its glowing against the dark background but I am not sure what this is.
As I mentioned in my very first post I am now testing the modular use of my pieces by expanding this scene to the secondary area outlined in my map. I will post more shots as I progress, thanks!
Looking damn good man! Only thing I can point to, if you're trying to get as close to the original as possible, is that their sky has a bit more bloom than yours it seems.
Looking damn good man! Only thing I can point to, if you're trying to get as close to the original as possible, is that their sky has a bit more bloom than yours it seems.
Thanks man! Yea I really need to play with my sky settings more too. I wonder if I can speed up the cloud movement too? It's quite fast in the game. Maybe a touch of post processing like you mentioned before.
Are you using the SkySphereBlueprint that comes with the 3rd person template? You can speed the clouds up a lot with it. I'm using it in my Bloodborne environment, and got the speed to 5, and it looks pretty decent.
@Stavaas Yes I am, so thanks I will have a look into that this weekend and see what I can do.
@OctOstera Thanks man, yea ill try play with that, so far I have only really adjusted the colour, but it seems pretty powerful.\
Here is an overview of what I am doing now: basically the red section is the main part I have been working on until now and I have started blocking in the secondary section.
Still a lot to do in the new sections. I really need to block sight in some areas, my height fog is pretty strong but never completely obscures sight. Does anyone know if I can set an absolute end to player sight or some kind of additional thick distance fog?
These shots are a bit too bright/washed out but here are some shots of the new areas. Really have to call this done very soon, so as always comments, crits and questions are more than welcome.
Replies
I am using the Speed Tree default material set up for testing, but I did try a new material (double sided, could not find the proper Foliage labeled one) but it still had the same issue further reinforcing the idea of normals on the mesh.
Yea with the High Resolution Screenshot I get a slightly lighter, flatter washed out image to what I have compared to the viewport. I saw on a thread someone said that there are Post Process options for screen shots, have you seen them?
@Adelphia I am using the material that comes through with Speed Tree but I also tried another simple double sided material but it was obvious it was still happening. Is it possible to export the mesh from ST to max so I can edit the normals?
@Stavaas I think they are static, but I tried painting some with the foliage tool and placing manually, would I have to rebuild lighting after changing to movable?
Thanks a lot for the suggestions guys, I am at work now but ill try all of them when I get home and let you know, cheers!
The speed tree material can be more complex than you actually need you just need a your texture sheet going into the base colour and subsurface and something going into your normals can't remember if you need an AO or not but it wouldn't hurt to just throw in a gradient AO
I'll throw something together tomorrow and see if I can recreate the issue for you
@Jack M. Thanks for the help, I was worried about that too, but the correctly shaded fronds seem to have my max normals (tilted up) so it is as if ST has changed the normals on only some cards but not all?
The constants in the middle are just experimental, but none of them seem to affect the problem areas anyway, I also have the plants as 'moveable', made sure the light maps are ok and even tried with higher res but no luck. Thanks again and to everyone with input!
In speed tree make sure your 'normal bias' option is set to 1 that should help if it's not
The foliage was a challenge and a half, I feel like I really have to fight with the engine to get the results I want. Having to use strange things such as emission and denaturation nodes. Does anyone else have a difficult time lighting foliage? I think it is difficult in my case because of the strange angle/contrast of my dark scene lighting, perhaps if it was an open broad daylight scene the foliage would be easier to tweak?
Anyway the foliage is still WIP and any feedback here would be incredibly helpful. The foliage is one of the few areas I am willing to push from the 'concept' and hopefully make it a bit better.
PS @Adelphia thanks again with the help for the grass, I had to send it to max after speed tree to fix the normals, I really wish ST had better normal editing!
Thanks,
Today I started to vertex paint in some moss on the walls. I think its a bit too bright/light but if I make the albedo any darker, it appears black in shadowed areas, might be time to adjust lighting yet again.
@Ged Thanks man!
@griffiti Thanks for the feedback! I see what you mean, that is a good idea, it is a bit abrupt in that section.
Still a bit of tweaking to do, but considering this material will be 85% hidden by the ground tiles, I am calling this one done.
I thought this would help add to the overgrown/wet kind of feeling of the scene and also add some specularity to an otherwise very rough environment. Just a few roots and puddles poking through the cracks and broken parts of the tiles.
The original scene has a very basic dirt texture under the tiles (with good reason) so I wanted to try and improve a little bit.
Thanks
Benvox2
There are a few settings for normals that you can change in SpeedTree, they are mostly responsible for averaging normals, which is useful on
tree coronas or other 'lush' foliage.
I think the problem you're having has more to do with the material.
SpeedTree assets use a 'Default-Lit' shader,
make sure to use a two-sided material with some SSS color (probably the same as basecolor would do), also you can adjust the opacity of the material to something low.
Just the odd glossy puddle every so often, but mostly covered up.
Thanks guys,
Still a fair bit of work to do but this is the scene so far with the original for comparison:
Some issues I am having:
All of my dark areas seem way to black, but increasing the sky light/indirect bounces does not seem to help.
Everything on the left side wall is really difficult to light. Right now I only have the stationary sky light, a stationary directional light, and the torch flame up the end as a static point light.
I am wondering if now is the time to implement a post processing volume to possible fix some of these problems? But it could also be the Albedo is too dark for some meshes or light-map issues.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
I'd like to see some more plant growth around the vines though but Its looking good
Oh can't remember if I said before or not in speedtree there is a slider called "normal bias" this changes how much of speedtree normals you use or your own
@Adelphia No post process at all, at the time. I have since added one (which I probably should have a long time ago) but reducing AO has not helped an awful lot here, but I think you are right when I just need more fake bounce light manually placed. Would you use static or stationary for these? I hate having to wait for builds for minor adjustments!
You are right, the vines on the left are missing some Ivy clusters that I will add, also I think the vines are a bit thick and too few, so I will adjust that too.
@Stavaas I have not tried LUT yet, I was looking into it though, my understanding is that it restricts the scene lighting to a predefined range of colours? Perhaps I can rely on this to push it closer to the concept after I add some more lights?
Cheers
LUT works really well for taking a scene that's lit well to matching a concept or reference. It's not a substitute for good lighting or fixing lighting issues, but it will let you make your scene look exactly how you want it to look if you are the point where everything is close to correct.
(Only the above image has had the FOV adjusted)
There is still a bit of tweaking to do (UE4 High-re screenshot function has been driving me mad) but one large difference is that DS3 seems to always have a slightly blown out/bloomy appearance to everything which I am lacking in my scene.
Other things I have noted:
-Unfortunately for me I will have to painfully re-do the ground tiles. Mine only look ok from above, but too flat and sharp/low poly from a player view so I will try make them more damaged and angled like the original.
-The LUT was very helpful, I am wondering if I would like to adjust it again, I have to work from the default image right? I can't somehow build onto my current LUT texture?
Thanks again for the input and any suggestions would be incredibly helpful!
I think you can, before editing just make sure that it has maximum intensity and edit your LUT as you did.
Keep it up, good luck!
I am getting close to calling this done, so it would be very helpful to borrow your eyes and to let me know if there is anything else I can do to push this section closer to the original or just improve upon it in general. Some notable changes include the new floor tiles which I think look much better now from a player view:
This is just preview lighting but I notice the Ivy on the far back wall has some kind of shading error, almost looks like its glowing against the dark background but I am not sure what this is.
As I mentioned in my very first post I am now testing the modular use of my pieces by expanding this scene to the secondary area outlined in my map. I will post more shots as I progress, thanks!
I might agree with @Stavaas though. Maybe some tweaks to the skysphere? Its looking a little too flat.
Keep up the great work, man
@OctOstera Thanks man, yea ill try play with that, so far I have only really adjusted the colour, but it seems pretty powerful.\
Here is an overview of what I am doing now: basically the red section is the main part I have been working on until now and I have started blocking in the secondary section.
Still a lot to do in the new sections. I really need to block sight in some areas, my height fog is pretty strong but never completely obscures sight. Does anyone know if I can set an absolute end to player sight or some kind of additional thick distance fog?
Cheers,
'Unreal dude will take the sword unto he'