Unreal Engine 3 Questions.
polycounter lvl 17
I am going to try not to ramble.
• Do you know of any good tutorials to show you how holographic textures are made? They each have a scanline feel to them (I guess I am talking about Mass Effect); I have been playing that more than UT3, and not sure if there are holograms in there.
I searched the forums and found the answer (-an- answer) to this
• What if I have a prop (like an Oil Rig) that animates? Simple Keyframmed animation, no bones, how do I put this in to UE3 and see it working?
Thank you Kovac I will have to give this a try
• What inspired me the most was a screen shot taken back in 2005. I can't find it anymore. It was a green field, some flowers and a gray sky like it might rain. Best of all were some enormous, gritty, and industrial Wind Turbines. Is this a map I just cant find? Is it part of a Map Pack? I bet I have gone through each map looking for this level, and still have not found it. Are those props (Wind turbines) in there anywhere? If not I look forward to making my own. If you know what I am talking about and where the screen shots can be found that would be most helpful.
Erick Chadwick for the Win
• My experience is with Source. In that Engine, most of the world is made of Brushes. In the DVD tutorials, it is mentioned in passing that brushes are taboo and only used in the early planning of the level. How accurate is this? I don't know if I can wrap my head around a world made 99% out of statics.
Marcan answered this below.
• My Library environment is mostly a cylinder turned inside out. Once I scale it up, am I going to be able to stand in it? Or will unreal have some collision issues with that?
• How does the Materiel Editor in UE3 handle large props that have multiple material IDs? Or does it?
• Do you know of any good tutorials to show you how holographic textures are made? They each have a scanline feel to them (I guess I am talking about Mass Effect); I have been playing that more than UT3, and not sure if there are holograms in there.
I searched the forums and found the answer (-an- answer) to this
• What if I have a prop (like an Oil Rig) that animates? Simple Keyframmed animation, no bones, how do I put this in to UE3 and see it working?
Thank you Kovac I will have to give this a try
• What inspired me the most was a screen shot taken back in 2005. I can't find it anymore. It was a green field, some flowers and a gray sky like it might rain. Best of all were some enormous, gritty, and industrial Wind Turbines. Is this a map I just cant find? Is it part of a Map Pack? I bet I have gone through each map looking for this level, and still have not found it. Are those props (Wind turbines) in there anywhere? If not I look forward to making my own. If you know what I am talking about and where the screen shots can be found that would be most helpful.
Erick Chadwick for the Win
• My experience is with Source. In that Engine, most of the world is made of Brushes. In the DVD tutorials, it is mentioned in passing that brushes are taboo and only used in the early planning of the level. How accurate is this? I don't know if I can wrap my head around a world made 99% out of statics.
Marcan answered this below.
• My Library environment is mostly a cylinder turned inside out. Once I scale it up, am I going to be able to stand in it? Or will unreal have some collision issues with that?
• How does the Materiel Editor in UE3 handle large props that have multiple material IDs? Or does it?
Replies
http://www.devmaster.net/engines/screenshots/Unreal%20Engine%203-2.jpg
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?p=833372#post833372
I think that answer is sufficent. I will have to try that. I am pretty dence sometimes, and had not only overlooked your reply, but forgot I had asked. :S
@ EricChadwick
That is the one, saw it in a magazine in an airport back in 2005. That is beautiful, and my new desktop. One question, how did you find it? Did you just remember what to look for? Or was there a term I was missing. I have looked all over for it.
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=unreal+3
Well for #1, you can easily scale up any object without any problem, but obviously unless you mapped it accordingly than the texture will scale, too. Watch out for your pixel ratio.... You might as well just scale it in your 3d package, remap it and reset Xform it before exporting.
As for #2... I'm not sure what you mean but you could have 70 matid's for all the engine cares! But for every extra material an object has, it is one more DRAWCALL for the engine. You shouldn't have any problem for a small map, but it's something you should know for the future.
Additionally, if I had a different Mat ID for each face of the cube, how do I assign a Material to each ID, in UE3? Is there a Material ID box, with number, that I am missing?
Aside: Good God, Marcan, your work is amazing. I am truly inspired. Could you answer the BSP question too then? Looks like you might know the answer.
Be aware that there is a very specific bug (probably fixed by Epic, but we branched our build on Army of Two quite early on) that if you scale a mesh which has UBX collision on it the collision will simply disappear. This will not be the case with UCX (another reason why you should use them).
(NOTE: If you did not create custom collision in your 3d software, you can quickly "create" one by using the mesh itself as collision in Unreal. I usually do that in the early stages when I build my levels because creating collisions can be time consuming if there is a lot of level design changes involved. You can do that by unticking the boxes "UseSimpleBoxCollision" and "UseSimpleRigidBodyCollision" in the Static Mesh editor.)
You can not assign a different material ID dynamically in Unreal, you can only change a material applied to the current material ID. To modify the material ID on specific faces you will have to do it in your 3d package and re-export.
As far as brushes go... Army of Two never used it, even for early conception of the levels. The way we do it now is even simpler: we create a simple 1x1x1 meter box in our 3d software and export it. Then we quickly lay out our composition in Unreal by using this box for every wall, prop, stairs, etc. by scaling it in X Y or Z. Then we export this back in our 3d software and start creating the final meshes.
You'll see, it's really easy to navigate through static meshes once you have the hang of it.
Also, I had no idea you could export your meshes -out- of UE3; do you have a little more info on this workflow? It seems neat to be able to mock it up in Unreal, and then flesh it out in Max; sorta like modeling in Max and adding details in Mudbox.
You can re-export any mesh from Unreal to any 3d package. When you're in Unreal, just select all the mesh you want to re-export and go in File/Export/Selected only, and export as either .stl or .obj. Then import it in your 3d software, most of them are compliant with these 2 very common formats.
Edit: Forgot to mention yet another bug... If you have a map with levels contained within it and you are streaming them, you have to open the actual map file to export a mesh contained within it.
Streaming levels is very common. If you have Gears of War you can look at how it is done.
::Edit::
http://www.hourences.com/book/tutorialsue3streaming.htm
Oh my word?! This is alot to take in. So, hypothetically, you could build a whole world, and then break it down into chunks and have those chunks stream? Is this more in depth than telling it not to draw certain props untill you are X distance away?
Yes. You wouldn't build only one map with your whole level in it, it will be separated in chunks so it can fit in memory basically. This isn't just "not drawing" (it's called culling) objects, because that object will still be in memory. It will remove unnecessary objects from memory to make room for more.
This is a bit advanced though, you may be just be getting a bit ahead here.
Edit: Because there's a difference between culling (for draw calls) and streaming (for memory.)
I have them in with my maps. But when I load my file it drops out my assets, says it cant' find them, and replaces them with Null objects.
So 1: Where is the right Place to save these?
2: Can I relink the map to the project and have it replace my Nulls with their proper counterparts? Or should I just -not- save it with the nulls, and reopen it when I get my Package where it belongs.
I was told back in health-class where I should and should not put my Package.
-Andrew
build/Content/environment/yourenvirodir/yourpackage.upk
i also believe once something is set to null it -is- null. Also if you cant fix this, try opening your packages -then- your map.
Technically, you can have your package where you want, Unreal will load it without any problem. In practice it's something else, it's just a matter of having a clean structure.
If you haven't saved your map yet, the link will be intact. Once you save it after you've seen the error, then it's too late. The thing is that there will still be a StaticMeshActor present in your scene with a null link. If you go in tools/check map for errors it will check for this kind of error (as well as a bunch of other stuff, check it out.) Then you'll be able to select this actor, and delete it/relink it to the package.