UDK - Dark ForestCliffs

chrisradsby

I thought that I'd share my progress on the environment I'm working on, mainly because I want feedback, paint-overs, ideas from you wonderful people I know I have some obvious seams on the cliffs etc but I'll add some vines and stuff and hopefully be able to cover most of it up. I'm not focusing on that right now. I just want to get the lighting working.

It's my first environment in UDK and I've been having troubles, some of you have seen my normal/lighting issue over at the technical UDK category.

I have a

- Dominant Directional Light (low-brightness)
- 2 orange point lights (to show off the normal detail, will add torches later)
- 1 skylight (ambient light controlling the mood/atmosphere)

- 512x512 Tilable bark for tree
- 512x512 Tilable Cliff
- 512x512 For all foliage seen in the scene right now
- 1024x512 Rubble Piles.

And absolutely 0% Zbrush work, everything is photoshop magic.

Oh well here we go:


If someone can point out exactly why I lose all my normal detail when I bake I'd be very grateful.
Here is the link to the issue thread I started (http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81441)

letronrael

i think i know what is the ''problem'' the thing is when your light is not baked... the shadows made by this light are very dark and strong....

so in fact what i mean is, you think that you are loosing your normal map but in fact you dont. The real result is when you bake light.

So maybe if you ajust your shadow to be darker and sharper , youll get the same result as before baking light.

And by the way, if your not sure about what i say, try to bake a light then move that light youll see what happens.

Hope it helps.

letronrael

by the way, cool environment ! , and if your looking to add something in your scene, maybe you can add a ''main'' mesh like an old witch house or something like that anyway.

Dont give up! looks great so far!

chrisradsby

Hmm maybe, you don't have an idea how I would go about that do you? I'm still a super-n00b in UDK xD

Visceral

Did you just post pics in .jpg format? Looks cool in the second shot. The normals are way to blown out int he first one.

But the compression is really bothering me :P keep up the good work.

chrisradsby

Hah, yeah it's a .jpg and yes and saved it at 8/10 image quality so that it would at least be a bit easier for some to see it. It's not really necessary to go all out just yet =P

Snader

That's not 8/10 quality. It looks more like 3/10 I think Tinypic recompresses the image if the filesize or dimensions are too large. Try posting the screenshots as 2 separate images? 1200 pixels wide or so should be plenty I think.

chrisradsby

Ah didn't know tinypic did that oh well. I'll upload a better one when I have an update to show

EMC3D

I usually save as .PNG nowdays.

passerby

just use dropbox to link images it wont mess with the file at all no matter the size or res

scotthomer

use Picturepush.com, they dont compress at all.
Its awesome!