If you really cannot delete anything truly, and as you work you find that there are several materials you will not use in your level. Will your bloated package effect performance on your level even if those materials are not used in the level? Or is it that because the unused mats are in an active package they are taking up performance budgets?
If it's not called in the level, it will not affect performance. Unreal has UPK's with tons of assets and only a few are used in certain levels. But unused assets are a no-no on disk as it does affect load times.
If this is the case I assume packages are rebuilt a lot?
We had a custom in-house tool that removed all references from UPK's that we moved to a dummy package.
So yeah, lock down your UPK naming conventions and come up with a solid workflow. If you have a texture named BlahBlah and a mesh named BlahBlah and you moved it to the same folder, it will overwrite it. Also, depending on how your data is packed on disk, it can overwrite it at that stage as well.
My rule is, if I mess up, close down Unreal and start over from last save. I do this at home too... even though I don't have other people to deal with. For instance, when I make a UPK, I bring in the mesh first. Mesh is called MeshName_smesh, textures are called TextureName_TypeOfTexture (diffuse/diffuseA/specular/ambOc/normal/cube). Materials are MaterialName_material and Material instances are MaterialName_matinst. Textures go in "Textures" folder, materials go in "Materials" folder and meshes go in "Meshes" folder.
So my UPK is named PolyCount. My mesh is called polyCount_smesh. Any textures used by the mesh are called polyCount_diffuse, polyCount_specular and polyCount_normal. Materials used are: polyCount_material (or polyCount_matinst). All of these go in their respective folders. You don't have to follow this (this was drilled into my head so...), but it's best to stick to a plan and keep on it through a project.
Yeah that's pretty spot on Lamont... Though I've always done the hack method of removing objects I don't need by renaming them to a random package without saving it, then saving my original package once it's been moved.
Terrain: it appears I have maxed out my terrain Material layers in Ued3 and would like to hear other peoples maxed out setting in terrain... I can have everything running below it appears. If anyone else has stats on terrain, works regularly with it, or has done some testing, Id like to hear if my findings are similar. I have a decent video card and conjured the following in my tests;
256x256 Terrain map; not sure if size matters yet to the complexity limit of the material layers...
first setup;
8 Diffuse only Materials before things start getting buggy...
or;
6 materials
5 have normal maps
1 is diffuse only.
2 materials have specular maps
2 have a power / constant on the diffuse texture sample to darken it up a bit.
The normal map missing isnt really necesary cause the terrain is outdoor and pretty much ambient lit... but later ill multiply the last 2 texture samples in PS to remove those Power / constant instructions and get that last normal in hopefully, maybe get one more specular node in too.
if I add that last normal right now it appears like the normal map becomes a diffuse, enlarges about 1000 times, and drapes itself to some random terrrain patches.... when I unhook the normal and update it goes back to a-ok.
This is driving me nuts, I've been searching all over for an answer, so hopefully someone here can help.
I can't see any bsp brushes other than my builder brush. If I take my builder brush in a subtractive level and click CSG: subtract, I get no change. Same thing with doing an add in an additive level. I loaded up one of the maps that shipped with GoW and I can see everything EXCEPT the bsp brushes. When I press H (which as far as I understand it, should hide everything except bsp brushes? or almost everything?) I get a completely empty level with a couple of directional lights in one corner.
How do I toggle BSP display back on?
Thanks.
[edit] Forgot to mention: if I click subtract in a subtractive level then build geometry for current level, I DO get a warning about Brush_1 having a null material reference, so these things are being created, I just can't see them at all for some reason. And yes, I've tried every display mode from brush wireframe to lit.
[double-edit] I just went and had a coffee and came back. The little down arrow near the top right of each viewport has visibility options, BSP was toggled off. I guess this setting is persistant even after a restart of unrealEd. It's bound to 'Q' so I likely hit it without thinking when I was trying to get a 'select tool'. D'OH! Problem solved.
Using Ued3 I assume that it is possible to make a static mesh appear when the player moves close to it, and also disappear when the player moves away from it. maybe a defined radius, when player enters, appear ect.
If I am setting up this situation, is it more going to be a problem to have this object share a texture with an object that is not going to appear/disappear with it? Or will making a mesh disappear mean that Ued also has to clear that texture from the screen? seems unlikely... I assume this object, because of the limited time it will be invisible, will not actually unload from the level.
Any help towards texture question, or pointers on kismet regarding the proximity visibility will be greatly appreciated.
Using Ued3 I assume that it is possible to make a static mesh appear when the player moves close to it, and also disappear when the player moves away from it. maybe a defined radius, when player enters, appear ect.
If I am setting up this situation, is it more going to be a problem to have this object share a texture with an object that is not going to appear/disappear with it? Or will making a mesh disappear mean that Ued also has to clear that texture from the screen? seems unlikely... I assume this object, because of the limited time it will be invisible, will not actually unload from the level.
It will not be a problem for the materials unless you want to have the static mesh still be there collision-wise and you just make the material disapear (think Star-Trek cloaking), in that case, you make a new material.
If you want the objects to remain static you'll probably have to add the specific actors into a separate persistent level (in the Generic Browser/Level tab). You can then add a trigger volume that will set that level's visibility based on it being touched through Kismet. It'd be in New Action>Level>Change Level Visibility. You'll need to probably set up a Variable for the level as well...
I don't know specifically what you're doing hiding or unhiding so it's hard to tell the reason of doing so... but I used the described method for creating lightning that randomly strikes from time to time (random hiding and unhiding of the bolt + post processing volume that encompasses the map).
What I want to have actually is a mesh fluidly appear and disappear dependent on how close the player is to that mesh. I would like it to fade out as well, not just blink out of existence. putting this mesh on an entire other level seems to be budget intensive, plus perhaps the fade to disappear it isnt as fluid as it could be. With lightning I imagine it wouldnt matter if one showing wasnt as exact as the next. In fact you may want it to be more random. With this I would want it to be pretty exact (depending on position of player) and a seamless fade out everytime. Am I reaching for too much?
What I want to have actually is a mesh fluidly appear and disappear dependent on how close the player is to that mesh. I would like it to fade out as well, not just blink out of existence. putting this mesh on an entire other level seems to be budget intensive, plus perhaps the fade to disappear it isnt as fluid as it could be. With lightning I imagine it wouldnt matter if one showing wasnt as exact as the next. In fact you may want it to be more random. With this I would want it to be pretty exact (depending on position of player) and a seamless fade out everytime. Am I reaching for too much?
Ohh to do this you are going to have to get very fancy with Kismet and materials. If I am thinking about this correctly you want an object in the distance to fade in over time till it is 100% visible to the player and then fade out till it's 100% invisible with no popping, correct?
If so you are going to have to do some math(not that much) and come up with a formula that uses the camera's FOV + the players position + players distance form the objet to determine the amount of opacity to add or subtract from the object.
This should be realtivily esay to do with kismet and the material editor but I can already tell that it is goin to take alot of trial and error to get it just right. But this is a great excrise to become more familiar with kismet and the material editor and by the time you get this done you will be a master of both.
Well said Billy. I've tweaked such things on the script level like fresnel colors for taking damage but I haven't touched Kismet enough to see how you'd pass and object's Scalar or Vector parameters through it. If that's possible it probably wouldn't be as hard, though I'd highly assume you could do a shader that would use the camera and be able to blend in the alpha based on distance directly.
Obviously there's the options in the Rendering tab of an actor's properties that you can set the max draw distance to get it to pop in, but unfortunately I can't seem to find any settings that would allow it to fade in... I'll keep lookin though
You could, try setting the blendMode to Masked and use pixelDepth to calculate the the color of an opacity mask you have hooked up. Obviously the object will not be truly culled in this case, just faded in/out.
You could, try setting the blendMode to Masked and use pixelDepth to calculate the the color of an opacity mask you have hooked up. Obviously the object will not be truly culled in this case, just faded in/out.
You could, try setting the blendMode to Masked and use pixelDepth to calculate the the color of an opacity mask you have hooked up. Obviously the object will not be truly culled in this case, just faded in/out.
Awesome, im a total beginner with Ued3 so im going to investigate these nodes. What you're talking about takes place strictly inside the material editor correct?
Yeassir, I'd go through the efforts myself to plan it out and send you some shots on how it'd work but I'm pretty loaded up on work atm... if you haven't figured it out by tomorrow or Wednesday I could try to take a stab at it for ya.
Awesome, im a total beginner with Ued3 so im going to investigate these nodes. What you're talking about takes place strictly inside the material editor correct?
Yes all the nodes that where named can be found in the material editor.
Spent a few mins after lunch to get what I think you're asking. I set it to Blend_Translucent to obtain a smooth fade in, but if you want a sharper/more controlled way the material pops in you could set it to Blend_Masked and then just relink to the opacityMask input instead of just opacity.
I'm sure there's a an even easier way to do this, but I've never learned enough about shader shit. The Clamp is there to restrict the material from going to fully transparent at a distance then starting to invert; I'd recommend hooking the material up without the Clamp first if you're interested in how those kinds of nodes work and seeing the results.
EDIT: Oh, and the 1-x node is called OneMinus in the list... just in case
oh wow, ok, i'll try to finish my work early tonight to try this, if not tomorrow for sure! thank you so much im really excited as this function will be a very large part of the level im making...
how would i make a subtle black outline on my models/textures in ut3?
Neox and Seforin were trading tips on this a while back; seek out their guidance! I think some node schematic images were posted too... Search function is Polycount's achilies heel but if you can navigate it Im sure I saw postings regarding this.
yeah i was reading them but theres is more for a toon look to there models :S i just want a simple outline ? ill probably try contacting Neox on the matter:)
theres many different ways, but I've used a camera vector with one of the channels masked (cant remember which, I think its Z, or B in the menu) as UV co ords for a line image, which then gets traced around the model.
Very simple and has depth problems with weight of line.
the problem with this method is, that it's based on the mesh's normal (pretty much like a rimlight, based on a fresnel term) and won't work on flat surfaces, round characters are no problem anything technical will get flat in most angles... also the thickness of the outline is varying based on the mesh density
i'm pretty sure thats how they created the special moves outline effects on the new streetfighter, you can see on guiles flat hair top, that it's getting completly filled with black in some angles
the other two methods i'd try in unreal would be modelled outlines (easiest but sucks up a lot of polygons) or posteffect outline modifying the zbuffer of the scene, damn i wish i could get a worldspace normal of the scene, the outlines for airborn would be so much better...
@imslightlybored: could you show what you did there? i'm definitely interested in that
Is it possible to use 1 static mesh and switchable materials for it? For example, I have a window which is a static mesh, but I want to have one version where my emmisive is turned off, and the other is emissive turned on. I can re-import another window mesh into it and make it's own material, but I'd figure there should be some how to use the same mesh but switch the materials
Is it possible to use 1 static mesh and switchable materials for it? For example, I have a window which is a static mesh, but I want to have one version where my emmisive is turned off, and the other is emissive turned on. I can re-import another window mesh into it and make it's own material, but I'd figure there should be some how to use the same mesh but switch the materials
You would turn the emmisive on and off through kismet. There is a "switch" you can add in the material. I wouldn't mind setting up a small scene, but I'm in the middle of a video project.
alexk. just make 2 mats (one with and one without emmisive). in the model previewer apply one of the materials to the staticmesh so that all of them have that material. then go into the viewport and select all the windows you want to apply the 2nd mat to and select the 2nd mat in the browser, then right click on the selected windows and go to materials>assign from generic browser.
After I re-read it. It's not something that he wanted a trigger for. You can do this with one material. Just put a constant for the emmisive value. And use material instance.
it won't work on bsp brushes unless they are round which i assume they aren't as it's bsp i guess modelled outlines would drop too, so you need to "blur" your image/zbuffer
a gaussian blur is basicly nothing more then moving your screentexture (alpha is zbuffer) into every direction by X Units (0.001 will do) and giving these directions different weights via multiply
so your nodes should look like this (from right to left, not from left to right how i'm writing)
texture coordinate > add with (0,001;0) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1)
this will offset the uvs of your scene textures zbuffer by 0,001 into X direction
now what you need to do is, do that into all 8 directions and add all this together with the initial scene texture, so it looks like
texture coordinate > add with (0,001 ; 0) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (0,001 ; 0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (0 ; 0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (0 ; -0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (-0,001 ; 0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (0,001 ; - 0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (-0,001 ; -0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (-0,001 ; 0) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) >
all this added together will gve you a hell of a bright image, but divided by the sum all multiplyvalues you'll get a blurred version of your image/zbuffer (depending on if you'd use the alpha of the scene texture or not)
now divide a scenetexture (in this case the alpha) by that blurred image and you'll get some sort of outline, all you need to do next ist tweak it, power it up, clamp it, whatever, until it looks good to you.
to have better control about the outline i added a multiplyvalue into all fomulars connected to the (add with (X ; Y)) part so its Multiplyvalue*(add with (X ; Y)) so the offset can be controlled by just one Node also i added more fancy stuff like the outline getting thinner by distance etc but that's not of your concern right now ^^
try to understand what i did, all in all it's just basic math, no fancy stuff, just adds, multiplies and divisions, otherwise i might not have understood it
sounds more complicated then it is
what it does in the end is blur the zbuffer and check the difference of the blurred and the normal image, it's not really super detailed, basing this on the world normals would give way better results but i can't grab those in the post effects, also you might not need to do this in a post effect, haven't tried it but i guess it will work in a normal shader too, this could give you control of the outlines thickness for every object.
I'm new to UnrealEd3 and I'm having an issue with my textures.. My colour map is totally blown out, it isn't in photoshop, or in the textureviewer, only in the UE3 viewport. It isn't the spec or normal because it's still there when I turn it off.. I'm sure it would be pretty easy to fix, here's a picture anyway..
/edit: just to confuse me even more, I saved everything and quit, then opened the editor back up, now all my textures are really blurry..
If you could get us a shot of the shader plugs as well... it looks like you have a node ramping the shit out of the saturation of the barrier.
The blurry textures sometimes happens to me as well (failing to go to the correct mip level). Two things to think of:
I'm pretty sure mip levels are determined on an object's pivot point, so if it's a larger mesh you might not get it to mip in at all so check your scale in relation to standard ut3.
Try relighting the mission and dragging the object closer to 0,0,0, as I've seen objects too far from everything else being permanently mipped out.
alexk. just make 2 mats (one with and one without emmisive). in the model previewer apply one of the materials to the staticmesh so that all of them have that material. then go into the viewport and select all the windows you want to apply the 2nd mat to and select the 2nd mat in the browser, then right click on the selected windows and go to materials>assign from generic browser.
that worked perfectly! except I could only seem to apply it one mesh at a time, doesn't seem to work when I have multiple meshes selected.. weird.. but no biggie
new Q:
when I'm working in the editor, sometimes my Generic Browser window doesn't want to close, I can still move it around and unreal is still running fine, but the damn thing will get stuck open... seems like a bug. anyone else get this, any fix for it?
If you could get us a shot of the shader plugs as well... it looks like you have a node ramping the shit out of the saturation of the barrier.
The blurry textures sometimes happens to me as well (failing to go to the correct mip level). Two things to think of:
I'm pretty sure mip levels are determined on an object's pivot point, so if it's a larger mesh you might not get it to mip in at all so check your scale in relation to standard ut3.
Try relighting the mission and dragging the object closer to 0,0,0, as I've seen objects too far from everything else being permanently mipped out.
Here's my shader network, but I can't see what would be blowing out the texture..
Also, the texture size is 1024x1024, and the model scale is quite small. Should I be using a 2048 texture?
that worked perfectly! except I could only seem to apply it one mesh at a time, doesn't seem to work when I have multiple meshes selected.. weird.. but no biggie
new Q:
when I'm working in the editor, sometimes my Generic Browser window doesn't want to close, I can still move it around and unreal is still running fine, but the damn thing will get stuck open... seems like a bug. anyone else get this, any fix for it?
When mine gets stuck I press the generic browser buttton at the top and then I am able to close the window. Odd but it works for me, hope it works for you too.
tanka: for the blown out specular, give the specular power a constant vector so you can change the size of the highlight. Your spec map looks pretty white too so it would be quite strong... maybe tone down the brightness of the map itself.
It's not the spec that's blown out, it's the colour map. If I break the link between the spec/normal maps the colour is still oversaturated.
I have barely started the texture either, theyre all just stand ins until I find a solution to this problem.
/edit, I fixed the blurry texture.. It had something to do with the camera. I still have no idea about this oversaturated material. I've searched high and low for more information but I can't find it anywhere.
/edit again, I think I've fixed the oversaturation.. Does unreal have a problem with .TGA files? I imported the .PSDs of the same textures and it seems to be working.
Hi im new to using Unreal 3. I have a problem with the modular pieces I have created when they a lit in the engine. I dont want the harsh lighting that appears on some pieces like the top trim. Instead I want the same sort of lighting across all of them.
They are not lightmapped and i have also turned of unreals sub division of the mesh as well which helped the middle pieces.
Any advice would be really great. Is it to do with how I have modelled the pieces or my set up in the editor?
Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, if so I will start my own thread.
Hi im new to using Unreal 3. I have a problem with the modular pieces I have created when they a lit in the engine. I dont want the harsh lighting that appears on some pieces like the top trim. Instead I want the same sort of lighting across all of them.
They are not lightmapped and i have also turned of unreals sub division of the mesh as well which helped the middle pieces.
Any advice would be really great. Is it to do with how I have modelled the pieces or my set up in the editor?
Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, if so I will start my own thread.
Here is the wireframe
If you want uniform lighting you will need to either add light maps or add more vertices to your meshes and increase the lighting sub-divisions so that the vertex-lighting is more evenly distributed across the mesh.
I am wondering if I can use animated textures in unreal. I know that I can use the panner and what not but I am looking more at say animated tracks on a plane or such.
Hi everyone,
First time poster on this forum! Unfortunately I have been unable to find a solution to this on here, or anywhere online.
I have made a nice deathmatch level, and I want to do a camera "fly through" of sorts to display it and use it for my portfolio.
Can anyone explain how I could do this? Or where I could learn. I have been hunting for some time.
Thank you,
- Shabba
If you just want screen shots then of course play the level as an observer and use print screen to capture what you need. For a movie your best bet is get some type of software that can capture video of your screen and either do the observer route again or make a sequence in Kismet+Matinee. There are tutorials on how to do this on the DVD that comes with the collectors edition of UT3. If you can't get those then may I suggest http://eat3d.com/kismet
Replies
We had a custom in-house tool that removed all references from UPK's that we moved to a dummy package.
So yeah, lock down your UPK naming conventions and come up with a solid workflow. If you have a texture named BlahBlah and a mesh named BlahBlah and you moved it to the same folder, it will overwrite it. Also, depending on how your data is packed on disk, it can overwrite it at that stage as well.
My rule is, if I mess up, close down Unreal and start over from last save. I do this at home too... even though I don't have other people to deal with. For instance, when I make a UPK, I bring in the mesh first. Mesh is called MeshName_smesh, textures are called TextureName_TypeOfTexture (diffuse/diffuseA/specular/ambOc/normal/cube). Materials are MaterialName_material and Material instances are MaterialName_matinst. Textures go in "Textures" folder, materials go in "Materials" folder and meshes go in "Meshes" folder.
So my UPK is named PolyCount. My mesh is called polyCount_smesh. Any textures used by the mesh are called polyCount_diffuse, polyCount_specular and polyCount_normal. Materials used are: polyCount_material (or polyCount_matinst). All of these go in their respective folders. You don't have to follow this (this was drilled into my head so...), but it's best to stick to a plan and keep on it through a project.
256x256 Terrain map; not sure if size matters yet to the complexity limit of the material layers...
first setup;
8 Diffuse only Materials before things start getting buggy...
or;
6 materials
5 have normal maps
1 is diffuse only.
2 materials have specular maps
2 have a power / constant on the diffuse texture sample to darken it up a bit.
The normal map missing isnt really necesary cause the terrain is outdoor and pretty much ambient lit... but later ill multiply the last 2 texture samples in PS to remove those Power / constant instructions and get that last normal in hopefully, maybe get one more specular node in too.
if I add that last normal right now it appears like the normal map becomes a diffuse, enlarges about 1000 times, and drapes itself to some random terrrain patches.... when I unhook the normal and update it goes back to a-ok.
Thanks for any feedback.
just double click a texture in the generic browser to bring up it's properties, and scroll down the list, it's between "Filter" and "LODGroup"
I can't see any bsp brushes other than my builder brush. If I take my builder brush in a subtractive level and click CSG: subtract, I get no change. Same thing with doing an add in an additive level. I loaded up one of the maps that shipped with GoW and I can see everything EXCEPT the bsp brushes. When I press H (which as far as I understand it, should hide everything except bsp brushes? or almost everything?) I get a completely empty level with a couple of directional lights in one corner.
How do I toggle BSP display back on?
Thanks.
[edit] Forgot to mention: if I click subtract in a subtractive level then build geometry for current level, I DO get a warning about Brush_1 having a null material reference, so these things are being created, I just can't see them at all for some reason. And yes, I've tried every display mode from brush wireframe to lit.
[double-edit] I just went and had a coffee and came back. The little down arrow near the top right of each viewport has visibility options, BSP was toggled off. I guess this setting is persistant even after a restart of unrealEd. It's bound to 'Q' so I likely hit it without thinking when I was trying to get a 'select tool'. D'OH! Problem solved.
If I am setting up this situation, is it more going to be a problem to have this object share a texture with an object that is not going to appear/disappear with it? Or will making a mesh disappear mean that Ued also has to clear that texture from the screen? seems unlikely... I assume this object, because of the limited time it will be invisible, will not actually unload from the level.
Any help towards texture question, or pointers on kismet regarding the proximity visibility will be greatly appreciated.
I don't know specifically what you're doing hiding or unhiding so it's hard to tell the reason of doing so... but I used the described method for creating lightning that randomly strikes from time to time (random hiding and unhiding of the bolt + post processing volume that encompasses the map).
Ohh to do this you are going to have to get very fancy with Kismet and materials. If I am thinking about this correctly you want an object in the distance to fade in over time till it is 100% visible to the player and then fade out till it's 100% invisible with no popping, correct?
If so you are going to have to do some math(not that much) and come up with a formula that uses the camera's FOV + the players position + players distance form the objet to determine the amount of opacity to add or subtract from the object.
This should be realtivily esay to do with kismet and the material editor but I can already tell that it is goin to take alot of trial and error to get it just right. But this is a great excrise to become more familiar with kismet and the material editor and by the time you get this done you will be a master of both.
Obviously there's the options in the Rendering tab of an actor's properties that you can set the max draw distance to get it to pop in, but unfortunately I can't seem to find any settings that would allow it to fade in... I'll keep lookin though
Oh snap son that sounds like a winner.
Awesome, im a total beginner with Ued3 so im going to investigate these nodes. What you're talking about takes place strictly inside the material editor correct?
Yes all the nodes that where named can be found in the material editor.
I'm sure there's a an even easier way to do this, but I've never learned enough about shader shit. The Clamp is there to restrict the material from going to fully transparent at a distance then starting to invert; I'd recommend hooking the material up without the Clamp first if you're interested in how those kinds of nodes work and seeing the results.
EDIT: Oh, and the 1-x node is called OneMinus in the list... just in case
Hope this helps!
Like a toon shader? Or rim lighting?
Neox and Seforin were trading tips on this a while back; seek out their guidance! I think some node schematic images were posted too... Search function is Polycount's achilies heel but if you can navigate it Im sure I saw postings regarding this.
Very simple and has depth problems with weight of line.
http://www.hourences.com/book/tutorialsue3mated3.htm
i'm pretty sure thats how they created the special moves outline effects on the new streetfighter, you can see on guiles flat hair top, that it's getting completly filled with black in some angles
the other two methods i'd try in unreal would be modelled outlines (easiest but sucks up a lot of polygons) or posteffect outline modifying the zbuffer of the scene, damn i wish i could get a worldspace normal of the scene, the outlines for airborn would be so much better...
@imslightlybored: could you show what you did there? i'm definitely interested in that
also hourences tutorial is really confusing and might not work on the bsp brushes im using:S
a gaussian blur is basicly nothing more then moving your screentexture (alpha is zbuffer) into every direction by X Units (0.001 will do) and giving these directions different weights via multiply
so your nodes should look like this (from right to left, not from left to right how i'm writing)
texture coordinate > add with (0,001;0) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1)
this will offset the uvs of your scene textures zbuffer by 0,001 into X direction
now what you need to do is, do that into all 8 directions and add all this together with the initial scene texture, so it looks like
scenetextures alpha > divide by (your zbuffer value) > add with:
(here comes the part from before)
texture coordinate > add with (0,001 ; 0) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (0,001 ; 0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (0 ; 0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (0 ; -0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (-0,001 ; 0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (0,001 ; - 0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (-0,001 ; -0,001) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) > add with
texture coordinate > add with (-0,001 ; 0) > plugged into the UVs of your scene texture> divide by your zdepth value, (you should test that value) > multiply by (1) >
all this added together will gve you a hell of a bright image, but divided by the sum all multiplyvalues you'll get a blurred version of your image/zbuffer (depending on if you'd use the alpha of the scene texture or not)
now divide a scenetexture (in this case the alpha) by that blurred image and you'll get some sort of outline, all you need to do next ist tweak it, power it up, clamp it, whatever, until it looks good to you.
to have better control about the outline i added a multiplyvalue into all fomulars connected to the (add with (X ; Y)) part so its Multiplyvalue*(add with (X ; Y)) so the offset can be controlled by just one Node also i added more fancy stuff like the outline getting thinner by distance etc but that's not of your concern right now ^^
try to understand what i did, all in all it's just basic math, no fancy stuff, just adds, multiplies and divisions, otherwise i might not have understood it
sounds more complicated then it is
what it does in the end is blur the zbuffer and check the difference of the blurred and the normal image, it's not really super detailed, basing this on the world normals would give way better results but i can't grab those in the post effects, also you might not need to do this in a post effect, haven't tried it but i guess it will work in a normal shader too, this could give you control of the outlines thickness for every object.
/edit: just to confuse me even more, I saved everything and quit, then opened the editor back up, now all my textures are really blurry..
First time poster on this forum! Unfortunately I have been unable to find a solution to this on here, or anywhere online.
I have made a nice deathmatch level, and I want to do a camera "fly through" of sorts to display it and use it for my portfolio.
Can anyone explain how I could do this? Or where I could learn. I have been hunting for some time.
Thank you,
- Shabba
The blurry textures sometimes happens to me as well (failing to go to the correct mip level). Two things to think of:
I'm pretty sure mip levels are determined on an object's pivot point, so if it's a larger mesh you might not get it to mip in at all so check your scale in relation to standard ut3.
Try relighting the mission and dragging the object closer to 0,0,0, as I've seen objects too far from everything else being permanently mipped out.
that worked perfectly! except I could only seem to apply it one mesh at a time, doesn't seem to work when I have multiple meshes selected.. weird.. but no biggie
new Q:
when I'm working in the editor, sometimes my Generic Browser window doesn't want to close, I can still move it around and unreal is still running fine, but the damn thing will get stuck open... seems like a bug. anyone else get this, any fix for it?
Here's my shader network, but I can't see what would be blowing out the texture..
Also, the texture size is 1024x1024, and the model scale is quite small. Should I be using a 2048 texture?
When mine gets stuck I press the generic browser buttton at the top and then I am able to close the window. Odd but it works for me, hope it works for you too.
tanka: for the blown out specular, give the specular power a constant vector so you can change the size of the highlight. Your spec map looks pretty white too so it would be quite strong... maybe tone down the brightness of the map itself.
I have barely started the texture either, theyre all just stand ins until I find a solution to this problem.
/edit, I fixed the blurry texture.. It had something to do with the camera. I still have no idea about this oversaturated material. I've searched high and low for more information but I can't find it anywhere.
/edit again, I think I've fixed the oversaturation.. Does unreal have a problem with .TGA files? I imported the .PSDs of the same textures and it seems to be working.
They are not lightmapped and i have also turned of unreals sub division of the mesh as well which helped the middle pieces.
Any advice would be really great. Is it to do with how I have modelled the pieces or my set up in the editor?
Sorry if this is the wrong place to post, if so I will start my own thread.
Here is the wireframe
If you want uniform lighting you will need to either add light maps or add more vertices to your meshes and increase the lighting sub-divisions so that the vertex-lighting is more evenly distributed across the mesh.
If you just want screen shots then of course play the level as an observer and use print screen to capture what you need. For a movie your best bet is get some type of software that can capture video of your screen and either do the observer route again or make a sequence in Kismet+Matinee. There are tutorials on how to do this on the DVD that comes with the collectors edition of UT3. If you can't get those then may I suggest http://eat3d.com/kismet