Viewing 3d Models Real Time

BradMyers82

Hey guys, I know this has been talked about before but I never really got the solutions I was looking for on previous discussions so I thought I would try to start my own thread here.

I have been pretty happy with simply using 3ds max to display my models real time, however; the emissive (self-illumination) doesn't actually produce light or photons like I would prefer. To me, it seems I could simply paint the color straight into the diffuse and achieve pretty much the same results.

I recently picked up unreal 3 hopeing that if I put fourth the effort of setting up a scene importing textures and so fourth it would pay off with a really nice result, however; there is serious down grading in the textures and I cannot seem to find out why. I read that if you actually play the map it fixes any downgrading in textures or if you click the never stream option it would fix this but so far, no luck. The character is imported as a static mesh, and the screen grabs I have are actually taken from playing a simple level with all the highest graphic settings on, yet the normals and textures in general look like crap compared to the 3ds max screen grabs.

I also tried xnormal viewer which is good, but a bit wierd when displaying the emissive (not as good as unreal, but still acutally produces light), but for some reason if you are using alphas the emissive glow goes away and you are left with something that doesn't look as good as 3ds max. Also, you only have the option of using a single light and cannot setup a 3 point light system like I prefer.

Nevertheless, I must admit I love the material editor in unreal, and the glow I get with my emissive setup is much like what I am looking for. Its a shame I cannot seem to figure out what is going on here.

So, I would like to know is it possible to setup a proper glow map like you can in Unreal 3 real time within 3ds max? I realize that I could use video post and lens effect, but I want to stick to screen grabs instead of relying on fancy renders.

Do you guys think I am doing something wrong with my setup in unreal 3 or does everyone get crappy texture results compared to 3ds max when in the unreal 3 engine?

Either a solution to using one or the other would be great, but it sucks that I can't simply view all the maps properly in one software app.

Here are examples of what I am talking about...

BradMyers82

Oh yeah, I should mention I am using 3ds max 2009 64bit.

Rob Galanakis

Glow: Glow is a post-process in UE3. There are post-process shaders in Max but the parser is pretty buggy and there aren't many. You can't simulate this in the viewport without a hardware shader.

Compression: Those artifacts are from DXT compression and are (mostly) unavoidable. DXT compression can really mess with normal maps, you can try one of the Swizzled varieties.

BradMyers82

Thanks Professor, that clears up quite a bit right there.

Anyone know of a shader for 3ds max that can utilize all the maps game artists create and give a glow like professor mentions? Of course what would be needed is:
an opacity slot or alpha slot, a diffuse slot, a specular color slot, a normal map slot and emissive slot. An envornment slot and possibility of setting up a 3 point light system would be nice too.

kio

well the problem is not really the shader itself, but the 3dsmax viewport engine, as it is not as potent as a full fledged next gen engine.. (dont even get startet with alpha transparencys )

i guess the normal map shaders from ben cloward are pretty sufficient for every day preview work. http://www.bencloward.com/resources_shaders.shtml

Rob Galanakis

ShaderFX from www.lumonix.com has a post-process glow shader. You should be able to preview your work with it.

If you want to write your own scene Shader for Max your best bet is to refer to how Kees and Ben do it in ShaderFX... FX in Max is poorly enough documented officially as is, Scene Shaders in Max are virtually undocumented. But Kees and Ben are mad geniuses, and have Neil Hazzard's email.

BradMyers82

kio- yeah, I am glad I haven't had to do any complex hair setups with opacity for the reasons you mentioned. As for ben cloward's shaders, I have known about them for some time, however; he doesn't have one that fills all the slots I need (diffuse, normal, spec, emissive, and opacity) and definitely doesn't have the kind of emissive glow I am looking for. Nevertheless, Ben is the man when it comes to this kind of stuff.

Professor- Thanks for pointing me to the lumonix site! I have come across it several times before but never really took the time to see how everything works. To my surprise the interface is just like the unreal engines material editor that I love. What’s even better, it function totally in 3ds max and you can see the results of your shader as you work real time in max.

So there you have it, if you can afford shaderfx by lumonix ($250.00) and you are looking to make your own shaders like me to display your work its the perfect solution.

Therefore, just this morning I was able to achieve pretty much exactly what I was hoping for by utilizing the lumonix shader fx software Professor mentioned. If anyone has any questions or want an exact explanation of how I did this IM me and I would be glad to help.

Below are the results of my tests from this morning. It's an unedited screen grab from my 3ds max viewport.

By the way, the model here is a work in progress and the textures are far from finished. (there is no specular and the diffuse is mainly just flat colors with an AO multiply on top, but the normals and emissive are mainly done)

Ben Cloward

Brad,

Great work! It's great to hear that you were able to get what you were looking for with our software. One of the reasons that we wrote ShaderFX (Kees Rijnen and I) is that I was getting a lot of requests from people to add this or that feature to the shaders on my site.

We decided that what people really needed was a way to just easily assemble their own shaders os they could have whatever they wanted instead of having to be dependent on a programmer for shader features. It's awesome to see that you were able to get the results you wanted.

Keep it up!

-Ben

osman

It's pretty late, so I may have missed something in your posts but:
When importing textures in the Unreal Editor, you have an option called CompressionSettings, have you tried setting that to TC_NormalMap?