also, if you want to vertex paint pools of blood in the cracks of the tiles or whatnot, you could take use of the alpha channel for the vertex colors. that would be neat.
I like this idea, is it also possible to use the 3rd channel for putting a thick blood material ontop of the tiles?
What is the best grid size to use? I'm trying to build everything modular on a grid, and most of the videos ive seen say to use a grid size of 32, but that seems to make everything huge from a in-game perspectie.
Seems like a grid size of 4 is much more flexible.
Unreal (April 2011) keeps crashing as soon as I add another (empty) Script Project Folder to load with the ini? Is that an April 2011 bug or am I doing something wrong?
My lightmaps in the viewport and ingame are Mipping at a certain distance- making for lame screengrabs.
Is there way to manually set this, LOD?
There's a setting on the dominant directional light that controls this. I think it's the 'whole scene dynamic shadow radius' under the cascaded shadow maps tab.
I am completly new to udk and would like to ask pretty much the most basic question ever:P How do I save a level? It crashed on me earlier and i thought that i had saved it but turns out noting in the level loads.
make sure you save your packages as well as just the level (if you use the save all feature it will do that for you). if your files are not in the default content folder, then you must load a package before loading the level.
I'm having massively frustrating issues with the lighting in UDK.
I'm just trying to setup some basic lighting with a single point light. Ill set the light, and it works fine with preview lighting in the editor window.
I'll do a quick bake and see how it looks with Lightmass.
Now lets say I want to change it, move it. The second I move it, change the radius, change the brightness, anything, my entire level lighting breaks (in this case, the entire level lights up) and my preview lighting becomes unusable).
What I assume should happen is the baked lighting should stay until I rebake, but I should be able to adjust the light in any way I see fit and see the new preview lighting accordingly.
The first image is my baked lighting from 2 PointLights on BSP surfaces.
The Second image is the same setup, but I just adjusted the brightness of one of the pointlights by 1.
CJE - right now your level is treated as one massive mesh that all lights effect. So moving or tweaking a setting will reset the lighting on all meshes or zone.
Theres noway to keep a bake and tweak lighting at the same time - it would be too hard to see what the light is acutally doing.
You could look into setting up volumes which holds different lights and meshes.
other than that im not sure what else todo anyone else?
So every time you change lighting in any way to even preview the changes as you make them you have to rebake lighting? Isn't that what preview lighting is for?
I noticed in my scene, the lighting doesn't get reset on the ceiling, even though that is also a bsp.
I want to make something where if you shoot it, a matinee sequence will start. I've got the matinee sequence all made up, but I'm unsure as to what I should use in order to 'trigger' it in kismet. Any ideas?
So every time you change lighting in any way to even preview the changes as you make them you have to rebake lighting? Isn't that what preview lighting is for?
I noticed in my scene, the lighting doesn't get reset on the ceiling, even though that is also a bsp.
Preview lighting was a pre-lightmass preview, where mostly you would be using spots and directional lights rather than dominant directional and light bounces to light your level. Unfortunately that's the way it has to be done these days, I tend to concentrate on sections of the level or make sub levels to cut down the amount of time it takes to run lightmass (and having 4 machines that have it installed really does help too).
I want to make something where if you shoot it, a matinee sequence will start. I've got the matinee sequence all made up, but I'm unsure as to what I should use in order to 'trigger' it in kismet. Any ideas?
make sure you save your packages as well as just the level (if you use the save all feature it will do that for you). if your files are not in the default content folder, then you must load a package before loading the level.
Completly forgot about my post here:P Anyways there was something wrong with the installation and it worked just as supposed to once i reinstalled. Thanks anyway:)
Hey guys i have a load of little lanterns i want placed all around my environment. Now what would be the best way to light this? With emissives or with actual lights? Atm i have them as emissives but i didn't know if that was crazy expensive?
I would use emissives as my main source of light, and then where needed use "real" lights to highlight certain details. Less is more imo. I would however reduce your emissive lightmass intensity so your lighting is so blown out like it is currently.
So..... it's been a couple versions since I updated, and in the April release, I can't seem to find the icon to launch the editor. Anyone care to enlighten me?
They changed the layout of the frontend, although I don't see why they got rid of the editor button. So, don't blame yourself. What I did was simply go to binaries > win64 (or 32 if you run 32bit) and make a shortcut on my desktop to udk.exe. Then I right click on it and hit properties. In target, simply add a space and then the word "editor" without quotes. Not -editor either, just editor. That should do it for you.
Ive got a question that i need help with... Basically a few of my pillars are producing the same shadow on both sides. The shadows are being generated by a skeletal mesh (the fan you can see) and it has happened on a duplicated version in another room. Ive looked at the light map for the pillar and its fine so i can only think that it is the fan itself causing the issue but if anyone could shed some light on how to fix this id greatly appreciate it.
I would like to have a low intensity music track playing in the background until a player picks up a flag, which triggers the music to change to a higher intensity music track.
Does anybody know how I would do this? I have looked at various tutorials and have not yet come across a solution.
hello guys. I need help from you guys. I'm having problems with blocking volumes. I create a brush -> CSG add, then convert to blocking volume, but when i send build the blocking volumes are rendered. Would anyone help me?
Thanks for the feedback Lamont. I solved here. For some reason unknown to me, had a blue CSG that did not appear in perspective view, only appear in the orthographic views. Deleted and everything ok.
So, I heard that you don't have to worry about edge bleeding with the borders of UV space anymore when it comes to UDK, just between shell borders. I was getting bleeding on the edges of a model, and then just for kicks, i padded the edge 3 pixels from the UV border. No more bleeding. Strange?
So, I heard that you don't have to worry about edge bleeding with the borders of UV space anymore when it comes to UDK, just between shell borders. I was getting bleeding on the edges of a model, and then just for kicks, i padded the edge 3 pixels from the UV border. No more bleeding. Strange?
From http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LightMapUnwrapping.html"Padding between UV charts is necessary to prevent bleeding artifacts. Padding around the edges of the lightmap UV layout, however, is not necessary as Lightmass automatically pads by one texel to prevent bleeding artifcats. In general, 4 lightmap texels of padding are necessary to avoid all artifacts."
Perhaps that one texel doesn't always cut it? Strange that they aren't automatically padding by 4 texels since that is the recommended amount as stated by the very next sentence :P
I've imported a skeletal mesh (a geosphere with a single bone)...
In the AnimSet Editor, I've checked Force CPU skinning...
Under Soft Body Bones, I've added the single bone from the list...
I've Enabled Soft Body Line Checks...
But without fail, when I click the "Generate Soft-Body Tetrahedron Mesh" button, I get the following error: "Could not generate soft body mesh."
Sorry, had a match this weekend. Just looked at the file: Soft body Attachment Threshold should be 1~1.2 and Soft Body Detail level should be .9 or above.
@Lamont... hey, thanks man! That did the trick. I had no idea those settings were so crucial (as they weren't really mentioned in any of the soft-body tutorials I ran across... from Epic or otherwise.
Hello guys. I'm trying to make the mapping moves in the X axis I tried with panner but he is constantly moving coordinates, and I wanted to move every 32 units to right and stop. Anyone know if it's possible?
Hello guys. I'm trying to make the mapping moves in the X axis I tried with panner but he is constantly moving coordinates, and I wanted to move every 32 units to right and stop. Anyone know if it's possible?
Each sign occupies 128 pixels/32 UU. I would like to use the same mesh for sign, without having to create a mesh for each.
I've got a scene lit primarily with a Dominant Directional Light and Lightmass is doing a pretty decent job giving me the results I am looking for.
My problem is that the dynamic objects in my scene (kActors, Movers, SkelMeshes, etc) have a very noticeable lighting delay when transitioning between lit/shadowed areas. Moving IN to a shadowed area looks just fine (because the Whole Scene Dynamic Shadows cover up the transition), but when moving OUT from a shadow, the delay is very noticeable and ugly.
Thanks again, Lamont, I did not know this flipbook, I will certainly be useful in the future, but I would like to switch between the signs, not to animate.
Thanks Rasmus... That fixes the issue perfectly for kActors and Skeletal Mesh Actors. Unfortunately, my player-controlled object is a dynamically spawned kActor, and I haven't been successful in setting that flag from UnrealScript... I will look into it further.
I also have several objects in my scene that are kAssets (essentially physically dynamic Skeletal Meshes) that do not have that flag on them at all... (looks like they do not have a Dynamic Light Environment component), so I may have to look for other solutions there.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. If I learn any more, I'll post my results here.
I am migrating my assets to the new June 2011 build of UDK... I always keep all my .upk files contained inside the "..\UDKGame\Content" folder (as I understand to be the proper methodology).
Upon loading a map in the new build of UDK, I get a Map Check error message listing every single actor in the scene as being "Externally referenced". Which is strange, since they are in the proper directory location, and are automatically loading just fine. Here's a screen shot:
The map even runs just fine (aside from the giant list of errors on load, and an error message when I click the "Play level in a window" button. But if I ignore the errors, everything works just fine. If I click on any scene actor, hit f4 and check its mesh properties... it is referencing the correct package/object just fine. I have no idea why I am getting all these errors.
I've been in the industry for a while, but only as an environment artist. Lately i have tinkered around with the concept of a point and click camera and i ran into this tutorial.
This has given me a SUPERB setup for what I'm thinking to do, however after doing all these changes, i am unable to figure out a method for connecting the mouse and camera rotation together.
SO I have the code for a point and click game set up with a camera attached and offset from the player through Kismet. Even though this is all fine so far, I want to link up a right click mouse button to activate the turning of the camera, and when it's released, it goes back to the point and click which is currently set up in that tutorial i posted earlier.
I am rather new to scripting, so any help with this would be greatly appreciated!
Replies
I like this idea, is it also possible to use the 3rd channel for putting a thick blood material ontop of the tiles?
default texture with no vertex colors is a clean texture
R. adds the cracks
G. puts in the completely damaged tiles
B. pools the blood starting by filling in the cracks
id definitely recommend the 3dmotive tutorial on vertex painting
Great, thanks for the info, I just got my hands on that 3dmotive video, should be informative. Thanks!
Seems like a grid size of 4 is much more flexible.
Is there way to manually set this, LOD?
There's a setting on the dominant directional light that controls this. I think it's the 'whole scene dynamic shadow radius' under the cascaded shadow maps tab.
Any help is appreciated:)
I'm just trying to setup some basic lighting with a single point light. Ill set the light, and it works fine with preview lighting in the editor window.
I'll do a quick bake and see how it looks with Lightmass.
Now lets say I want to change it, move it. The second I move it, change the radius, change the brightness, anything, my entire level lighting breaks (in this case, the entire level lights up) and my preview lighting becomes unusable).
What I assume should happen is the baked lighting should stay until I rebake, but I should be able to adjust the light in any way I see fit and see the new preview lighting accordingly.
The first image is my baked lighting from 2 PointLights on BSP surfaces.
The Second image is the same setup, but I just adjusted the brightness of one of the pointlights by 1.
Notice the huge issue...
Anyone have an idea whats going on here?
Theres noway to keep a bake and tweak lighting at the same time - it would be too hard to see what the light is acutally doing.
You could look into setting up volumes which holds different lights and meshes.
other than that im not sure what else todo anyone else?
I noticed in my scene, the lighting doesn't get reset on the ceiling, even though that is also a bsp.
I want to make something where if you shoot it, a matinee sequence will start. I've got the matinee sequence all made up, but I'm unsure as to what I should use in order to 'trigger' it in kismet. Any ideas?
Preview lighting was a pre-lightmass preview, where mostly you would be using spots and directional lights rather than dominant directional and light bounces to light your level. Unfortunately that's the way it has to be done these days, I tend to concentrate on sections of the level or make sub levels to cut down the amount of time it takes to run lightmass (and having 4 machines that have it installed really does help too).
Completly forgot about my post here:P Anyways there was something wrong with the installation and it worked just as supposed to once i reinstalled. Thanks anyway:)
I did a test, loading the exact same scene in March and April.
Scene has:
2 BSP brushes with 1 Point light using lightmass and a lightmass importance volume.
April UDK:
Render time was over 15 minutes, and produced artifacts.
March UDK:
The exact same scene, rendered in under 10 seconds, and produced clean lighting.
Something is obviously amiss with lightmass in March UDK.
Feeling dumb...
I would like to have a low intensity music track playing in the background until a player picks up a flag, which triggers the music to change to a higher intensity music track.
Does anybody know how I would do this? I have looked at various tutorials and have not yet come across a solution.
From http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LightMapUnwrapping.html "Padding between UV charts is necessary to prevent bleeding artifacts. Padding around the edges of the lightmap UV layout, however, is not necessary as Lightmass automatically pads by one texel to prevent bleeding artifcats. In general, 4 lightmap texels of padding are necessary to avoid all artifacts."
Perhaps that one texel doesn't always cut it? Strange that they aren't automatically padding by 4 texels since that is the recommended amount as stated by the very next sentence :P
I'm trying to create a very basic soft body in UDK, and I'm following all of the instructions listed here:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/PhysXSoftBodyReference.html
I've imported a skeletal mesh (a geosphere with a single bone)...
In the AnimSet Editor, I've checked Force CPU skinning...
Under Soft Body Bones, I've added the single bone from the list...
I've Enabled Soft Body Line Checks...
But without fail, when I click the "Generate Soft-Body Tetrahedron Mesh" button, I get the following error: "Could not generate soft body mesh."
Any help would be great appreciated...
Thanks Lamont, much appreciated. Here is a bundle of resources related to this issue: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3405058/UDK-Softbody-Error.zip
Includes a UPK file as well as the 3DSMax source file (2010) and the ASE export.
Hopefully I'm doing something stupid and easy to remedy...
I really appreciate you taking a look at it!
-eaa
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Each sign occupies 128 pixels/32 UU. I would like to use the same mesh for sign, without having to create a mesh for each.
I've got a scene lit primarily with a Dominant Directional Light and Lightmass is doing a pretty decent job giving me the results I am looking for.
My problem is that the dynamic objects in my scene (kActors, Movers, SkelMeshes, etc) have a very noticeable lighting delay when transitioning between lit/shadowed areas. Moving IN to a shadowed area looks just fine (because the Whole Scene Dynamic Shadows cover up the transition), but when moving OUT from a shadow, the delay is very noticeable and ugly.
Here is a video showing this phenomenon:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3405058/UDK-LightmassDelay.mov
I've looked for a WorldInfo and/or Config file variable to shorten the Lightmass interpolation time, but have had no luck.
Any suggestions?
-eaa
Thanks again, Lamont, I did not know this flipbook, I will certainly be useful in the future, but I would like to switch between the signs, not to animate.
Thanks Rasmus... That fixes the issue perfectly for kActors and Skeletal Mesh Actors. Unfortunately, my player-controlled object is a dynamically spawned kActor, and I haven't been successful in setting that flag from UnrealScript... I will look into it further.
I also have several objects in my scene that are kAssets (essentially physically dynamic Skeletal Meshes) that do not have that flag on them at all... (looks like they do not have a Dynamic Light Environment component), so I may have to look for other solutions there.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. If I learn any more, I'll post my results here.
-eaa
I am migrating my assets to the new June 2011 build of UDK... I always keep all my .upk files contained inside the "..\UDKGame\Content" folder (as I understand to be the proper methodology).
Upon loading a map in the new build of UDK, I get a Map Check error message listing every single actor in the scene as being "Externally referenced". Which is strange, since they are in the proper directory location, and are automatically loading just fine. Here's a screen shot:
The map even runs just fine (aside from the giant list of errors on load, and an error message when I click the "Play level in a window" button. But if I ignore the errors, everything works just fine. If I click on any scene actor, hit f4 and check its mesh properties... it is referencing the correct package/object just fine. I have no idea why I am getting all these errors.
Do y'all have any advice or suggestions?
Much appreciated,
-eaa
I've been in the industry for a while, but only as an environment artist. Lately i have tinkered around with the concept of a point and click camera and i ran into this tutorial.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/Devel...Interface.html
This has given me a SUPERB setup for what I'm thinking to do, however after doing all these changes, i am unable to figure out a method for connecting the mouse and camera rotation together.
SO I have the code for a point and click game set up with a camera attached and offset from the player through Kismet. Even though this is all fine so far, I want to link up a right click mouse button to activate the turning of the camera, and when it's released, it goes back to the point and click which is currently set up in that tutorial i posted earlier.
I am rather new to scripting, so any help with this would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance everyone!
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TexturingGuidelines.html