Tutoria l: Snowy rock

chrom

Hi polycount
this is my first post here and have to introduce myself. My name is Dimitar and i am working in game industry from couple of years.This tutorial is for making a rock with snowy map on it. Ive used the same techniques for trees, cliffs and almost every kind of static objects.I hope will be useful for you thanks for watching.

http://vimeo.com/26760682

chrom

added screens from udk with objects made the same way as the rock from the tut

Ace-Angel

Nice, very useful for a quickie. Question: Can you do a Z-Up back of the texture or not in Max?

Mark Dygert

That was long... and I skipped a lot of it. The part that interested me, the material set up can be handled a few different ways and get around some of the "not being able to rotate the object" limitations you run into.

In max:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=965440#post965440 <- a method similar to yours but uses a the Z up option of a falloff map. This will enable you to rotate the objects and have the snow recalculated before baking.
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/snowflow-make-snow-with-the-click-of-a-button <-Snow with volume, in the click of a button, with all kinds of handy settings like wind, accumulation ect... This can be optimized and baked. This is great for more than just a dusting.

In Unreal:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66952 <- Quite a few techniques discussed.
http://www.3dmotive.com/product-udk-mesh-paint <- much more dynamic, fluid and easier to use.

teaandcigarettes

chrome: Looks really cool I will have a closer look later on.

Mark: +1 for the links.

I'm gonna make a shameless self-plug. Here's a material I made for my Oasis enviro.

The nodes in the Blend box are used to add a texture on top of the rocks (it's used for sand, but could be used for snow too) and the nodes in the Blend B box are used to add a texture to the sides of the objects. It's best if you make an instance of the material and tweak the values as you see fit. The object can be rotated and the blending will be updated on the fly.

For those who are using the July build of UDK; you can also combine it with the vertex paint stuff made by Ryan since it should be possible now to use the Vector Transform node alongside vertex color (I didn't have a chance to test it yet, so I might be wrong).

Ryan had also been experimenting with some more advanced stuff here: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=75689

Anyways, here's the shader. It doesn't have to be that complex; you could interpolate only between two textures. You also don't need the nodes responsible for the detail textures and color correction.





edit:

Here's another technique, much simpler than mine: http://blog.pietermans.com/2011/06/24/quickie-super-easy-z-up-masks-for-the-udk/

chrom

Ace-Angel thanks.About the z up Mark post very helpful links about it.

Mark this is just one simple method for doing this and not everyone is familiar with udk.The tut is long because cover the whole making, my fault here i have to mention that is almost for beginner level.Big thanks for the links Ive learned a lot of them.

teaandcigarettes thanks for the shader will try it , and for the links too second one really enlighten me.

cheers