Maya Actor X into Unrealed 3 texture problem

wsorbust

Hi, I'm new to the forum. As you might be able to tell from the title of the thread, I'm pretty new to the unrealed 3 also, so please forgive me if my questions are painfully obvious etc., but I've been a visitor to the site a few times and found some amazing art here, and thought someone might be able to help me.

You'll read below that I'm assuming that if you apply texture in Maya and export, it should be imported automatically. (Since I'm not able to apply another texture in unrealed)

The problem I'm having is importing a textured object, a.k.a. a cube, from maya into unrealed. I've tried using targa and pcx files, which I assigned to the "color" slot on a surface shader in Maya. I've tried naming the shader "SKIN" and even assigning the texture file to the "diffuse" slot on the surface shader. I thought the file type might have been an issue also...

Ok, so I export. It states it was exported with one texture (1 material). The file opened in a text editor is this:

*MATERIAL_COUNT 1
    *MATERIAL 0 {
        *MATERIAL_NAME "AxToolMultiSubMimicry"
        *MATERIAL_CLASS "Multi/Sub-Object"
        *NUMSUBMTLS 1
        *SUBMATERIAL 0 {
            *MATERIAL_NAME "initialShadingGroup"
            *MATERIAL_CLASS "Standard"
            *MAP_DIFFUSE {
                *MAP_CLASS "Bitmap"
                *BITMAP "C:Documents and Settingsuser1Desktopa.tga"
                *UVW_U_OFFSET 0.0

I import the .ase file in the "static mesh" tab. But...under "materials-->0" shown in the properties below the viewport of the static mesh, it shows: "(EnableCollision=True,Material=None)". The box when inserted into the level shows as a light blue box which is triangulated. (I didn't hit the triangulate option when exporting). Not only does the box not have a texture on it, I'm not allowed/able to apply another texture, by "subtracting" or going down to the texture setting and applying a new one. (I can make it appear in the properties box a texture is selected but it doesn't show in my viewport.


Any ideas or links to where I can find the correct procedure for doing this...how to import an object that I can assign texture to would be great. Thanks

Jesse Moody

Did you create a material in unreal? Since that is what you will need to do to apply any type of texture to any object in unreal. You also have to import your static meshes.


Feel free to check out my tutorial that covers all this at

www.artbyjessemoody.com

wsorbust

Hmm. Well, after 20 minutes or so, I've come to believe this might be my problem. I have no idea how to create a material. I see tutorials about it, but have no idea how to, or where to open up the material editor, which I would believe would allow me to create a one. I can view the material properties...etc. But do not know where to go from there. . . So, I'm checking out the UDN. Bah. It's in there. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction Jesse. Hopefully I can get this working.

Vailias

generic browser -> new-> then select material instance constant from the "factory" dropdown

Then just fill in the blanks, and be sure to choose an existing material as the material parent.

gamedev

As well, I wrote a nice tutorial a while back for Roboblitz (which uses UE3) on creating materials and applying them to static meshes. It has pictures as well which should help:

http://www.roboblitz.com/RoboBlitzEditorWiki/index.php/Creating_and_Applying_Materials_to_Static_Meshes

If in the event you get to the last stage of the tutorial and there is no material index to specify a material for your mesh ensure you have applied a texture file to your model and not just created a material using built in nodes in Maya. Unreal usually won't create a material index for you unless it has a path to a texture file in the export file (which looking at your export out looks like you've done correctly).

Good luck -

-Tyler

wsorbust

Well, I have to first off apoligize, because I now realize I couldn't tell what version of Unrealed I was using, I thought 3 was in UT2004, but that's obviously not the case. It probably caused everyone to misunderstand everything I said. lol

Anyway, I opened up the Roboblitz Ed and I finally saw what you were talking about in your and other's tutorials Tyler, and made my cube to actually import and show with texture. :poly108: Thanks everyone.