Custom UT3 Character

barnesy

Hey guys heres a character I have been working on for a Uni module. Cant really think of a decent name at the moment. 'Prawn man' has been suggested many a times.
Heres the blueprints so you can get a feel for what style im going for

Front


Side

barnesy

Heres a close up of him all ready for unreal (they grow up so fast)

For some reason it wont let me export any of the parts. I get the error 'Unmatching nodes' error. Ive looked on the UDN website and it seems to be a problem with the Hierarchy...but for some reason it works fine with the skeleton its skinned to. If you have a look at the image below youll see what i mean :S

Any suggestions crits etc are more than welcome on this thread
Thanks

barnesy

Hey guys , today I have continued with thi project. I have managed to get the model into Unreal and test some animations. The problem I originaly had with exporting was leaving the biped in the scene (told you i was new to unreal haha)



He may be celebrating but im not
I have repaired the majority of verts in the hands and knees now. However his arms still deform horribly when he moves his shoulder blades in!

Anyway swiftly moving on , I have managed to unwrap the head which wasnt the easiest of tasks. I broke it into lots of sections with the hope of painting over these seams in ZBrush however the 3.5R3 polypaint UI is different to the 3.1 so I will have to play around with it as i dont kno how to change the size of the texture is saves.



The default is 1024x1024 with a depth of 30 which is creating a horrible finish in max.

Avanthera

I dont think its the size of the maps in zbrush, (which you can change in the tool dropdown, uv section i think)
It seems you are relying on the matcap too much, which wont transfer over to your texture map, it doesnt seem to have that much information on it atm, try to look at it with the flat matcap to see no shading info, just the texture.
Did you flip the texture map vertically before plugging it into max? that may also be the problem.
all of your skinning problems can be fixed with an hour or so of weight painting, just take your time:)

It seems strange that you have zbrush, yet you havent sculpted a high poly version yet? if you need to change some porportions to better fit your high, then alot of your skinning and some of your uv work will be ruined, I think you should go ahead and post a final sculpt, a final uv'd low, get some good critiques and then go ahead and skin it.
right now you are kindof all over the place, nobody seems to know what to give crits on

barnesy

shrew81 wrote: »

I dont think its the size of the maps in zbrush, (which you can change in the tool dropdown, uv section i think)
It seems you are relying on the matcap too much, which wont transfer over to your texture map, it doesnt seem to have that much information on it atm, try to look at it with the flat matcap to see no shading info, just the texture.
Did you flip the texture map vertically before plugging it into max? that may also be the problem.
all of your skinning problems can be fixed with an hour or so of weight painting, just take your time:)

It seems strange that you have zbrush, yet you havent sculpted a high poly version yet? if you need to change some porportions to better fit your high, then alot of your skinning and some of your uv work will be ruined, I think you should go ahead and post a final sculpt, a final uv'd low, get some good critiques and then go ahead and skin it.
right now you are kindof all over the place, nobody seems to know what to give crits on :

Your right shrew. It is all over the place .Im trying to work this around other uni modules so Its back and forth really. I wanted to see that the mesh was working in unreal before making any real commitment.
I didnt use zbrush earlier becasue the majority of the model is hard surfaced armour and im not the best person with zbrush nad tend to get a jellybaby like mess at the end haha

ohh i also sorted the problem with the seams , it was just messing around with the settings in the uv pulldown

I have sculpted the high polly though and im going to render to texture in max

Here it is





Crits are welcome now that you atually have some progression here :poly121:

barnesy

[IMG]file:///C:/Users/Michael/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.png[/IMG][IMG]file:///C:/Users/Michael/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.png[/IMG]Over the last few days I have managed to get the character working in the game engine. I had one issue with the ini file where I wasnt referencing the mesh locations correctly but I managed to sort that with the help of Mike Salom

Matching the models proportions to those of the male provided by Epic really paid off. Not only does the mesh animate smoothly but also the head mask and goggle parts for the iron guard classfit the character and fit the overall style of the character also.

Normal armour


Changalbe parts



WHen in game the iron guard goggles are black and dont have a texture. Has anyone else had this problem?

I am currently at the stage of baking the normal maps and ambient occlusion maps out in max. For some reasom my computer is very special when importing meshes from 3.5 so I am having to export them out in chunks.
On top of that 3.5 has a very special scaling issue where the models will appear pocket sized in max. Luckily this is a quick fix with adjusting the export paramaters.

Heres an example of bakes.Obviousl im going to have alot of fun compositing them in photoshop

Normalmap


Lightmap


I would show you more ingame screenies but for some reaon theyre coming out black :O

KyleJensen

The character reminds me of a badass version of Dr. Zoidberg.

Looking good so far. I don't think your light map is supposed to show red like that. Are those overlapped or inverted pieces? If so, fix them or move them out of the UV box.

barnesy

Shad0wForce wrote: »

The character reminds me of a badass version of Dr. Zoidberg.

Looking good so far. I don't think your light map is supposed to show red like that. Are those overlapped or inverted pieces? If so, fix them or move them out of the UV box.

Thanks man.

Because my computers being special at the moment, im having to import the zbrush sculpt in small chunks. The red bits are simple where the other 2 chunks go. Im going to have to overlap them in photoshop which is going to be fun

barnesy

[IMG]file:///C:/Users/Michael/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-2.png[/IMG][IMG]file:///C:/Users/Michael/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-3.png[/IMG][IMG]file:///C:/Users/Michael/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-4.png[/IMG]
Heres a update with the texturing. Ive basically spent today sorting out the diffuse spec and emissive. For some reason the emissive is just white
However im not that fused becasue it creates a nice contrast throughout the model.



I still need to change the spec map abit as I want the black metal to recieve similar speular levels as the silver metal.



Tommorow I am going to texture the head and the changeable parts. I will also have to re write the ini file as my computer decided to delete it

kjell

the model is not really that well readable with the armor mate, too much going on I'm afraid

barnesy

Errrrm, What would you suggest? , like removing some of the black and grey metal?
Also I am hoping th head ties it all together , im spending today creating the texture for the head.

barnesy

Finally heres some progress as far as getting this project finished.
I have made a new ini file and there are afew problems at the moment.

original armour set


changeable parts


Portrait


Emissive maps and hoverboard


The only problem i seem to have is there is no neck on the model , its just black :S

barnesy

The same problem seems to happen when selecting the spare parts. For some reason the original arms and thighs stay black but the original head is fine , with no neck ofcourse.



Any help ith this problem will be greatly appreciated
Thanks

Megabiv

Have you tried remaking the matierial in the UT3 Editor, i found while making my second shoulder pads that they'd go black too and remaking the texture helped out. Oh and for some reason using PSD's in unreal can make it a bit, abnormal. Try using only TGA's and see if you get any luck from that. Good luck!

P.S have a good look at the UT error log, this helped me out massively when i had errors, it should at the least point you in the right direction, such as UT3 not being able to find the textures, it'll say error loading "blah blah diffuse" "blah blah normal" etc..

barnesy

Megabiv wrote: »

Have you tried remaking the matierial in the UT3 Editor, i found while making my second shoulder pads that they'd go black too and remaking the texture helped out. Oh and for some reason using PSD's in unreal can make it a bit, abnormal. Try using only TGA's and see if you get any luck from that. Good luck!

P.S have a good look at the UT error log, this helped me out massively when i had errors, it should at the least point you in the right direction, such as UT3 not being able to find the textures, it'll say error loading "blah blah diffuse" "blah blah normal" etc..

Thanks for the advice

After alot of tweaking I have managed to sort out the textures for the new head.

Also the emissive texture seems to glow correctly in game and changes when you are on a different team which is cool , but i dont understand why the in game textures render differently than the character selection and the editor

Anyway, here he is having a little hover board session , bless him



I need to sort out the 1st person arms, custom faction, render him off and then get the video diary sorted aswell

barnesy

Hey guys, Ive been busy these past few days finalising this module. I managed to fix the whole black texture issue. The problem was that I exported the changeable arour parts from a seperate max file.
Heres some pictures of him in the selection screen. Any suggestions as to what I could improve on in the future would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for all the support also

barnesy

Name: Prawn High Guard
Faction: Prawn
Version:1.0 Final
Compatibility: Unreal Tournament 3 version 2.1
Author: Michael Barnes

Discription:
The Prawn Species are known for their human like appearance...but they are far from human

The Prawn High Guard are considered to be the deadliest class of Prawn warriors.
The High Guard are highly trained in all areas of combat, specializing primarily in short range combat



Character Download: http://www.filefront.com/16132741/PrawnHighGuard_UT3Character.zip

Forum Threads
Digital Academy: https://www.staffs.ac.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=292

CGSociety: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=39&t=858685

Polycount: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=70518

Epic Forums: http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?p=27133832#post27133832

barnesy