Bit confusing as normally the range is black to white ie 0-255 and its easy to visually
do to that way
ie almost black would be good for cloth, near white would be good for metal highlights
So what constant times by my specpower texture would give me a standard range, as 500 seems a bit arbitrary
for example if i was doing an eyeball highlight the spec power as a constant would be around 90 -120.
Yeah 500 in my previous post was just a random example number to show the math.
For your eyeball example you would determine the highest value you want your spec power to be, in this case Eyeball = 120.
The eyeball highlight would then be painted with value 255 white pixels and multiplied by a constant of 120 which would give it a spec power value of 120.
(1 divided by 255 color range) X "painted value" X "constant value" = Spec Power
(1 / 255) X 255 X 120 = 120
Then for example you painted cloth with value 10 pixels which is still being multiplied by the same constant of 120 in Unreal, it's spec power would end up being around 4.7
(1 / 255) X 10 X 120 = 4.7058823529411764705882352941176
It might be easier to paint spec power values in HSB rather than RGB because the math becomes much easier to do. More like multiplying a % with your spec power constant value.
(1 divided by brightness range of 100) X "Brightness" X "constant value" = Spec Power
So your eyeball example would be like this:
0.01 X 100 "white" X 120 = 120
My cloth example from earlier would be like this:
0.01 X 4 X 120 = 4.8
Not quite as accurate as using RGB but easier math.
Here's the easiest way to think about a specular power texture, it's a mix value.
Figure out the lowest power and the highest power you'd like, say a power of 10 for cloth, and a power of 50 for metal (These are hypothetical values). The texture should be a weight of those values (White would be highest value, black would be darkests).
In the material you would create a Lerp node where 10 would go into A, 50 would go into B and the channel your specular power resides in would go into the Alpha of the lerp.
aggh JordanW that makes so much sense after I went through the udk shader tutorials
its just that you used to be be able to just plug it straight in which was a bit more simple:)
Alpha, then use alpha to lerp together the original texture + something fancy with a reflection. You now have a tiling texture with a puddle every now and then.
Or....
Make a 2 triangle plane. Put a nice material on it with an alpha (and depthbiasedalpha), and then add some nice reflection and such on that.
Getting a puddle shape really isn't the hard part. The "hard" part is making a nice and convincing reflection and/or puddle animation.
You cannot do this with vertex painting well since then your floor would have to be pretty heavily tesselated and even then you will see the triangulation on the edges of your puddle which would suck. The only way out would be to somehow soften or average out the shape. All in all way too complicated. Go with an alpha texture to begin with.
Hey Guys, im having a problem with terrain and vehicles. I currently have an underground area constructed with vehicles inside and terrain outside. A door connects the base to the outside.
THe problem is when the vehicle goes through the door it gets ejected violently into the air. When i delete the terrain or turn off block rigid body in the properties of the terrain, everything works fine, but obviously the vehicle just falls into space.
nah you can use it for other things, it's very useful but one more cost to remember. Anything that you can do without unnecessary shader functions is always a bonus.
Depends on vert count of asset really, and other circumstances. Oh and I've found an asset must have a collision primitive or else it won't work at all.
I haven't worked much with terrain recently - and hated it when I did - so I can't help too much on that. Seems like it doesn't like the hole in your terrain, though...
I had to to try it on a piece of paper, but yeah it's the same, just written differently than what I thought is the standard formula for lerp (alpha*x +(1- alpha)*y). Point is lerp(alpha,x,y) is easier to use
For a uni project I am creating a character with a muscle system for unreal. Basically I know how to use skinfx to create muscle systems but I cant seem to find any information about gettint the muscle system in uunreal with actorx.
Can anyone point me in the right directions or throw some advice my way please?
Thanks
Oh wow....just found this. Never knew what hand painting does in speedtree, but it's some pretty cool stuff. Lets you control the look of your foliage A LOT more. This might not be news to some, but I'm sure someone will find it as new and interesting as me...:poly124:
I'm working on a trigger that ends the match once activated, like a finish line..... Heres an image ...
So at the moment I have it so that it counts once activated and opens a different UI scene based on the count.
However, its not opening correctly during online multiplayer. I'm trying to devise a system that takes the player id and then opens the correct scene depending on how they finish. In all honestly I'm a bit clueless at the moment. I've tried making the trigger client side and not client side only, also I've stopped the game being paused when ui scenes are opened.
Once this is figured out I'd love a score board with times etc... But I'd like to finish this first....
Anyone got any ideas on how to control this in multiplayer?
Here's a bit of a problem. I'm trying to make a speedtree to put in the UDK, and some of my billboards are floating in space. They aren't attached to any branches. I've tried to mess with a bunch of settings to get rid of it, but to no avail. Anyone know why it's doing this? Link below has the pic.
Alpha, then use alpha to lerp together the original texture + something fancy with a reflection. You now have a tiling texture with a puddle every now and then.
Having trouble with this point. Can you show an visual example?
I need some help with Lightmass and shadows. No matter what I do, the shadows are just really weak, barely visible. Even with a strong point light put right above my static mesh, the preview shows strong and defined shadows, but after compile it's just washed out.
My static mesh has two UVs, it shows 2 uv channels, and I've set Light Map Coordinate Index to 1, 0 being the UV for the texture. The UVs are identical though. Light Map Res 512.
Force Direct Light Map checked, and Override Light Map.
I don't get it, I get much better shadows turning off Lightmass/GI... Then of course I get bad lighting...
I have littel bit information about UDK that it is use for 3D game engine technology for cross-platform game development with fully
integrated suite of top-tier development tools. But it is possible to create a cave using the terrain editor or to create a static mesh for this?
Because as per my knowledge we can only create terrain in the vertical dimension.
I am much more interesting to know this because it is helpfull for me.
I need some help with Lightmass and shadows. No matter what I do, the shadows are just really weak, barely visible. Even with a strong point light put right above my static mesh, the preview shows strong and defined shadows, but after compile it's just washed out.
My static mesh has two UVs, it shows 2 uv channels, and I've set Light Map Coordinate Index to 1, 0 being the UV for the texture. The UVs are identical though. Light Map Res 512.
Force Direct Light Map checked, and Override Light Map.
I don't get it, I get much better shadows turning off Lightmass/GI... Then of course I get bad lighting...
I am having similar problems. Anyone have any solutions?
hrm i have a problem with the standard max biped, is there a way for udk not to consider twistbones in the Phat Editor? It seems like the forearm twistbones are aprented to the upper arm and not to the forearm like it should be, therefore, the hand always floats around, which is pretty bad for me and i can't seem to find a way that makes the forewarm and its twists move together as i can weld them only to their parent and not to the forearm
also i get the skeletalmeshactor casts shadow but has no physiscs asset assigned, can i turn that off for certain models? we have some models in the map that really don't need a physics asset as the player can't reach them
[nevermind]
:edit: wth is this stuff, i create an archetype for my crowd and it disappears on the next load, its just gone, kismet still knows it but i can't reach it to change stuff
Hello all, I'm good with modeling, texturing, lighting theory, etc., but when it comes to working with unreal, I'm pretty new, and I don't get why it gives me the technical problems it does. Since I can't post images here for whatever reason, I'll use my blog as I've always done so far. www.3dryan.blogspot.com
PROBLEM 1:I've got a couple shots of two objects in my scene: A camera on a tripod and a backpack. There's only one light affecting them, a point light that's in the top corner of the room. There's also a directional light in the outside environment, but it's not affecting anything in the room as far as I can tell. The lightmaps are getting some nasty artifacts on them, not sure why, but it looks really unsightly.
PROBLEM 2: The build times for my lighting have skyrocketed since I started messing with lightmap resolutions. I only messed with a couple of objects that were at the default 32x32. I bumped about 6 or 7 objects up to anywhere from 64x64 to 1024x1024. The build time went from 5 minutes to 20. I've heard that lightmaps should be used on most of your objects because the new UDK's lightmass system can handle them better, but should all your objects have lightmaps? If I use them on all my objects, my build time will take hours when all the objects have been modified.
A note about the first tutorial it was made with UT3 in mind, now with lightmass in UDK you don't need padding around the outer edge of 0-1 UV space just between each shell.
Be sure to add a lightmass importance volume to your scene to keep build times down. Your largest lightmap resolution will dictate the time it takes to do a lighting build. Also make sure you are using a Dominant Directional Light rather than a normal Directional Light if you want to take advantage of Lightmass.
If you want bounced lighting make sure to change the Environment Color to something other than black. To get to that setting click View -> World Properties -> Lightmass -> Environment Color.
1024 for a lightmap is quite high and only really necessary if you want detailed shadows on a really big object like a large patch of ground. From my own experiments 32 seems to be fine for a barrel sized object, I guess if you wanted to go hardcore 16 pixels might even be enough for a barrel. You don't need to lightmap everything, you can use vertex lightmaps or smaller res lightmaps on objects that don't need detailed shadows such as those that will be far from the player/camera.
You should upload your pics to photobucket or dropbox and use "img" tags like this: [noparse][/noparse] to display them in your post.
Ben, as usual, you rock. Some VERY useful tutorials. It's got some stuff in it that I'll keep in mind for future problems I may have, but I didn't find anything that would explain why i got the artifacts. The only thing I can think of with my models is UV edge bleeding, but I just checked my UV's and they're closely knit together, but it's not on the seams where the artifacts are occuring. It's smack dab in the middle of the UV shells. I think lowering the lightmap resolution may have fixed it on its own, as I went into the content browser and adjusted my resolutions based on Epic's props. Yeah, my resolutions were FAR too large and my build time is now more than acceptable. So, I guess the artifact problem is a thing of the past, because lowering the res seems to have fixed it. Also, thanks for the help on posting images. Didn't know that's how it works, lol. Problems solved!
right click anywhere in the asset browser and create one
That's almost amusing, but then how does that actually translate to actually using it in game. I know how to acutally create it in the browse and I know there is a PP volume, but there is no way to actually attach a custom PP chain to it so I ask again ... how do I get a custom PP chain to work.
best way would be to create your own mod structure and set it up the mods default engine ini, quickest way is to hack it in the udk version of that ini, i thibnk its the default engine, but i'm not totally sure, you'll have to search for the default postprocess in one of the config files.
@Neox, I had a thought on your crowd issue, I set up a path that resembled yours with a hole in the floor, and a step up.
When I opened PIE and let the crowd spawn they got stuck at the step and wouldn't climb up it. I managed to fix the problem by using a quick setup with a path blocking volume and a blocking volume near the step.
the hole in the floor was somewhat easy, in the archetype theres a boole for bCheckForObstacles i ticked this on and in the kismet also ticked on force check for obstacles, and they went around the hole. If that doesnt work you could try a path blocking volume around the air parts of your map.
heres a link to the map and upk.
not sure if this will help you, but its worth a try maybe
I imported into UDK textures at 2048x2048 and I made a material...but under the texture properties it says "Imported: 2048" then "Max In-Game 1024" is there a way to have it set so it displays it at 2048?
Double click the texture in the asset browser then scroll down to the LODGroup setting. Change that to something else that supports a higher texture resolution like TEXTUREGROUP_RenderTarget.
New update to UDK, it now imports FBX, could be pretty swanky.
[FONT="]Hi Everyone,[/FONT]
[FONT="] [/FONT]
[FONT="] Epic Games has released a free, updated version of the Unreal Development Kit (UDK). [/FONT]
[FONT="] [/FONT]
[FONT="]Epic is committed to providing the UDK community with regular software releases free of charge. Below is a list of technical enhancements included in the March 2010 UDK Beta. Please download the updated software build at [/FONT][FONT="]www.udk.com/download[/FONT][FONT="]. [/FONT]
[FONT="] [/FONT]
[FONT="]An extensive list of new features and improvements included with this version of UDK are available at:[/FONT] [FONT="]http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitBuildUpgradeNotes.html[/FONT][FONT="] [/FONT]
[FONT="] [/FONT]
[FONT="]In addition, we maintain a blog that regularly highlights additions to UDK:[/FONT] [FONT="]http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ContentBlog.html[/FONT]
Just got the new update, and I must say that my prayers have been answered! Finally you can set it up so that you don't lose texture detail as you move away from the object. AND there's no performance or texture memory hit. If you click on a texture and mess with "mipgen settings" It will sharpen the image at a distance so that you don't lose that sexy detail. The higher the number the more sharpening. If you set it too high, it gets a little too sharp, so you have to watch it. Epic, you rock.
Dumb question - Do I have to uninstall my existing UDK to update? I've been avoiding updating for that reason since I noticed a couple of people having problems with fresh installs.
No need to uninstall the previous version. Each install is self contained, I usually keep the current and previous UDK on my system.
Keep in mind if you save your files with a new version they will not be able to be opened with the previous version. So keep backup copies with the older version if you ever want to go back.
now in regards to that, can you take files and move them forward? ive been trying not to put too much of my work into udk packages over time because i have the feeling that if i load an entire package from the 02-10 beta, then they will not load in the 03-10 beta...is this a fact? or is it just that you cant go from current to previous with a package?
when you create a level, there is usually a package sharing the same name as whatever you call the level. if you are using an external package, be sure that it is referenced in the content browser before you open up the level.
Replies
do to that way
ie almost black would be good for cloth, near white would be good for metal highlights
So what constant times by my specpower texture would give me a standard range, as 500 seems a bit arbitrary
for example if i was doing an eyeball highlight the spec power as a constant would be around 90 -120.
Yeah 500 in my previous post was just a random example number to show the math.
For your eyeball example you would determine the highest value you want your spec power to be, in this case Eyeball = 120.
The eyeball highlight would then be painted with value 255 white pixels and multiplied by a constant of 120 which would give it a spec power value of 120.
(1 divided by 255 color range) X "painted value" X "constant value" = Spec Power
(1 / 255) X 255 X 120 = 120
Then for example you painted cloth with value 10 pixels which is still being multiplied by the same constant of 120 in Unreal, it's spec power would end up being around 4.7
(1 / 255) X 10 X 120 = 4.7058823529411764705882352941176
It might be easier to paint spec power values in HSB rather than RGB because the math becomes much easier to do. More like multiplying a % with your spec power constant value.
(1 divided by brightness range of 100) X "Brightness" X "constant value" = Spec Power
So your eyeball example would be like this:
0.01 X 100 "white" X 120 = 120
My cloth example from earlier would be like this:
0.01 X 4 X 120 = 4.8
Not quite as accurate as using RGB but easier math.
More random examples:
0.01 X 33 X 120 = 39.6
0.01 X 50 X 120 = 60
and so on...
I hope that makes sense, I'm not a math professor
Figure out the lowest power and the highest power you'd like, say a power of 10 for cloth, and a power of 50 for metal (These are hypothetical values). The texture should be a weight of those values (White would be highest value, black would be darkests).
In the material you would create a Lerp node where 10 would go into A, 50 would go into B and the channel your specular power resides in would go into the Alpha of the lerp.
its just that you used to be be able to just plug it straight in which was a bit more simple:)
anyway cheers for that breakdown Ben
And also can someone tell me how to go about making parts of a floor wet and parts that are dry? Something like this.
and this
Could try this wet and dry effect with alphas or vertex painting?
Or....
Make a 2 triangle plane. Put a nice material on it with an alpha (and depthbiasedalpha), and then add some nice reflection and such on that.
Getting a puddle shape really isn't the hard part. The "hard" part is making a nice and convincing reflection and/or puddle animation.
You cannot do this with vertex painting well since then your floor would have to be pretty heavily tesselated and even then you will see the triangulation on the edges of your puddle which would suck. The only way out would be to somehow soften or average out the shape. All in all way too complicated. Go with an alpha texture to begin with.
as a note always try and avoid vertex painting if possible and break surfaces up in other, cheaper ways.
THe problem is when the vehicle goes through the door it gets ejected violently into the air. When i delete the terrain or turn off block rigid body in the properties of the terrain, everything works fine, but obviously the vehicle just falls into space.
Any ideas what is wrong?
You only use vertex mapping for terrain texture right?
Depends on vert count of asset really, and other circumstances. Oh and I've found an asset must have a collision primitive or else it won't work at all.
I haven't worked much with terrain recently - and hated it when I did - so I can't help too much on that. Seems like it doesn't like the hole in your terrain, though...
I had to to try it on a piece of paper, but yeah it's the same, just written differently than what I thought is the standard formula for lerp (alpha*x +(1- alpha)*y). Point is lerp(alpha,x,y) is easier to use
Can anyone point me in the right directions or throw some advice my way please?
Thanks
[ame]
Hi Folks,
I'm working on a trigger that ends the match once activated, like a finish line..... Heres an image ...
So at the moment I have it so that it counts once activated and opens a different UI scene based on the count.
However, its not opening correctly during online multiplayer. I'm trying to devise a system that takes the player id and then opens the correct scene depending on how they finish. In all honestly I'm a bit clueless at the moment. I've tried making the trigger client side and not client side only, also I've stopped the game being paused when ui scenes are opened.
Once this is figured out I'd love a score board with times etc... But I'd like to finish this first....
Anyone got any ideas on how to control this in multiplayer?
Many thanks for your time and help
Greg
www.3dryan.blogspot.com
Noob question: Why is it that I can't post attachments? Do I need more posts?
Having trouble with this point. Can you show an visual example?
My static mesh has two UVs, it shows 2 uv channels, and I've set Light Map Coordinate Index to 1, 0 being the UV for the texture. The UVs are identical though. Light Map Res 512.
Force Direct Light Map checked, and Override Light Map.
I don't get it, I get much better shadows turning off Lightmass/GI... Then of course I get bad lighting...
integrated suite of top-tier development tools. But it is possible to create a cave using the terrain editor or to create a static mesh for this?
Because as per my knowledge we can only create terrain in the vertical dimension.
I am much more interesting to know this because it is helpfull for me.
I am having similar problems. Anyone have any solutions?
also i get the skeletalmeshactor casts shadow but has no physiscs asset assigned, can i turn that off for certain models? we have some models in the map that really don't need a physics asset as the player can't reach them
[nevermind]
:edit: wth is this stuff, i create an archetype for my crowd and it disappears on the next load, its just gone, kismet still knows it but i can't reach it to change stuff
PROBLEM 1:I've got a couple shots of two objects in my scene: A camera on a tripod and a backpack. There's only one light affecting them, a point light that's in the top corner of the room. There's also a directional light in the outside environment, but it's not affecting anything in the room as far as I can tell. The lightmaps are getting some nasty artifacts on them, not sure why, but it looks really unsightly.
PROBLEM 2: The build times for my lighting have skyrocketed since I started messing with lightmap resolutions. I only messed with a couple of objects that were at the default 32x32. I bumped about 6 or 7 objects up to anywhere from 64x64 to 1024x1024. The build time went from 5 minutes to 20. I've heard that lightmaps should be used on most of your objects because the new UDK's lightmass system can handle them better, but should all your objects have lightmaps? If I use them on all my objects, my build time will take hours when all the objects have been modified.
Thanks in advance for any assistance.
Having proper lightmap UVs will have a big affect on how light/shadows are baked.
Check out these two tutorials about lightmap UVs:
http://stephenjameson.com/tutorials/lightmap-uvs-tutorial/
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LightMapUnwrapping.html
A note about the first tutorial it was made with UT3 in mind, now with lightmass in UDK you don't need padding around the outer edge of 0-1 UV space just between each shell.
Be sure to add a lightmass importance volume to your scene to keep build times down. Your largest lightmap resolution will dictate the time it takes to do a lighting build. Also make sure you are using a Dominant Directional Light rather than a normal Directional Light if you want to take advantage of Lightmass.
If you want bounced lighting make sure to change the Environment Color to something other than black. To get to that setting click View -> World Properties -> Lightmass -> Environment Color.
1024 for a lightmap is quite high and only really necessary if you want detailed shadows on a really big object like a large patch of ground. From my own experiments 32 seems to be fine for a barrel sized object, I guess if you wanted to go hardcore 16 pixels might even be enough for a barrel. You don't need to lightmap everything, you can use vertex lightmaps or smaller res lightmaps on objects that don't need detailed shadows such as those that will be far from the player/camera.
You should upload your pics to photobucket or dropbox and use "img" tags like this: [noparse]
Hope that helps.
That's almost amusing, but then how does that actually translate to actually using it in game. I know how to acutally create it in the browse and I know there is a PP volume, but there is no way to actually attach a custom PP chain to it so I ask again ... how do I get a custom PP chain to work.
When I opened PIE and let the crowd spawn they got stuck at the step and wouldn't climb up it. I managed to fix the problem by using a quick setup with a path blocking volume and a blocking volume near the step.
the hole in the floor was somewhat easy, in the archetype theres a boole for bCheckForObstacles i ticked this on and in the kismet also ticked on force check for obstacles, and they went around the hole. If that doesnt work you could try a path blocking volume around the air parts of your map.
heres a link to the map and upk.
not sure if this will help you, but its worth a try maybe
www.chrisperrella.com/wip/CrowdMap.zip
Trying to learn UDK.
So im trying to build this worldmap with a heightmap..
map topo might be familiar to those who played FFI
It imports fine i get this...
ok good..
So i hit the thessellate button because i want to smooth out the world mesh and i get this...
Whts going on ? can i fix it? the "noise" bar things pop out only at the edge of pure black and the first grey height color and only that.
My height map works fine in max, Vue ple and worldmachine... so its not an unwanted color noise problem.
Any help or input would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance
I imported into UDK textures at 2048x2048 and I made a material...but under the texture properties it says "Imported: 2048" then "Max In-Game 1024" is there a way to have it set so it displays it at 2048?
vvv Thanks Ben.
Keep in mind if you save your files with a new version they will not be able to be opened with the previous version. So keep backup copies with the older version if you ever want to go back.
some one plz plz just help me out thanks! xxxx