Asset Placement In UDK

DDuckworth

Hey everyone, is there an easier way to place various assets within a level?

An example would be crates and then placing various objects in those crates, using KActors so that you can play around with them in game.

I was wondering if there is an easy way to place these assets by say going in game, spawning meshes, and placing them using the physics gun, using the widget to place small objects and rotate them can be such a huge pain. Thanks for any help!

Oniram

i had a friend once use take all of his KActors and place them some significant distance above the floor, all rotated and stacked non uniformly, then when he spawned (it was in a room that he didnt spawn in).. the physics took over and they all fell on top of each other.. that could work.

DDuckworth

Well that works but then i'd like them to stay where they fall for scene presentation or just so that it's not completely random each time, thanks for the advice though!

Oniram

another thing i would suggest is (if you use max) use reactor. you can place all of the objects in max.. applying physics to them, then export to udk. downside is you wouldnt be able to shoot them (if you wanted them to move). but you could just do that as a template so u can know what will go where.

here's a tut on it.

http://3dmotive.com/product-reactor-junk-pile

DDuckworth

Unfortunately I use maya, but thank you, I can figure out my own way to do that with dynamics in maya for sure. It's a good idea and I could use it for the values to simply type in to where I would like to place my assets in game.

If anyone else would like to follow what I am going to be doing I will be happy to make a tut on it once I finish up

A. Rabbit

For items without collisions, you could use a material which utilizes the world position offset. A good example would be foliage scaling and rotating randomly based on it's world position. It could even change textures and tint colours.