right direction, the result of "SSS part 1" is black and white and you add it to your "SSS part 2", so if you have a mask (be it an alpha in one of your texture, or a new texture) what would you need to do to change the effect of "SSS part 1" over "SSS part 2"?
I could just say the answer but i think its better for you if you come up the solution by yourself and really think simple its super easy math and i'm a loser with math...
yes you'll have to create your own diffuse inside your custom shading, see the tut, i have specularmasks, diffuse, cubemaps etc right inside the custom lighting
speaking of that tutorial, where can i find it with higher resolution images? the ones at Moddb are small enough that i can't read some of the node titles.
I like to thank yall for all the help you have been giving me when it comes to my questions, both successful advice and non successful. But sadly I have another question (Annoying I know)
I am trying to rig it up where matinee sequences are dependent on each other IE one will not work unless another has been triggered. Like pulling a lever to open a door but the lever not working unless a button was pressed to turn on the power in a different part of the level
I think it has something to do with bool and I have been playing with it but getting no where really, had some really interesting results with my tinkering but getting no where, any help would be appreciated
Oh and I figured out the who missing geometry thing, not what was happening but just a quick fix, just make a single bone joint and smooth bind all the geometry to it, that seems to work on things I don't have to move lol
Oh I am intermediate C++ and C#, did an internship where I programmed a UI for a simulator (In unreal script 2.5 oddly enough) That seems about right, I didn't think of using integers for the test
See what I have are these three door controls, but they should not work unless the power plant is turned on, and it is turned on by a button so I boiled it down to a test to see if that button has been activated, its count is only one so I guess I can have a parameter that checks to see if the switch is at 1 or 0 in the way of switch count
does anyone have links to post processing tutorials? google is failing me at the moment. i'm having trouble capturing a certain mood in my scenes with just lighting alone.
this is in reference to my earlier questions about rigging up one matinee to run depending on weather a different one has been activated, been trying to do what Skyane suggested but still getting no where, here is a shot of my layout
The ones with the red rectangle are the two I am trying to get this to work on first before moving on to the others, rectangle one needs to happen first if rectangle 2 is to work at all
Well all I have succeed to do so far is keep rectangle 2 from working at all, I am sure I have the bool setting in rec 1 right if I followed the tutorial videos right (it was the door tutorial) but getting no where
you guys are great with the help, thanks for the help so far, wish I knew enough to help back
does anyone have links to post processing tutorials? google is failing me at the moment. i'm having trouble capturing a certain mood in my scenes with just lighting alone.
what exactly do you want to do with the posteffects?
Neox, ever have any problems with textures all of a sudden looking lower rez in the editor?
for some reason, my textures all looked awesome, then a second later they all looked pixilated and low quality on the mesh, nothing i do seems to undo this issue =/
Neox, ever have any problems with textures all of a sudden looking lower rez in the editor?
hehe sure i had, and still have but well thats the compression, best thing i know to do i first of all import your textures with alpha (dxt5 instead of dxt1) and set the texturegroup to skybox
hehe sure i had, and still have but well thats the compression, best thing i know to do i first of all import your textures with alpha (dxt5 instead of dxt1) and set the texturegroup to skybox
done!
also, setting the LOD bias to -1 seemed to help too =]
This may be a stupid question but are you sure the boolean you are switching is switching from false to true? The best way to make sure is to print the boolean to the screen. You can do this with the Log action I believe.
I also see that you are changing the boolean with one instance and comparing the boolean in another instance. Maybe you should hook up the same variable into both the change and the compare just to make sure its looking for the same thing? Hopefully this helps.
Its not a stupid question, I am thinking the same thing, I did a quick test and switched it manually before I started up the test and it works just fine, so I am sure that is the problem, but I just don't see where I am doing it wrong everything seems to be right, this is the one thing I hate about programming but visual and text type, get something small wrong and nothing works, and just trying to figure out that small thing is a pain ass
Oh and the two variables, the one in 2 is the actual variable, the one in 1 is a remote variable tied to 2's variable, cant think of its name off the top of my head
Hmmm well, i would start by doing a Log of the variable before and after the change.
That will print whatever the variable is equal to on the screen in game. If you then see its not changing at all. Youve narrowed down the problem. It could be changing but not procedurally updating that second variable that is tied to the first variables value.
If that still doesnt work I guess you can recheck the change boolean node and make sure it's all hooked up and all the data fields are correct.
I dunno if I can solve the problem but if you want to PM the map to me or email it to me I'll take a look. Sometimes fresh eyes are the best thing when solving a problem. I would of course delete the map after I've sent it back to you.
Thanks for the advice man, I logged like you suggested (didn't know I could log Boolean values in Mantnee) and narrowed it down, the variable was not changing for some reason, so I switched it's start value to true and now everything works like I wanted it
Yea the curse of programming, its always something simple
Thanks for the help, hope I can return the favor someday
I know this is a long shot but if anyone here is good with custom vehicle code could you send me a PM, I have some questions about how the RemoteRedeemer works. And yes I have tried asking and searching on the Unreal 3 forums already.
I have no idea if I have asked this or not, if I have please forgive me, its been a long 2 months
Is their any way to turn off the weapons and Hud, I was going to add custom weapons and Hud to my mod project but I don't have time so I am just going to remove them for the sake of presentation, plus it stands out like a sore thumb in the Steam Punk Environment I am aiming for.
I'm working on a test scene, and I'd like to fake dynamic, soft-shadows using a light function in UE3 (unless there's a way to get actual soft-shadows, penumbra shadows, etc.). Are there any need-to-knows to achieve this look? I've used light functions before, and hopefully the desired effect will be achieved. However, I'm just a little curious how the baked lighting and light functions is going to look together.
The tutorials that come with collectors edition UT3 are really helpful for people who are just starting out. I'm not going to get into the whole "illegal download thing" but I'm sure... if you looked... you could download them somewhere.
I've been thinking about getting Gears of War for PC... anybody have an opinion on the overall advantage or disadvantage of making a map for GOW instead of UT3?
Thanks.
If you go to 3DBuzz.com you can sign up for a free membership and then stream all the tutorials for UT3 and UT2kX. If you want to do any really cool cut scenes or mass invasion style maps then GOW is, IMOP, better than UT3 but I would just learn them both.
I have no idea if I have asked this or not, if I have please forgive me, its been a long 2 months
Is their any way to turn off the weapons and Hud, I was going to add custom weapons and Hud to my mod project but I don't have time so I am just going to remove them for the sake of presentation, plus it stands out like a sore thumb in the Steam Punk Environment I am aiming for.
Thanks for any help
I think the command you are looking for is toggleHUD and then I think you have to feed it a 1 or 0 to turn it on or off. But I am not 100% sure if that is the command or not as the Example game I am looking at while I write this does not have a HUD so I can not verfiy if that works or not.
I'm working on a test scene, and I'd like to fake dynamic, soft-shadows using a light function in UE3 (unless there's a way to get actual soft-shadows, penumbra shadows, etc.). Are there any need-to-knows to achieve this look? I've used light functions before, and hopefully the desired effect will be achieved. However, I'm just a little curious how the baked lighting and light functions is going to look together.
Depending on the version of unreal you are using there's a way to get actual soft-shadows, penumbra shadows, shadows through the alpha of static meshes, ect. But at the moment you have to be an Unreal Dev to even mess around with it....But there is something that you can do to allow you to get better shadows than the stock ones.
In your light setting there should be a couple of drop boxes towards the bottom of the light settings that effect the way that the light cast shadows. The first one that you will come across should be the modulated shadows drop down box. Changing this to (Depending on your version of the engine) modulate or modulate better should make the shadows in the player LE (Light Environment) crisper and more defined with a simi-soft edge.
After you have messed around with though settings you should then take a look at the shadow filter quality and the shadow Projection Technique. I could go into great detail about what they each do but I dont have the time ATM so just mess around with thoes settings and you should get something similar to what you are looking for.
yes you'll have to create your own diffuse inside your custom shading, see the tut, i have specularmasks, diffuse, cubemaps etc right inside the custom lighting
I Actually add this shader to one of the games my studio is working on and I did get this to work the same way but with out feeding everything into the custom lighting node. In mine I have it set up the normal way that you would go about setting up a shader. I will post it tomorrow as I still need to make comments in it.
is there any way to get hold of the bitangent calculators unreal uses?
apparently x-normal is too different to unreal for there to be any kind of seamless solution.
Try inverting your projection axis in the Y direction when you are generating your normal maps. I am pretty sure its that direction that needs to be changed to so Unreal reads it correctly...I ran into this issue a long time ago if memory servers me correctly and that is what I did to fix it. If that does not post your normal map your are having issues with so I can take a look.
Okay one more question and I will be leaving yall alone about this for a while lol, though this one is a doosy
I am having a problem with Unreal ed reading my script, it wont
now what I do is I run my game type mod and map unpublished (copy editor shortcut and in properties replace editor on the path with -useunpublished)
Now I have my map and package in Custommaps in CookedPC in the unpublished directory (or the other way around, sorry if I got it wrong) and the script file in the same directory as Custommaps and my code in SRC-Modname-Classes
Now when I hit my Run Unpublished link I get a message saying it is using my my mods level package instead of my script to run the game, now it works, I can select my game type and then the map and they both have the preview image I have set up but it does not have anything involing the script, just what I was able to make in the editor
Now my friends told me to put my maps and package in a file with my mods name (as I have been typing it everywhere else) in the same directory as the Custommaps and script file, I did and then I got a message saying it is now using my script instead of the package, sounds like I wanted right, but when I go into the game I choose my cutom game type, then the map to go with it, then I get the loading screen and that is it, it stopps at the load screen, it is not a lock up, it just keeps loading.
Now what I am thinking is that is does not know where to fine the package and level file because the preview image is not there when I am selecting Game type and level, that is what I think anyway
Either way that is the problem, I need to use both script and level/package but I can only get one or the other to work, not both at the same time, any help would be appreciated
hrrrrm how do i activate a trigger with another trigger? triggers don't have an input but what i would like to do is enabling them only when another trigger has been hit first. hmmmmm kismet help lacks a lot of informations
So i was looking for something about toon shaders in unreal but i didn't find anything in the thread, i might have overlooked it or didn't read far enough. could someone point me in the right direction?
Does anyone know where I can find some good tutorials on how to make some believable metal (preferably gold) shaders with the material editor?
Here you go I made this for you real fast at work. Its a very basic gold but with a little tweaking it should do what you want it to. Let me know if there is something that you don't understand and I will explain it a little better.
Here you go I made this for you real fast at work. Its a very basic gold but with a little tweaking it should do what you want it to. Let me know if there is something that you don't understand and I will explain it a little better.
Just a heads up.
It appears Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3 is now in stock at Amazon. I just ordered a copy and should be here on Tuesday .
Hey there, is there any way to export a static mesh from an uncooked package to a format that I can take it back into Maya? Maya crashed and I have the nearly finished static ingame. Or is there any way to re import my ASE into Maya to be able to use that? Thanks!
select it in editor end export it as stl or obj, but its not guaranteed that the data that comes out is really good
The way that I have found to get around this is to first open whatever I exported out of Unreal in side of Milkshpae 3D and then re-export to a .3DS or .OBJ. The reason that I use Milkshape is because for some reason it tends to handle the direction of the vertex normals better than Max can.
Apologies if this has already been asked, but I didnt see it...
Is there any way to update/replace static meshes? My fav workflow in max is to block stuff out, and replace blockmodels with finished pieces one by one. I assume its possible in Unreal to place static meshes and then later replace the source mesh, thus updating all the instances in the editor... or do you really have to delete and re-position for every update?
Replies
could you use an alpha layer in the inverse normal texture to control it?
I could just say the answer but i think its better for you if you come up the solution by yourself and really think simple its super easy math and i'm a loser with math...
using the custom lighting node, stops me using the standard normal/diffuse/spec nodes for the "normal" material aspects.
i feel like i'm in a bit over my head, but i'll keep bashing on through.
got the rest of the shader working, now to just get the SSS nailed
biggest problem i'm having with it at the moment, is that it's coming out waaaay too bright. and i still haven't figured out that missing link...
I am trying to rig it up where matinee sequences are dependent on each other IE one will not work unless another has been triggered. Like pulling a lever to open a door but the lever not working unless a button was pressed to turn on the power in a different part of the level
I think it has something to do with bool and I have been playing with it but getting no where really, had some really interesting results with my tinkering but getting no where, any help would be appreciated
Oh and I figured out the who missing geometry thing, not what was happening but just a quick fix, just make a single bone joint and smooth bind all the geometry to it, that seems to work on things I don't have to move lol
See what I have are these three door controls, but they should not work unless the power plant is turned on, and it is turned on by a button so I boiled it down to a test to see if that button has been activated, its count is only one so I guess I can have a parameter that checks to see if the switch is at 1 or 0 in the way of switch count
The ones with the red rectangle are the two I am trying to get this to work on first before moving on to the others, rectangle one needs to happen first if rectangle 2 is to work at all
Well all I have succeed to do so far is keep rectangle 2 from working at all, I am sure I have the bool setting in rec 1 right if I followed the tutorial videos right (it was the door tutorial) but getting no where
you guys are great with the help, thanks for the help so far, wish I knew enough to help back
what exactly do you want to do with the posteffects?
for some reason, my textures all looked awesome, then a second later they all looked pixilated and low quality on the mesh, nothing i do seems to undo this issue =/
set to compression none
hehe sure i had, and still have but well thats the compression, best thing i know to do i first of all import your textures with alpha (dxt5 instead of dxt1) and set the texturegroup to skybox
[ame]
done!
also, setting the LOD bias to -1 seemed to help too =]
Its not a stupid question, I am thinking the same thing, I did a quick test and switched it manually before I started up the test and it works just fine, so I am sure that is the problem, but I just don't see where I am doing it wrong everything seems to be right, this is the one thing I hate about programming but visual and text type, get something small wrong and nothing works, and just trying to figure out that small thing is a pain ass
Oh and the two variables, the one in 2 is the actual variable, the one in 1 is a remote variable tied to 2's variable, cant think of its name off the top of my head
Thanks for the advice man, I logged like you suggested (didn't know I could log Boolean values in Mantnee) and narrowed it down, the variable was not changing for some reason, so I switched it's start value to true and now everything works like I wanted it
Yea the curse of programming, its always something simple
Thanks for the help, hope I can return the favor someday
apparently x-normal is too different to unreal for there to be any kind of seamless solution.
Is their any way to turn off the weapons and Hud, I was going to add custom weapons and Hud to my mod project but I don't have time so I am just going to remove them for the sake of presentation, plus it stands out like a sore thumb in the Steam Punk Environment I am aiming for.
Thanks for any help
If you go to 3DBuzz.com you can sign up for a free membership and then stream all the tutorials for UT3 and UT2kX. If you want to do any really cool cut scenes or mass invasion style maps then GOW is, IMOP, better than UT3 but I would just learn them both.
I think the command you are looking for is toggleHUD and then I think you have to feed it a 1 or 0 to turn it on or off. But I am not 100% sure if that is the command or not as the Example game I am looking at while I write this does not have a HUD so I can not verfiy if that works or not.
Depending on the version of unreal you are using there's a way to get actual soft-shadows, penumbra shadows, shadows through the alpha of static meshes, ect. But at the moment you have to be an Unreal Dev to even mess around with it....But there is something that you can do to allow you to get better shadows than the stock ones.
In your light setting there should be a couple of drop boxes towards the bottom of the light settings that effect the way that the light cast shadows. The first one that you will come across should be the modulated shadows drop down box. Changing this to (Depending on your version of the engine) modulate or modulate better should make the shadows in the player LE (Light Environment) crisper and more defined with a simi-soft edge.
After you have messed around with though settings you should then take a look at the shadow filter quality and the shadow Projection Technique. I could go into great detail about what they each do but I dont have the time ATM so just mess around with thoes settings and you should get something similar to what you are looking for.
Ah dont feel to bad if you really want to wrap your head around it read the following book.
Shaders for Game Artist and Programmers
I Actually add this shader to one of the games my studio is working on and I did get this to work the same way but with out feeding everything into the custom lighting node. In mine I have it set up the normal way that you would go about setting up a shader. I will post it tomorrow as I still need to make comments in it.
Try inverting your projection axis in the Y direction when you are generating your normal maps. I am pretty sure its that direction that needs to be changed to so Unreal reads it correctly...I ran into this issue a long time ago if memory servers me correctly and that is what I did to fix it. If that does not post your normal map your are having issues with so I can take a look.
I am having a problem with Unreal ed reading my script, it wont
now what I do is I run my game type mod and map unpublished (copy editor shortcut and in properties replace editor on the path with -useunpublished)
Now I have my map and package in Custommaps in CookedPC in the unpublished directory (or the other way around, sorry if I got it wrong) and the script file in the same directory as Custommaps and my code in SRC-Modname-Classes
Now when I hit my Run Unpublished link I get a message saying it is using my my mods level package instead of my script to run the game, now it works, I can select my game type and then the map and they both have the preview image I have set up but it does not have anything involing the script, just what I was able to make in the editor
Now my friends told me to put my maps and package in a file with my mods name (as I have been typing it everywhere else) in the same directory as the Custommaps and script file, I did and then I got a message saying it is now using my script instead of the package, sounds like I wanted right, but when I go into the game I choose my cutom game type, then the map to go with it, then I get the loading screen and that is it, it stopps at the load screen, it is not a lock up, it just keeps loading.
Now what I am thinking is that is does not know where to fine the package and level file because the preview image is not there when I am selecting Game type and level, that is what I think anyway
Either way that is the problem, I need to use both script and level/package but I can only get one or the other to work, not both at the same time, any help would be appreciated
Thanks again
nevermind found a tutorial...
This is a good tutorial I just added this style of phong rim/specular lighting to one of the games that my studio is working on.
Here you go I made this for you real fast at work. Its a very basic gold but with a little tweaking it should do what you want it to. Let me know if there is something that you don't understand and I will explain it a little better.
http://www.samdeiter.com/images/basic_gold_shader.jpg
Thanks again for your help, Billy! I'll definitely use this
No worries hope it help:)
It appears Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3 is now in stock at Amazon. I just ordered a copy and should be here on Tuesday
The way that I have found to get around this is to first open whatever I exported out of Unreal in side of Milkshpae 3D and then re-export to a .3DS or .OBJ. The reason that I use Milkshape is because for some reason it tends to handle the direction of the vertex normals better than Max can.
Yes you can create a material that you can then apply to your screen via the post process chain.
Is there any way to update/replace static meshes? My fav workflow in max is to block stuff out, and replace blockmodels with finished pieces one by one. I assume its possible in Unreal to place static meshes and then later replace the source mesh, thus updating all the instances in the editor... or do you really have to delete and re-position for every update?
-N