The Polycount UT3 Pack Thread

adam

Post your UT3 pack contributions here. Ask question, get answers, make something beautiful and useful.

And..... go!

Here's the original post for anyone wondering what the heck this is all about:
http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=254448&page=0&vc=1#Post254448

pior

Hmmm not quite sure if the following truly belongs to PnP but I thought I'd share the results of my reference hunting.

materials in Roboblitz UEd3, fast and easy
Hourence material tutorial
ini tweaks - useful for screenshots
UDN UT3 mods page - incl. folders and naming conventions
UDN ActorX for 3DSMax
UT3 character models structure
Custom character tutorial
UT3 Xan custom character model

Hope it can get stuff started. Also the CE video tutorials are a great resource esp for advanced material nodes - covers emmissive textures, fresnel efects aso.
Also, make sure to check the necris guys armor in editor. These meterials have cubemap reflections, fresnel shaded skintones and others all in one node setup. Nice!

Besides I have a question. When I fiddled with Roboblitz some time ago a special sky/fake GI light was available. Now in the UT3 version of the editor only pointlight is accessible. Is it hidden someshere else? Also if someone knows a good testmap to throw static meshes meshes in it'd be great. I am curious to see something similar to the GoW headshots that epic released a couple years ago. With dynamic shadows!

adam

Anyone willing to host the CE videos? There's gigs worth...

dom

This guy has some of them uploaded at gametrailers

http://triggz.gametrailers.com/gamepad/index.php?action=fanmovs

dom

I fixed up a quick head basemesh for anybody who needs one. It's pretty hi-res so might be best to adjust the base level to the right proportions you want before subdividing.

No UVs. There's an OBJ file and I also included a ZTL file with eyeballs.



http://www.dominicqwek.com/downlaod/dombasemesh_02.zip

pior

Regarding materials I now have a shader with colorizable rimlight, fake sss and hopefully other fancy things soon. Will post it later if anyone interested. Here with 512*512 maps two default lights and one Roboblitz skylight.



Wooo.

adam

pior, post away!

It would be neat if this 'UT3 pack' included not JUST 3D greatness but shader magic as well.

Ozymandias

I won't have time to get started until after the 1st of the new year, but I will be getting started then. This sounds like a lot of fun to me.

Jesse Moody

I should be able to contribute some tutorials over the xmas break.

Emil Mujanovic

Thanks for the basemesh, dom. Will have to have a sketch with that in mudbox over the Christmas break.

Pior, you're a Maya guy right? I haven't really done much research in regards to bringing in characters into the UE3 as of yet. Was just curious what kind of exporters/importers you used (if this info is in links you posted above, then disregard my question and I'll be sure to read through them during the Christmas break).
Shader stuff would be great too, dude!

Jesse, anything you got to contribute, man, I'm sure would be a great help.

Now to just make some time and actually open the editor and watch through all those VTMs. Then get to making some art!

-caseyjones

struve

We should get all our DomWar guys together in one large Character pack. It would be a new class called Polycounters or something.
Also you guys are welcome to any of the models on my site for this, just let me know what you want.

Jesse Moody

[ QUOTE ]
We should get all our DomWar guys together in one large Character pack. It would be a new class called Polycounters or something.
Also you guys are welcome to any of the models on my site for this, just let me know what you want.

[/ QUOTE ]

Could be cool unless there are multiple rigs that need to be made and thus multiple animations.

struve

I think it would involve lots of skinning and costume animations for characters that are off the wall. Most of them from what i remember would work with the existing rig.

IronHawk

I'll be working on a set of terraced cliff faces that are modular and can be used to do levels similar to the way the nwn1 editor worked. Seems like it would be useful for the mod community for mapping and also a good exercise for me.

adam

Ha! The DomWar 2 characters sounds like an awesome start

Davision3D

Heres are some screens of my Zombie head in the game:

Only the Diffuse and the Normal textures are working ingame, the other textures are only see able in the character customization, if someone figures out how to make all textures work ingame please let me know.

cholden

awesome stuff, gang!

I'm planning an UT3 map. I've started making some materials (see below), and have UT3, but need a new pc to do anything with it.


quick render in max ("I have 100 of the same book," says the wizard.)

Showster

Nice stuff guys! Can't wait to update this and nail the export process.

moose

[ QUOTE ]
Besides I have a question. When I fiddled with Roboblitz some time ago a special sky/fake GI light was available. Now in the UT3 version of the editor only pointlight is accessible. Is it hidden someshere else? Also if someone knows a good testmap to throw static meshes meshes in it'd be great. I am curious to see something similar to the GoW headshots that epic released a couple years ago. With dynamic shadows!

[/ QUOTE ]

in the ActorClasses Browser, go to Light > Skylight.
Select it, click in a viewport, hold A, and click... whammo! Or you can select it, right click, and add actor, whichever floats your fancy There are Spotlights, Point Lights, and Directional Lights there. If you expand the class, and select the "moveable" you'll get a dynamic light.

Adjusting the properties of the light and mesh to cast dynamic shadows, and increasing the shadow properties will also get cleaner shadows.

katana

boy they really improved unreal ed...I saw the game in target tonight, but like other's have echoed...I'm gonna need a better comp for it...

vahl

rooster

nice work davision

bounchfx

sweet vahl. playable?

moose

badass!

pior

Okay some more info. If you want to use existing Epic content as a guide for your own, esp for shader authoring you will notice that its locked. You can create a copy of an existing package under a new name and call it your own but it will not let you import static meshes to it aso.

Workaround :
http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=585462

Basically :
-Duplicate the desired package, ie coolepicpackage.upk, to a new file. Exemple : mypackagerocks.upk
-Open mypackagerocks.upk
-Go to the log tab in the generic browser
-Type in :
obj savepackage file=blargh package=mypackagerocks

Package is now unlocked.

Vailias

rockin info you're linking Pior.
Once the custom faction issues are sorted it will be great to add in new chars.

also

eventually going to be the head of Necris Brock from UC2. I dug the concept a lot.. and I've got a good deal of work to do on him before he's the real deal. darn necris concept face having so little topological clues. oh and yay for maya's mesh sculpting tools, now I don't need mudbox hehe.

adam

One thing I was talking to pior last night about was giving this pack some sort of purpose. If someone gets a bunch of random art in a zip file that won't be exactly useful.

Since we all agree that'd we like to NOT theme this in any way and just do our thing how about this:

We, as the individual creator of each asset within the pack, write a little something up for what it took to make the asset they're seeing. We could talk about: Applications used, time it took, inspiration, any lumps/struggles faced while getting it in the engine, and so on.

This way whomever does take the pack has something to LEARN from, if just a little bit.

What do you guys think? If we'd like to do that I can do up a quick word doc template for everyone to fill in whenever they're finished something to include in their package.

Motz

Not sure what UT3 uses in the way of installers (2k4 used .utx), but I write SMS/SDO MSI based installers for part of my living. If needed, I could package the character pack for installation/uninstalling with any customizations required under the sun.

AB, would the technical portion for the write ups be static, since everyone will be following the same export/in-game setup? If so, a tutorial documentation repository would be nice to include with it along with the art-based write ups. Maybe a video etc.

Vailias

AB: good idea.
Motz: That would be cool too. There isn't a specific installer package, like the UMODS for ut2k4/3/99. However an automated installer would be beneficial, especially once the script side issues have been sorted out.

Jeremy Wright

Vahl just made me piss myself

Motz

[ QUOTE ]
AB: good idea.
Motz: That would be cool too. There isn't a specific installer package, like the UMODS for ut2k4/3/99. However an automated installer would be beneficial, especially once the script side issues have been sorted out.

[/ QUOTE ]

I can handle text/script parsing, for example, find the next free line in an INI/txt file and write character info there etc, check to see if the char package already exists from a previous install, if so update it blah, update exsisting scripts/merge, patches yadada. I write about 15 of these a week, so it's no big deal, least I can do.

Hell, it could be graphical and allow the end user to install each character separately/include/exclude certain options etc.

Davision3D

That would be great Motz!

adam

fyi: The pack isn't just characters.
So the installer could be catagorized.

The integration to Unreal 3 may be static, but could still be documented. Any hiccups hit along the way, and such...

dom

i was going to post a link to a tutorial but realised pior already had it in his list. oh well, im heading off to shanghai for holidays , when i get back next year i'll dive more into ue3

Davision3D

I made a nasty Zombie Head and imported it into UT3, it can be used for the male IronGuard and Ronin Factions.

screenshots

It looks much better in character customizations then ingame, some of the textures wont work ingame and it seems that they get downsampled a lot. Would be cool if at least the specular would look ingame like it looks in character customizations... i blame epic!
Its still beta, i hope i can make some improvements later.

Here is the file:
http://files.filefront.com/Zombie+Beta+09zip/;9309199;/fileinfo.html

pior

Hehe nice of you to post it here Davision! I didn't look at your file yet but the spec not behaving well might come from a material not instanced/parented to the correct base shader. Did you use Base_02 as a parent? If I understand the engine properly a completely custom material assigned to a bodypart won't display properly ingame since a complete character made out of bodyparts, helmet, googles aso needs to call a single parent shader (with the exeption of the character customization screen where the shaders and textures are not merged together). Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I went the custom head route too and got it to work yesterday. I wrote up the detailled process while doing it, more like a memo than a tutorial but I'll post it soon anyways, might be of some help.

Also I totally agree with the idea of including some howto text with the custom assets.

BTW thanks Moose for the info about that light I missed! Got it now :P And I just found how to create custom physics assets, just a matter of right clicking the skeletal mesh icon to derive a physics assets from. Too bad these seem to be linked to factions tho... Can't get a custom physics asset to work on a custom IronGuar character/bodypart.

Anyways! Time to start on a full character!

pior

UT3 Custom Head Tutorial

Wooo!

diZzyWalnut

eh oui - Pior's tuto is here -
Merry Christmas.

Thanks

Renaud Galand

thx Pior ! Your custom head rox, btw

animeboyz

Pior you are a god!


Thank You!

Vailias

Per:"I still have to check if one can have a custon head pointing to a necris material, but part of the Ironguard faction. "

Yes you can. I've done the equivalent with EvilEngine's Xan model (put it in a number of different families)

also the FBX files won't import 100% export friendly for maya so heres a working maya 7 version of the Ironguard skel for use
Skeleton
It is in maya ascii format so should be easily backward convertable as it is just bones and materials.

SyaPed

Thanks Pior! Was waiting for a nice tutorial like this.

Just in case someone else has this problem. I had to put the .upk file into the installation directory of the game, not into 'my documents'. Otherwise the game would crash.

animeboyz

I had that same problem too SyaPed. Glad to know I wasn't the only one

Davision3D

Very good tutorial pior!

I based my Material on the "Ironguard Base".
I know now that all materials get downsampled, you can see that at the bottom of the UTCustomChar.ini. The BodyMaxTexSize is set to 1024 and the HeadMaxTexSize to 512, that can be changed to 2048 and then it will look better, but i dont think it looks like 2048. 512 and 2048 is huge difference! Sure its hard to notice while you shot at it but i think that is something very disappointing when you look at the high res screenshots of epic!

I read your Tutorial, is there reason for setting the LODBias of the normal map to 2? What does LODBias mean?

If you find out how to make reflection and transmission work ingame let me know.

Where can i Download your head?

SyaPed

Got a head ingame. Something looks a little off though :P But when I try and edit the .ini file to get my head on a male body, the game crashes when I get into the customize character menu

pior

Vailias : Doesn't it only work (as in ingame - not talking about the special cas of the character customization screen) if all the custom parts are displayed at once ie not mixed with existing faction bodyparts? I know that everything seems to behave well if only 'classic' texture slots like diffuse, spec, normal and emissive are used with default numerical values. But I tried the following with no success :

Base Necris parent
>Common necris material
>Fancy IM material

The 'fancy material' used custom reflection and fresnel maps yet followed the parented necris structure (since it links to it) and numerical values. Yet the custom textures didnt show up in the game even if all displayed bodyparts of the character used that shader (did a quick stickman just for the sake of the test)

I think I also tried the following with no success (not sure of the structure, been some time now) :

Base All
>custom material
>custom IM material,

assigned to a custom head. But since it was not a complete custom body I can understand that the shader was overriden by the one from other bodyparts. I wonder what factor decides which subshader to keep and which one to override.

I know that when I tried to mix the Xan bodyparts to other part of the faction he is part of I ended up with a different visual result (ie less shiny) than when using the Xan parts alone.

Now I want to create a completely custom parent material to see how it behaves once applied to a full custom character... Tricky stuff.

David, sorry I don't remember exactly about the Lodbias :P I guess I saw that on another bodypart and replicated it! Sorry again it's more notes than a real tutorial... Also thanks for the downsampling info, I guess it can be mentionned in readmes if the end user wants a crispier result. As for the transmission I don't know ! I did not test that yet Is it even working on stock characters?

adam

Hey hey, just popping in to say a couple things:

I'll have the little document ready (.doc is ok for everyone I assume?) within weeks of the new year.

I'm going to try and get the environment prop wagon off to a start seeing as how heads are up and rolling well. (We need variety!)

Question about custom head models: Does UT3 do facial animation? If so do cusotm heads work for this?

:P

Showster

Hi all,

I'm plugging away with the character information around, but I'm getting some pretty mixed results.



Thats what I have so far, I'm hoping its just a skeletal issue I can sort out but no really luck so far. Anyone else having any bizzare character issues like this one?

EDIT - Sorted the problem, was my rig

Greg


model source thus far http://rol.planetquake.gamespy.com/megsutsource.zip

animeboyz

I spent my time today trying to import a one piece mesh. I got him in. I moved around joints from the standard human rig to fit him, so when I play as him the animations aren't perfect.

In the character selection screen my character appears all stretched out and mangled, but in game he looks pretty good just like he does in the editor. Wierd, no?

Showster

One piece mesh? how did you do the custom ini for that animeboys?

My megs seems to play okish ingame apart from being rotated 90 degrees the wrong way but it doesn't show any of the character select screen bugs. UT3 is a strange one :-D

Lee3dee

drew out a Polycount UT3 CTF map today, collecting ideas etc, seeing where all the appropriate static meshes are that i can use.

Its going to start life out as bsp so I can get the gameplay flow down. I'll be posting my process with occasional map downloads for testing and feedback. I may need some models if anyone is interested when i get towards the geometry pass stage.