Best way to create decals for trash in UT2004?help

armagon9177

Hey guys, I've been working on a 100 percent custom map for UT2004 called DM-Carbon. Its coming along great but I would like to use some localized details like grime and soggy flattened trash in some corners and line the edges of the floors with in in my map.

I was inspired by the great detail EPIC Games achieved using them in Gears of War. So if you've seen the type of trash laying around in that game thats kinda what Im aiming at.

Does anyone know the best way to go about doing this in Unreal Engine 2? I know normal maps and other things are out of the question of course. But is a projector or static mesh the way to go? Does anyone have some insight into this or a good tutorial or documentation?

I would really appreciate any help. Thanks guys!!

Armagon

cyborgguineapig

I'm Slightly rusty with UT but yeah I'd say projectors are what you want to use. Just some brief information here. [url="usehttp://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Projector"]usehttp://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Projector[/url]

Vailias

depends on how you have your level set up. If its all BSP then likely a combination of projectors and static mesh is in order to get the right depth an amount.
Make a new map and make some static mesh trash piles. Save them as prefabs so you don't have to place individual pieces more than a few times.

If your map is based around terrains then you can make good use of a decolayer with static objects to achieve trash distribution.

mvelasquez

I'm not much of a level guy, but static mesh decals I think would serve your purpose. Just have a plane with an alpha'd out grime texture applied and position it just a few units on the surface of your wall or whatever so it looks flush with the wall. it helps to turn off shadow casting on the static mesh too. Vailias has the right idea too. Just make little trash units that you can distribute to the right parts of your level.

Ott

Make sure your planar trash is bent slightly, and that everything breaks the axis of whatever you have as your flat surface and it's pivot point is at the BOTTOM of the objects.

You will go crazy trying to align flat planes to a BSP surface, and giving everything some depth will make sure you can "bury" your trash into the geometry better to help with alignment.

Unreal also has a "align to the floor" if you right click the Static Mesh that can quickly and easily align stuff to the ground. (This is why I strongly suggest you place your pivot points at the bottom of the object.)

As for the object creations itself, I would model a few random sets of garbage piles and then mix em up a little and create static meshes of merged objects, that way you don't have to place piece by piece of each individual trash. You might even model it in with your buildings / objects just to save yourself some time. Placing and moving stuff in Unreal is not nearly as easy as it is in Max/Maya.

Ott

On that note, unless you are really using a crappy computer, and if it is just for fun, I wouldn't worry too much about polycounts with that engine...so I would actually model stuff instead of using projectors.

Learn to use .dds textures and clean your meshes up as best you can - but I've ran levels with animated characters and 300,000+ tris on screen and not seen a stutter.

Spend time on your models and your environments. More people will want to see screenshots of the stuff in your level than will actually play it, so spend time on the small details, make a small manageable map and go to town on the details. You can do some really great stuff even in that old Engine.

Jesse Moody

Also some things that really boost quality of level in UT2004 is baking your lighting with AO maps on your diffuse maps, decal textures, detail maps for detail when you get close to the walls, floors, etc.

LOTS AND LOTS of resources out there for UT2004. Greatest thing as well is that you can find a bad ass map, download it, open it and find out how things are done.

I have learned so much by doing that myself.