Need advice on approaching a castle in UDK
Hi all,
I'm new here (hi!) so you'll have to bear with me!
I'm looking at building a castle, similar to Disney's castle (below). But these questions apply for me to buildings or anything else LARGE.
I have a couple concerns given I'm relatively new to building inside of UDK.
1. If I were to model this inside of Max, and have say a tilable brick texture all over it. How on earth would I be able to lightmap it? Forgive my noobness but won't I need an enormous map?
Also if I had say 10 different materials, that made up the entire castle, how could I bring it all from max into UDK, I guess I would need lots of elements, but aren't I limited to 6 inside of UDK? And isn't that bad for performance.
... OR ...
2. Would I be better off creating modular pieces (that I can give their own lightmaps) and build the entire castle inside of UDK, if so, how would that work for large walls that have no trims, or for example the round towers?
Please if I don't make sense let me know, cause to be honest I'm not 100% what I'm asking for myself haha!
Thanks so much guys.
I'm new here (hi!) so you'll have to bear with me!
I'm looking at building a castle, similar to Disney's castle (below). But these questions apply for me to buildings or anything else LARGE.
I have a couple concerns given I'm relatively new to building inside of UDK.
1. If I were to model this inside of Max, and have say a tilable brick texture all over it. How on earth would I be able to lightmap it? Forgive my noobness but won't I need an enormous map?
Also if I had say 10 different materials, that made up the entire castle, how could I bring it all from max into UDK, I guess I would need lots of elements, but aren't I limited to 6 inside of UDK? And isn't that bad for performance.
... OR ...
2. Would I be better off creating modular pieces (that I can give their own lightmaps) and build the entire castle inside of UDK, if so, how would that work for large walls that have no trims, or for example the round towers?
Please if I don't make sense let me know, cause to be honest I'm not 100% what I'm asking for myself haha!
Thanks so much guys.
Replies
A castle doesnt lend itself to modular construction really. I would use brushes for the base and paint a ground material on them plus path then model the rest in max and just construct shaders in udk. I would do the texturing in max or zbrush/mudbox then use the maps in the udk shaders.
Have fun man!
My main problem is lightmapping in UDK and how it works for big objects like huge walls etc. Like if I did model it all in max as you said, I'd have to lightmap such a huge thing wouldn't I?
Does anyone know anything I could download/deconstruct that would allow me to figure it out? I don't want to come across lazy, I'm happy to hunt for the information myself, I just need a push.
But if you're dead set on it and feel you can pull it off...there are a lot of questions that need to answered before people can get into any kind of specifics.
1) Are you going to be able to run around in it? Or are you building it for one static shot, like the ref pic above?
2) Does it have to be an exact copy of this castle or can it be loosely based on it?
You're going to have trouble getting accurate ref and matching proportions, because they used forced perspective to make it look bigger than it actually is, which is a cool trick but a nightmare to recreate...
Kanga is right it doesn't lend itself to modular design very well but with a few tweaks it could hit pretty close. Striking a compromise like that is pretty common... you have to balance game play with design, concept with the tech at hand.
3) How important is it to the scene? Are you willing to make this 100% with unique meshes and unique textures? Are you going to do any sculpting?
Could you possibly use some of the same ref that Disney used to build this castle, to come up with something similar? Wikipedia lists off a few real world places that where the inspiration for Disney's Castle.
Palace_of_Fontainebleau
Palace_of_Versailles
Chateau_de_Chenonceau
Chateau_de_Chambord
Chateau_de_Chaumont
Neuschwanstein_Castle
Alcazar_of_Segovia
Castile_and_Leon
I don't see why people are saying this can't be modular? This seems like the ideal thing to make modular
There are 3 turrets which are round and several which are square. The merlons and covered walkways along the top of the walls can just be modular pieces. in general the walls seem to be spaced an even amount apart so you can make a piece for that.
As mark says you should only model it in max if you're never going to get up close to it. Otherwise you're going to have a huge waste of memory.
1. it would be more, fly outside around it
2. Loosely based on it, I'm still deciding really on what look I want!
3. I thought I'd have about 5 or so textures, ie roof/brick/trims/doors etc. Possibly sculpt the brick texture.
I guess I'd like to create an amateur version of what Paroxum has recently done http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=81800&page=3, maybe I should use CE3, then I won't have to worry about lightmaps, model it all in max and avoid the confusion.
wtf are u saying? crazybump has NOTHING to do with shaders!
it can create normal maps, not much more...
also nDo, a Photoshop Plugin (for free!) is waay better for what u intend it for.
I am with sprunghut. This castle is a perfect example of modularity imo.
If you look at the chunks I've highlighted you'll see repetition of most of those areas all over the place, they're just slightly scaled different.
Good solid planning and forethought will carry you pretty far here.
(haha, realized I didn't marque a region of just regular tiling bricks)
it has everything to do with shaders do your research!!! ndo is as good as crazy bump.
it generates normal maps. now even spec maps and such, but not when i posted.
is a normal map equaling a whole shader? also... necroposting?
surely its argueable which one is better, i should have made myself more clearly back then, yes. i prefer nDo, because it gives you the whole photoshop layer thing, which for me personal works muhc more precise. but i'm not really fluent in crazybump.
The reason I say its hard to do modular on this is because of the way its actually constructed. They used force perspective to make it look bigger than it is. They tightly control the view of castle with walkways and the mote so you don't ruin the illusion. They also have things on different levels and scales so its a bit of a nightmare to recreate. If you wanted to do a modular castle based on the same theme, it could work but its going to be hard to match.