our coder is trying to use something called navmeshes to allow our playe character to auto path around objects so we dont have to do path nodes (its a diablo style point an click movement system) but while he can make it work for ai characters, he cant get it to work for the player char. do any of you epic Wwwyzzerdds out there know if its possible for nav mesh to work with player chars?
(disclaimer i have no idea what i am asking, just passing on a message)
Right, I've been wrapping my head around this and I simply can't figure out what's wrong, so figured I'd take it here.
I've got this static mesh (the text) with a black plastic material and a green emissive material on the back, hoping it'd shoot out the light from the emissive to colour the wall. I did check the 'buseemissive' thing and bumped up the intensity to about 20 (just to see if that was the problem) but it simply won't work.
I had a similar issue with another mesh just earlier, and I don't remember what I did but somehow it just worked all of a sudden. This one won't though. I also tried rendering with both production and preview quality, and made sure to save the package/level.
On another note, I'm also getting this weird white pattern on the tables. Seems to be the intensity of the specc varying across the surfaces. I take it it's just how the light mass thingy works and that one can't soften out those harsh edges?
I'm having some issues with UDK Lighting, I keep getting wierd shapes appearing in the lightmaps and have no idea what is causing them, I've tried everything I can think of so far.
Materials only consist of a white/black AO bake and Normal maps.
Lightmap UVWs have padding, are not stretched or distorted, and also in this screenshot I have built the scene using production quality.
Also something I noticed is that these artifacts are less noticable when building at a lower quality which is pretty strange.
Update: Turning AO off in post process / lightmass settings doesnt help with the strange shadowing behind the pipes Thanks for the suggestion anyway Tiros. Update 2: Seems as though lowering the value in the StaticLightingLevelScale in World properties helps to minimize the odd shadowing behind the pipes, however I am still stuck with the odd color blotches that randomly appear on some lightmaps.
Rhinokey, the UTPlayer (or whatever UDK uses) class is going to have to be tweaked for this to work. There's a few flags that we used for our AI in the past that could maybe just work out of the box though. Try having him set bForceNavMeshPathing and bForceObstacleChecking directly into UTPlayer if possible. Unfortunately, I'd imagine player controls would overwrite this and keep it from working out of box but it's worth a shot. I know our programmers created a more visual queue for this that showed the desired path for each movement executed but would have to do some poking around to see if that what was actually being used.
Tiros, let's see a setup of your material to help further debug that problem. Emissive should be able to shine behind that just fine.
alexl: The circled parts are the SSAO. Just turn off your Ambient occlusion in the world properties (I think) It's part of the post processing so adding a post processing volume if you havn't got one and making sure AO is unticked should remove it.
As for the other ones I have no idea.. having the same problem myself
/edit: Ack, got it to work now. Don't know which part of it was the problem, but I reset the x-form of the mesh and re-did the uv-coordinates, and it's working now
I have a quick question about the 3Dbuzz crowd sim video. At one point he shows how to do pylons and the navmesh. What do I need to do so that I can see the navmesh in my viewport. I went into the dropdown for the viewport and checked the nav related things to be shown but I cant figure out how to see the nav mesh itself.
I have some questions, there is any way to use full dynamic lights? I've seen borderlands and APB doing that, is it possible or that needs some big engine tweaking?
Also, I'm playing with cameras and set up a bird-like camera, but I have a problem: The player shoots to the floor (as the camera is pointing there) I've tried searching but can't find anything... anyone knows any way i could make the player shoot straight?
I have a question. Ive got a static mesh with an alpha mask. this mesh has an emitter which i am using for lightmass. my question:
is there any way possible to have lightmass, or any light, project the shadows of the object minus the areas from the alpha.
You need to have a 1-bit alpha and set it up in the image import options. Also in the material you need to set it up correctly, link to masked and set material to masked. You need to add the mesh as an InterpActor and in the properties enable LightEnvironmentComponent. And I think it only works with directional lights.
I have some questions, there is any way to use full dynamic lights? I've seen borderlands and APB doing that, is it possible or that needs some big engine tweaking?
You can add dynamic lights. Look in the light classes.
Also, I'm playing with cameras and set up a bird-like camera, but I have a problem: The player shoots to the floor (as the camera is pointing there) I've tried searching but can't find anything... anyone knows any way i could make the player shoot straight?
Weapons are tied to camera vector from what I have read. You will need to mod the weapon scripts. How? I don't know.
You need to have a 1-bit alpha and set it up in the image import options. Also in the material you need to set it up correctly, link to masked and set material to masked. You need to add the mesh as an InterpActor and in the properties enable LightEnvironmentComponent. And I think it only works with directional lights.
I thought Lightmass featured opacity masked shadows in lighting bakes ?
I thought Lightmass featured opacity masked shadows in lighting bakes ?
But I think you still have to place the correct type of actor. Could just be the old way, but it's how I've always done it to get objects working right. I can fire it up and have a quick look.
Correction - I have my transparent portion points to the diffuse (I lerp them all together in the diffuse channel). Blend is set to Translucent. I have nothing plugged into the opacity channels.
What is the max number of terrain setup layers you can paint on your terrain. I seem to have hit five, anymore than that and my terrain becomes a rainbow colored mess. Is 5 it? No way around it?
Kind of in on the same track as alexl here earlier. So, anyone else but me who love but at the same time hate the new lightmass system for UDK? This is rendered at production quality...
Are your lightmap UV's adequately spaced out and completely unique, Tiros? If there's not enough padding, stuff can bleed over badly and cause artifacting in general.
Aye, I'm sure that's not the problem. Setting the lightmaps to a lower resolution gets rid of the artifacts btw. But then it just looks crappily lowres. So it has something to do with how the lightmass renders I think.
You can add dynamic lights. Look in the light classes.
Weapons are tied to camera vector from what I have read. You will need to mod the weapon scripts. How? I don't know.
I've tried looking and playing with the light settings, with the object and bsp's setting, I've searched on UDN but I still can't get dynamic soft shadows... anyone has a tutorial on that?
I've tried looking and playing with the light settings, with the object and bsp's setting, I've searched on UDN but I still can't get dynamic soft shadows... anyone has a tutorial on that?
I've looked at those videos, and still I'm not sure how to do this. Maybe i'm explaining bad: there is no way to force dynamic soft shadows on all models? For example, to make a day-night cycle with a directional light...
I've looked at those videos, and still I'm not sure how to do this. Maybe i'm explaining bad: there is no way to force dynamic soft shadows on all models? For example, to make a day-night cycle with a directional light...
I don't think so. But I can take a stab later on tonight.
I've looked at those videos, and still I'm not sure how to do this. Maybe i'm explaining bad: there is no way to force dynamic soft shadows on all models? For example, to make a day-night cycle with a directional light...
For soft edged shadows,
would lowering the shadow resolution work?
You lose some precision but that accuracy loss seem to get eaten by the softness anyway?
If so give these settings a try:
( one dominant directional light. light mass intensity turned down a bit to accentuate actual shadowing )
settings in game: ]
skeletal mesh above has light environment component property "enabled".
//.
Edit:
( fer completness sake )
If using a point light instead of a dominant directional light...
And you also want the effect of the light environment fake on your dynamic model...
The shadow settings are then set in the dynamic model's "light environment" properties...
( resolution, shadow type etc )
.//
If not using "light environment" u git additional quality choices:
results with closer percentage filter "high" ( BPCF high )
( edge grain @ edge seems nicer then the light environment shadow )
No light environment soft shadow point light setting in game:
.//
Beside shadow quality choices you are also not limited to one shadow as with dominant directional and/or light environment shadows.
Normal lights were used instead of modulated. Modulated do not seem to self shadow overlap very well.
.//
If you really want full-dynamic day-night cycles, like Crysis, then you've got the wrong engine. That's one of the limits of Unreal. You can only get around it by chaging a lot of engne code, something you don't have acces to with UDK.
I think they did this for Vin Diesel's The Wheelman game. All shadows were dynamic in that game.
If you really want full-dynamic day-night cycles, like Crysis, then you've got the wrong engine. That's one of the limits of Unreal. You can only get around it by chaging a lot of engne code, something you don't have acces to with UDK.
I think they did this for Vin Diesel's The Wheelman game. All shadows were dynamic in that game.
Yeah, that is what I wanted to hear. Borderlands and APB have dynamic shadows too
@claydough: Thanks man, but I think you didn't understand me. With soft edged dynamic shadows I meant that I didn't want the stencil dynamic shadows, I would be allright with the dominant shadows, but those aren't dynamic at all, to the point of a full cycle
EVE Online is using Geomerics' Enlighten in the ambulation expansion of their game, which is due out next year. There are some videos of it in action. Nifty shit for sure.
Deelekgolo: Not sure if you can do it in your world properties, but you can at least create a post-processing volume and untick 'Ambient Occlusion' in there.
Guys, I need an answer quickly:
Is it possible to render animations to file with Unreal, other than using Fraps or Camtasia ? Like the Tiledshot # console command writes to file a single image, but for a small machinima?
These should be, since UT3 and Gears cutscene are videos, but created ingame...
They're BINK video's, i'm 100% sure, you can see compression artifacts sometimes. So they captured them from the engine somehow.
I just want them rendered to file since we're creating a showreel here at work and I don't want to wait 1 hour for a silly 360 render while it looks nicer and renders faster in Unreal.
function PostBeginPlay()
{
NextShotTime = Level.TimeSeconds;
}
function Tick(float Delta)
{
while (Level.TimeSeconds >= NextShotTime)
{
ConsoleCommand("SShot");
NextShotTime += 1/FPS;
}
}
defaultproperties
{
bHidden=true
FPS=10
}
Then you could bind a key to "Summon WhateverPackage.TimedScreenshots" and another key to "Killall TimedScreenshots".
To get the best results if you want a high FPS for your video, you could set the timedilation low and the FPS in that class low. For 30FPS for instance, you could set the FPS in the class to 3 and "Set LevelInfo TimeDilation 0.1" on the console. This probrably wouldn't be of much help unless your computer can't put out as many FPS as you want the video to have at the detail settings you want for the video.
Anybody know the exact settings to prevent TC_NormalmapUncompressed textures halving in size next time you open the package? I always get the impression LOD Bias -1 never does much...
I think LOD Bias has nothing to do with compression. It's just telling Unreal which LOD of the texture to display (at some value I don't know) from the camera. So LOD Bias -1 is like saying use the next larger LOD of the texture than "normal".
I also noticed TC_NormalmapUncompressed as a new addition with UDK but I don't know how it works, sorry. If it works like it's name says then the texture should stay uncompressed...
The uncompressed format stores two of the normal's 3 channels in 8 bits each (so 16 bits per pixel). This is the highest quality but because only two channels are stored, the Z needs to be calculated in the pixel shader. (The material editor does this automatically, note the increased instruction count in the screenshot above).
Because the memory usage is 4x that of DTX1, reducing the X and Y resolutions by half (ie 1 mip level) will make the memory usage identical. We believe that half-resolution uncompressed normals look better than DXT1 compressed normals, so the texture editor automatically reduces the resolution when choosing TC_NormalmapUncompressed format. The texture's original resolution is restored when changing back to another format.
(This code is in UTexture2D::Compress() should you wish to remove or disable this functionality)
So I guess that explains it, the format automatically halves the resolution of the normal map. lol, who would've thought...
the sizes of the texturegroups are written down in one of the config inis, you could just use skybox (up to 2k) or UI (up to 4k) to ship around that "issue"
It appears to not be a texturegroup thing, rather some hardcoded C++ stuff. I'm not all that big on optimizing and performance when I use UDK to present stuff, it just has to look good. I guess I can work around it by upscaling the normalmap. Importing 4k textures is gonna take long though :x
Hi guys! this may be obvious to some of you but is there a way to use the animations provided with the UDK with custom models? I mean the animations of the robot character.
Hi guys! this may be obvious to some of you but is there a way to use the animations provided with the UDK with custom models? I mean the animations of the robot character.
On UDN there is a skeleton mesh you use as a template. From there, you bind/rig your custom mesh and import it. The animations are already there.
So, this is more of a optimization kind of question. As I've never done a whole environment before I've never really encountered the problem.
The preview of the level inside the editor and flying around the environment in the editor itself, with the lighting baked, is going perfectly smooth, absolutely no lag at all. However, once I save the level it starts lagging really bad.
Could this be an issue with the lightmaps draining my performance or.. any ideas? *shrug*
Still havn't solved the issue with the artifacts appearing everywhere either, but got it down to a respectable level. So might just have to go with it and hope it won't show that much once it's all done.
Replies
(disclaimer i have no idea what i am asking, just passing on a message)
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ContentBlog.html
-Rhino sorry I got nothing on nav meshes that's more of a coder/LD thing
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ViewModes.html#Lit%20Lightmap%20Density
I've got this static mesh (the text) with a black plastic material and a green emissive material on the back, hoping it'd shoot out the light from the emissive to colour the wall. I did check the 'buseemissive' thing and bumped up the intensity to about 20 (just to see if that was the problem) but it simply won't work.
I had a similar issue with another mesh just earlier, and I don't remember what I did but somehow it just worked all of a sudden. This one won't though. I also tried rendering with both production and preview quality, and made sure to save the package/level.
On another note, I'm also getting this weird white pattern on the tables. Seems to be the intensity of the specc varying across the surfaces. I take it it's just how the light mass thingy works and that one can't soften out those harsh edges?
Materials only consist of a white/black AO bake and Normal maps.
Lightmap UVWs have padding, are not stretched or distorted, and also in this screenshot I have built the scene using production quality.
Also something I noticed is that these artifacts are less noticable when building at a lower quality which is pretty strange.
Screenshot: http://alexluong.co.uk/misc/lightmass_artifacts.jpg
Update: Turning AO off in post process / lightmass settings doesnt help with the strange shadowing behind the pipes
Update 2: Seems as though lowering the value in the StaticLightingLevelScale in World properties helps to minimize the odd shadowing behind the pipes, however I am still stuck with the odd color blotches that randomly appear on some lightmaps.
Any ideas?
Tiros, let's see a setup of your material to help further debug that problem. Emissive should be able to shine behind that just fine.
As for the other ones I have no idea.. having the same problem myself
Kovac: Here's everything you should need to know and more
http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/8513/bah.jpg
/edit: Ack, got it to work now. Don't know which part of it was the problem, but I reset the x-form of the mesh and re-did the uv-coordinates, and it's working now
is there any way possible to have lightmass, or any light, project the shadows of the object minus the areas from the alpha.
Also, I'm playing with cameras and set up a bird-like camera, but I have a problem: The player shoots to the floor (as the camera is pointing there) I've tried searching but can't find anything... anyone knows any way i could make the player shoot straight?
And it's just a static mesh. No InterpActors.
I've tried looking and playing with the light settings, with the object and bsp's setting, I've searched on UDN but I still can't get dynamic soft shadows... anyone has a tutorial on that?
http://download.udk.com/tutorials/using-udk/lighting.zip
For soft edged shadows,
would lowering the shadow resolution work?
You lose some precision but that accuracy loss seem to get eaten by the softness anyway?
If so give these settings a try:
( one dominant directional light. light mass intensity turned down a bit to accentuate actual shadowing )
settings in game:
skeletal mesh above has light environment component property "enabled".
//.
Edit:
( fer completness sake )
If using a point light instead of a dominant directional light...
And you also want the effect of the light environment fake on your dynamic model...
The shadow settings are then set in the dynamic model's "light environment" properties...
( resolution, shadow type etc )
.//
If not using "light environment" u git additional quality choices:
results with closer percentage filter "high" ( BPCF high )
( edge grain @ edge seems nicer then the light environment shadow )
No light environment soft shadow point light setting in game:
.//
Beside shadow quality choices you are also not limited to one shadow as with dominant directional and/or light environment shadows.
Normal lights were used instead of modulated. Modulated do not seem to self shadow overlap very well.
.//
I think they did this for Vin Diesel's The Wheelman game. All shadows were dynamic in that game.
Yeah, that is what I wanted to hear. Borderlands and APB have dynamic shadows too
@claydough: Thanks man, but I think you didn't understand me. With soft edged dynamic shadows I meant that I didn't want the stencil dynamic shadows, I would be allright with the dominant shadows, but those aren't dynamic at all, to the point of a full cycle
next gen 2.0...
hopefully soon?
[ame]
[ame]
Soo, no one has an answer to what this could be? (http://boards.polycount.net/showpost.php?p=1041199&postcount=222) Been searching everywhere and tried a bunch of stuff but can't get rid of it..
Is it possible to render animations to file with Unreal, other than using Fraps or Camtasia ? Like the Tiledshot # console command writes to file a single image, but for a small machinima?
These should be, since UT3 and Gears cutscene are videos, but created ingame...
Those cutscenes were made with Matinee.
I just want them rendered to file since we're creating a showreel here at work and I don't want to wait 1 hour for a silly 360 render while it looks nicer and renders faster in Unreal.
What about using kismet? Let me mess with it. But it might crash or something funky I bet lol!!
Might get you in the right direction.
otherwise, something has gone horribly wrong for you. PEACE
I also noticed TC_NormalmapUncompressed as a new addition with UDK but I don't know how it works, sorry. If it works like it's name says then the texture should stay uncompressed...
EDIT:
Here's some info from UDN:
So I guess that explains it, the format automatically halves the resolution of the normal map. lol, who would've thought...
The preview of the level inside the editor and flying around the environment in the editor itself, with the lighting baked, is going perfectly smooth, absolutely no lag at all. However, once I save the level it starts lagging really bad.
Could this be an issue with the lightmaps draining my performance or.. any ideas? *shrug*
Still havn't solved the issue with the artifacts appearing everywhere either, but got it down to a respectable level. So might just have to go with it and hope it won't show that much once it's all done.
Do You think We can use UT 3 MALE.max to work properly in UDK ?
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/UT3CustomCharacters.html
UDK BROWSER / UT GAME / CHARACTERS /CH ANIM HUMAN =
ANIM SET - K ANIMHUMAN_BASEMALE