UE3 Material Issues

Loren Broach

So I'm trying to get a mask working on one of my material and can't seem to make it work no matter what I try. I'm using Hourence's tutorial: http://www.hourences.com/book/tutorialsue3mated.htm

And here's what I got.


Both the Diffuse and Mask are 32bits. Anyone know what I might be doing wrong?

Snowfly

What does the alpha channel of your mask image look like?

spitty

according to the material browser, deckmask is dxt1, which wouldn't have an alpha channel. you could probably drag any other channel from deckmask to the opacity mask node.

then again i haven't done anything in ue3, so i could be wrong:)

Loren Broach

Snowfly! What a great question to ask! I didn't realize the mask needed an alpha too. haha Thanks.

okkun

Just throw the mask into the alpha channel of your diffuse.

Loren Broach

Bah, ran into another problem. If a particular object is multi-subed and has multiple different textures, how can I make all the textures apply to it?

Loren Broach

Didn't see your post till after I posted Okkun, anyways I could have sworn I tried that early with no result, but it's working now thanks.

Any idea how to make multi-sub textures work?

Ryan Smith

Keen, it's easy... you make your material for all your sub objects first, then when you apply that texture to the mesh in the mesh browser, givin you exported it properly, there should be multiple texture slots... Each texture slot corespons to the multisubobject ID.


although UE3 is a 0 based property thingermajigger, which means it's slots start with 0 instead of 1..

so if in max your multisub id is 1, it would be 0 in ued, and multisub in max is 2, it would be 1 in ued, and so on and so forth.

Saidin311

Yeah I'm pretty sure multi-sub is done through the options of the mesh rather than the material browser.

When you import your mesh, have your materials ready and then open up the slot for each material. Click to make a material active and then click the "use selection" button to fill in the slot.

Loren Broach

Oh so you have to make a separate material for each texture. BRILLIANT! thanks that worked.

Jesse Moody

Yep just like in max man. Gotta make each material for each sep id you create. That is kinda the whole point of seperate material ids other wise we would just use the one mat id and single texture.

You got normal maps and spec for all this as well?

Loren Broach

not yet, trying to get the scene looking good with just the diffuse then I'll move on to spec and normal.

Loren Broach

Ran into another problem, I have decals that aren't straight black and white alpha. So in the Material editor in UE I got bad results with the Opacity Mask. Then I tried changing the diffuse to emmissive and making the alpha channel connect to opacity. This kind of worked but now light won't affect it. Any ideas?





I know the texture and the decals don't match, but I was trying to accomplish the same thing with that texture. (It had alphas too)

Snowfly

as far as i know, that is just the way unrealed is out of the box. 8-bit alphas can't have lighting, so if you want it lit...you'll have to go back to 1-bit alpha.

but a solution would be nice!

sprunghunt

[ QUOTE ]
as far as i know, that is just the way unrealed is out of the box. 8-bit alphas can't have lighting, so if you want it lit...you'll have to go back to 1-bit alpha.

but a solution would be nice!

[/ QUOTE ]

Lit translucency is supported in one of the versions of UE3 I just can't remember if that's a released version or not

However if you're trying to put decals on a wall you could do two other methods:

1)use projectors to project the dirt onto the wall. Even though they'll be using emissive they should still be shadowed by lighting in the level.

2) use a material which blends the dirt onto your background texture so you don't have to use decals. I'd use a linear interpolate and a few other shader instructions to do this.

have fun!

Sean McBride

And i'm pretty sure that lit translucency is only a shadow map baked in also... i could be wrong but yes truely dynamic lights will only effect 1 bit alpha or no transparency materials all together.

at one point it was in the engine... but made the engine chug so bad epic decided not to support it anymore and just ripped it out.

Ott

Right click in the Generic Browser and select "Create new Decal" or whatever it is...(Don't have the editor open atm) Then, select a surface in the editor and press the "D" button to place a decal.

Use the Decal system as a projector (this is essentially the new projector system)...works much better than using alpha cards for grundge overlays.

The lighting works better, and you can also receive the normal map info from the projected surface. Don't use alpha maps for this...just a Color map.

According to the UDN, the Decals have about the same hit on the engine as a static mesh.

Wish I could show you some of the Decals we have

hobodactyl

Hey everyone, I'm starting to toy around with UT3Ed, but when I try to use a Multi/Sub-Object Material for a static mesh it looks textured properly in Max, but when I bring it into UnrealEd I get all of the material slots, but it ignores any materials past the first two slots. Here's a screenshot of the setup:


It seems to be applying the first material to everything beyond the 2nd slot; any ideas?

EDIT: Figured out I wasn't applying the materials correctly in Max :P