Chesterfield Sofa (UDK & Octane)
Hi everybody,
not my first time at polycount - have been around for like 4 years. However I haven't done any gameart for ages and so registered again with a new nick.
Currently I'm working on a small university project, an UDK adventure, inspired by Hitchcock's "Rope" movie.
The whole level will actually only consist of one large and 2 small rooms, so I'm not really worried about polycount & texture sizes that much at the moment
My first prop is a classic Chesterfield sofa. The hi-poly was all classic sub-div modelling in lightwave, the lowpoly is around 1k tris.
Here's a render of the hi-poly (with some quick and sloppy texturing) in Octane render, which I bought recently and am quite enthusiastic about.
Turntable: http://vimeo.com/17247427
Now to the point:
The whole thing looks quite good in Xnormal's 3d viewer, as you can see here:
Now I imported exactly the same .ASE into UDK, made a simple material and what I get is this one:
Looks like some serious normal issue here and also it doesn't seem to like mirroring at all.
As I said, the material is quite basic, so I'm not sure what's wrong with it:
Anyone an idea what's wrong here?
Thanks a lot! :thumbup:
not my first time at polycount - have been around for like 4 years. However I haven't done any gameart for ages and so registered again with a new nick.
Currently I'm working on a small university project, an UDK adventure, inspired by Hitchcock's "Rope" movie.
The whole level will actually only consist of one large and 2 small rooms, so I'm not really worried about polycount & texture sizes that much at the moment
My first prop is a classic Chesterfield sofa. The hi-poly was all classic sub-div modelling in lightwave, the lowpoly is around 1k tris.
Here's a render of the hi-poly (with some quick and sloppy texturing) in Octane render, which I bought recently and am quite enthusiastic about.
Turntable: http://vimeo.com/17247427
Now to the point:
The whole thing looks quite good in Xnormal's 3d viewer, as you can see here:
Now I imported exactly the same .ASE into UDK, made a simple material and what I get is this one:
Looks like some serious normal issue here and also it doesn't seem to like mirroring at all.
As I said, the material is quite basic, so I'm not sure what's wrong with it:
Anyone an idea what's wrong here?
Thanks a lot! :thumbup:
Replies
But currently your normals may be flipped (go to channels in photoshop and flip the green channel and see if that fixes it).
Still 2 problems left:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75168
As for specular, good luck. I've never gotten spec to work as I think it should. If you come up with a solution, please post! You may need a spec power, but I don't know what to tell you here.
That's how it currently looks:
Of course a lot better now, but still kind of flat compared to the Xnormal view. Any hints?
That's my material setup:
Tried a combination of the spec and AO for specularpower, which looks better than without, but still not really great.
Edit: Now without the crappy realtime AO...
edit - just as clarification the picture looks like they're using a separate height map plugged into it but you can get good results with the red channel of the normal too
Spec power has a input range of 0-100
The default spec power is 30
but an image has a output range of 0-1
if you want to get even close to the default value you'll need to multiply your image values by a constant of 10-20
that's why your model has currently got such a broad highlight.
I'd also seriously consider using a reflection map - it could make the metal pins much more realistic and give the leather a nicer looking shine.
It's looking good though.
But thanks anyway, I'll probably look into that at a later point!
@Sid Thanks! I really love the style of those sofas, so sooner or later I really had to do one :thumbup:
@sprunghunt
A few hours before your post I began to realize, that I somehow misunderstood the effect of spec-power...now I finally really comprehend what it's doing, haha!
That was a really helpful post, thanks :thumbup:
So it's basically just like the glossiness setting anywhere else, right?
However this wasn't the only problem up to that point - the reason I didn't get any nicer highlights was also because my point-light-source was simply too far away. I actually assumed if it would be too far away to reach the model, the model would become unlit (as I'm used to, from good old doom3 engine..)
Alright, so now I multiplied my spec-texture with 70 and connected it with spec-power (and also moved the light closer):
Xnormal still looks nicer, with the same maps, but we're getting there :poly121:
I'm definitely considering reflection maps, but I think it won't make sense until most of the scene is done, right?
Just one more question: It's kind of odd, everytime I rebuild the lighting, the highlights on the model seem to change (looking actually worse!) - so I usually move the light around and it looks better again. What's with this?
Non-technical version:
When lighting is built, the static mesh is lit with a static light. When you move the object (or the light), that object becomes dynamically lit. If you rebuild lighting and the object has no discernible shadows (it probably doesn't), then you'll need a lightmap UV channel.
If you want more honest results, create a 2nd UV channel in your modeling program and unwrap everything discretely to the new channel. Re-import the model and in the mesh editor, change LightMapCoordinateIndex to "1." Below it, change LightMapResolution to whatever you like (powers of 2).
Open up the attribute editor for the asset in the level. Under StaticMeshActor >StaticMeshComponent>StaticMeshComponent, make sure "bOverrideLightMapResolution" is ticked ON. This will allow the lightmap settings of the mesh to override the instance setting in the level.
Also, be sure to run PIE (Play In Editor button located at the top right part of the screen, I think it looks like a joystick?) to view the asset. That will give you a better idea of run-time results.
You can use a scene capture actor to setup reflection maps that are generated from your scene. This way you can just regenerate them every time you need an update.
The change in lighting is from a light environment to baked lighting. All static objects use baked lighting.
What about the highlights don't you like? You may be seeing the effects of baked in vertex shadows.