I understand. So, as long as I have a proper UV layout it can recycle that and I don't have to go through the extra step of having a second channel with independent spaced UV islands like in ue3 to prevent bleeding?
You still need to make sure there is some space between islands. What i meant was, if the lightmap UV layout fits your texturing then you can get away with a single UV channel. In any case though, you won't get bleedings as horrible as you would in UDK.
Edit: And you can use very low res. lightmaps and get better results. From my personal experience, UE4's 128 lightmap res quality is almost equal to UDK's 1024.
One concerning thing about UE4 is compile times. I would expect compiling the actual engine from a clean solution to take a long time, which it sounds like it does. But from looking at this video it seems that compile times are very long, even for compiling a nearly empty game dll. The compile times are all cut out of the videos, but at around 20:00 the compile in editor feature compiles for 40 seconds before the video cuts to when its done compiling. I assume its compiling all the source files for the game project and not just the changed file, but thats still a really long time since theres only a few small source files in that game project.
I have had the beta for a while but I never really did anything with it besides browsing the engine header files, but from the little I looked at it, it didnt seem as nicely organized and designed as Unitys API. Although some of that is all the macro and template crazyness required to turn c++ into a semi modern language.
Has anyone figured out how to edit the world post process volume? I really want to turn off the lens flares and eye adaptation effects for game mode but I haven't been able to figure out where the controls for those attributes are.
Has anyone figured out how to edit the world post process volume? I really want to turn off the lens flares and eye adaptation effects for game mode but I haven't been able to figure out where the controls for those attributes are.
There should be a post process volume in the level set to Unbound(if not, create one) and that is the world post process volume.
There should be a post process volume in the level set to Unbound(if not, create one) and that is the world post process volume.
Ah, I see! Thank you, there's one mystery solved. I still can't find the options to modify eye adaptation though, it doesn't seem to be any of the attributes listed in the post process volume.
Eye Adaptation is defined by Min and Max brightness settings under the "Auto Exposure" section of the post-process volume. You can also disable momentarily the feature by choosing a fixed exposure in the viewport. (Go to Lit > Exposure > Fixed at ... )
Do we have any idea how UE4 handles hair/fur? I remember Epic started toying with it with UE3.9 (Samaritan). I'll be happy if games finally ditch rendering polygonal hair forever (save certain artstyles).
Force No Precomputed Lighting - This essentially deactivates Lightmass's ability to produce light and shadowmaps, forcing the level to only use dynamic lighting.
One concerning thing about UE4 is compile times. I would expect compiling the actual engine from a clean solution to take a long time, which it sounds like it does. But from looking at this video it seems that compile times are very long, even for compiling a nearly empty game dll. The compile times are all cut out of the videos, but at around 20:00 the compile in editor feature compiles for 40 seconds before the video cuts to when its done compiling. I assume its compiling all the source files for the game project and not just the changed file, but thats still a really long time since theres only a few small source files in that game project.
I have had the beta for a while but I never really did anything with it besides browsing the engine header files, but from the little I looked at it, it didnt seem as nicely organized and designed as Unitys API. Although some of that is all the macro and template crazyness required to turn c++ into a semi modern language.
You are tight... and not right at the same time. The compile times for 3 lines of code might seem long. But on other hand my project with several thousand lines of code compiled about 30 seconds.
System is setup in way to optimize compilation times for big projects with a lots lines of code.
So wait, lighting information is not baked into the 2nd UV channel, just GI information?
It is actually other way around. Global Illumination information is baked into light cache, while indirect shadowing and shadows are baked to light maps.
I requested many months ago an option to build only light cache or indirect shadowing, but it doesn't seem like they implemented it yet.
It would eleminate need for lightmaps while retaining some benefits of indirect lighting.
Are there plans for that real-time GI we saw in videos in the past to make a comeback at some point?
There are plans, but nothing specific.
But they are dedicated to solving this problem since their own game (Fortnite), also suffers from lack of dynamic GI.
I bought it for $20, and I plan on updating it every few months when there's an update to the engine. Subscribing again. I look at it as a mmo subscription UDK for free was nice for all of us for many years, so i'm happy to pay to get ue4
Maybe someone has already asked or maybe the question is too dumb no one has asked.
basically wanting to start making environments and originally going to use the free UDK which ive now found you can still download. If i was to get Unreal4 is it the same deal? Can I still just make an environment with no intention of making a game as I would the other one or are the tools in Unreal4 so vast would it be a waste?
The way I see it at least I'd have the real version companies would use. But the options are so confusing.
You really want to use the newer version of UDK if you want to make environments for your portfolio. The lighting, materials, baking, editor, etc is so much nicer to work with and vastly improved. With game art you want to be ahead of the curve, people who didn't want to learn normal maps got left behind, it will be the same with PBR and any new tech.
Maybe someone has already asked or maybe the question is too dumb no one has asked.
basically wanting to start making environments and originally going to use the free UDK which ive now found you can still download. If i was to get Unreal4 is it the same deal? Can I still just make an environment with no intention of making a game as I would the other one or are the tools in Unreal4 so vast would it be a waste?
The way I see it at least I'd have the real version companies would use. But the options are so confusing.
Again sorry for the dumb question.
You can still use the UE4 for everything you used the UDK for, the main two things you'll notice for your use are the faster lightmap process times, faster tessellation, and PBR. Nothing about the UE4 requires you to make a game, but even if you only want to use it for environment work, you need to pay $20 at least once to get an engine build, whether or not you ever update it is up to you.
ZacD Cheers, that was my thought. Again it just all confused me. Spent the last few weeks getting up to speed with the previous UDK. But Unreal4 doesnt look too different if anything it looks a lot nicer.
Can I still just make an environment with no intention of making a game as I would the other one or are the tools in Unreal4 so vast would it be a waste?
Of course you can. Actually, doing a project in any new tech is the best way to learn it imo. If it's what employers are using, you should make every effort to use it too.
DAYUM it looks fantastic. Saw some videos last night and was blogging about it in fanboy mode.
They're saying that the current version if UE4 requires some decent specs, though. I don't have a quad-core processor atm, so I suppose I'm stuck with regular UDK for a while.
I did not expect this to happen this soon Really excited for material definition everywhere to not be botched.
Same, still waiting here. I would guess it'll take another 8 hours at least, because of timezones, and they're probably manually migrating the accounts.
Do we have any idea how UE4 handles hair/fur? I remember Epic started toying with it with UE3.9 (Samaritan). I'll be happy if games finally ditch rendering polygonal hair forever (save certain artstyles).
Has Unreal 4 native support for real Parallax Occlusion Mapping or is bump mapping only? The tessellation Pipeline in the current udk is nearly non existant and not very useful.
Custom Grid in the editor for the power of 10 or Power of 2 only?
Shame the documentation (for that page anyway) is more: 'do things this way because it works', as opposed to 'this is a common mistake, this is why it's wrong and why, and this is what works and why'. Maybe documentation is still a WIP, I don't know.
Quack: Unless that part of things changed, it's not synced to anything. They're just describing how to use explicit normals to make things look a little less shitty, but that will only work on static objects.
Mind blowing really, surely will get my hands on the SDK, 20 USD nothing to go wrong with, also super nice you can cancel any time and still use the engine, awesome for just for fun modders like me.
Shame no Linux support yet though, CryTek was bold enough to get their newest engine working under Linux thats a big plus for them.
Mind blowing really, surely will get my hands on the SDK, 20 USD nothing to go wrong with, also super nice you can cancel any time and still use the engine, awesome for just for fun modders like me.
Shame no Linux support yet though, CryTek was bold enough to get their newest engine working under Linux thats a big plus for them.
so does that mean then if you pay $20 and cancel before the next month you get to carry on using unreal for forever and ever? and the only down side is you don't get updates and support?
so does that mean then if you pay $20 and cancel before the next month you get to carry on using unreal for forever and ever? and the only down side is you don't get updates and support?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer:
When you cancel your subscription, you wont receive access to future releases of Unreal Engine 4, however your login will remain active, and you are free to continue using the versions of Unreal Engine 4 which you obtained as a subscriber under the terms of the EULA.
Heard that some people are running UE4 on kinda low-spec macbooks and such?
I'm getting a PC with 8GB RAM and a good GPU, but iirc it has an dual-core i3 (plus a medium size case..)
You need really good GPU to run it UE4 smoothly.
I have been working on Radeon 7850. it was acceptable. But later switched to GTX 780, and at Effects Demo I had about 50fps. Which I honestly consider quite good result that demo.
Depending on what GPU you getting that i3 will be holding you back. Less with
Radeon, and more with GeForce.
Currently have a i7-2600k and a 7850 2gb along with 16gb of RAM. On the effects map, I get roughly 34 - 45 FPS... seems "ok" but nothing stellar, I'd assume on a more complex map I'd get much lower. Might be time to upgrade my GPU anyway.
Quack: Unless that part of things changed, it's not synced to anything. They're just describing how to use explicit normals to make things look a little less shitty, but that will only work on static objects.
The default import option for meshes is to import normals, this means it imports the vertex normal data from the FBX. These vertex normals -should- match up with whatever was baked. The documentation listed is fairly old, and it's the workflow I use myself. However a few guys at the office have been using 3dsMax2014 with great results. BTW in UE4 importing normals works for both static and skeletal meshes.
Do we have any idea how UE4 handles hair/fur? I remember Epic started toying with it with UE3.9 (Samaritan). I'll be happy if games finally ditch rendering polygonal hair forever (save certain artstyles).
Which was all content driven: Meshes, special material, vertex shader. There should be a material function in UE4 called SplineThicken that will widen the super thin hairs you create. I recommend a mix of this method and the "banana-peel" method for hair since making the bulk out of individual hairs could get expensive. UE4 doesn't have anisotropic shading yet so realistic highlights will be the biggest difficulty.
Lightmaps:
They are a lot more forgiving this time, Like Kevin said a lot of the tricks that were used before aren't really needed. And yes you can use smaller resolutions, the only thing you need to watch for is if you have a texel partially shadowed that can create a larger shadow than you want. Like if some mesh is overlapping another.
A quick explanation of what changed about lightmaps, previously they used directional lightmaps which stored light intensity and color from 3 pre-defined directions in texture space. This means that if a lightmap texel wrapped around a thin object it wouldn't be correct, it would look like the light kept changing direction which gave it a flat look. Now we store a world space spherical harmonic per lightmap texel. Think of it as a super super low res cubemap aligned in worldspace. This more accurately describes the lighting direction.
You really want to use the newer version of UDK if you want to make environments for your portfolio. The lighting, materials, baking, editor, etc is so much nicer to work with and vastly improved. With game art you want to be ahead of the curve, people who didn't want to learn normal maps got left behind, it will be the same with PBR and any new tech.
Replies
You still need to make sure there is some space between islands. What i meant was, if the lightmap UV layout fits your texturing then you can get away with a single UV channel. In any case though, you won't get bleedings as horrible as you would in UDK.
Edit: And you can use very low res. lightmaps and get better results. From my personal experience, UE4's 128 lightmap res quality is almost equal to UDK's 1024.
I have had the beta for a while but I never really did anything with it besides browsing the engine header files, but from the little I looked at it, it didnt seem as nicely organized and designed as Unitys API. Although some of that is all the macro and template crazyness required to turn c++ into a semi modern language.
There should be a post process volume in the level set to Unbound(if not, create one) and that is the world post process volume.
Ah, I see! Thank you, there's one mystery solved. I still can't find the options to modify eye adaptation though, it doesn't seem to be any of the attributes listed in the post process volume.
It also eleminate all forms of indirect lighting. Like reflections,indirect shadowing and global illumination.
You are tight... and not right at the same time. The compile times for 3 lines of code might seem long. But on other hand my project with several thousand lines of code compiled about 30 seconds.
System is setup in way to optimize compilation times for big projects with a lots lines of code.
It is actually other way around. Global Illumination information is baked into light cache, while indirect shadowing and shadows are baked to light maps.
I requested many months ago an option to build only light cache or indirect shadowing, but it doesn't seem like they implemented it yet.
It would eleminate need for lightmaps while retaining some benefits of indirect lighting.
There are plans, but nothing specific.
But they are dedicated to solving this problem since their own game (Fortnite), also suffers from lack of dynamic GI.
basically wanting to start making environments and originally going to use the free UDK which ive now found you can still download. If i was to get Unreal4 is it the same deal? Can I still just make an environment with no intention of making a game as I would the other one or are the tools in Unreal4 so vast would it be a waste?
The way I see it at least I'd have the real version companies would use. But the options are so confusing.
Again sorry for the dumb question.
You can still use the UE4 for everything you used the UDK for, the main two things you'll notice for your use are the faster lightmap process times, faster tessellation, and PBR. Nothing about the UE4 requires you to make a game, but even if you only want to use it for environment work, you need to pay $20 at least once to get an engine build, whether or not you ever update it is up to you.
Of course you can.
edit: Wow this thread is moving fast...
[edit]
Looks like it MIGHT be synched to xnormal: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/Types/Textures/NormalMaps/Creation/index.html
They're saying that the current version if UE4 requires some decent specs, though. I don't have a quad-core processor atm, so I suppose I'm stuck with regular UDK for a while.
I did not expect this to happen this soon
Still waiting on an email back as well
That's polygonal hair.
Hold me tight man, this is going to get rough =[
Yeah, but it seem like I was in middle of queue, so It might take a while
Custom Grid in the editor for the power of 10 or Power of 2 only?
Shame the documentation (for that page anyway) is more: 'do things this way because it works', as opposed to 'this is a common mistake, this is why it's wrong and why, and this is what works and why'. Maybe documentation is still a WIP, I don't know.
Documentation trails behind the actual development of the engine, so sometimes is a little lacking.
Normal mapping primarily.
Both.
Shame no Linux support yet though, CryTek was bold enough to get their newest engine working under Linux thats a big plus for them.
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer:
When you cancel your subscription, you wont receive access to future releases of Unreal Engine 4, however your login will remain active, and you are free to continue using the versions of Unreal Engine 4 which you obtained as a subscriber under the terms of the EULA.
Copied and pasted from https://www.unrealengine.com/faq
I'm getting a PC with 8GB RAM and a good GPU, but iirc it has an dual-core i3 (plus a medium size case..)
Feasible, crash-at-startup, or a fire hazard?
I have been working on Radeon 7850. it was acceptable. But later switched to GTX 780, and at Effects Demo I had about 50fps. Which I honestly consider quite good result that demo.
Depending on what GPU you getting that i3 will be holding you back. Less with
Radeon, and more with GeForce.
Just checked my order, and my GPU is the 2GB model GTX 650
Hilariously, I don't think you can.
Speaking to the normal map questions:
The default import option for meshes is to import normals, this means it imports the vertex normal data from the FBX. These vertex normals -should- match up with whatever was baked. The documentation listed is fairly old, and it's the workflow I use myself. However a few guys at the office have been using 3dsMax2014 with great results. BTW in UE4 importing normals works for both static and skeletal meshes.
Regarding Hair:
This document covers how we created hair for Samaritan: http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/GDC2011/GDC2011EpicNVIDIAComposite.pdf
Which was all content driven: Meshes, special material, vertex shader. There should be a material function in UE4 called SplineThicken that will widen the super thin hairs you create. I recommend a mix of this method and the "banana-peel" method for hair since making the bulk out of individual hairs could get expensive. UE4 doesn't have anisotropic shading yet so realistic highlights will be the biggest difficulty.
Lightmaps:
They are a lot more forgiving this time, Like Kevin said a lot of the tricks that were used before aren't really needed. And yes you can use smaller resolutions, the only thing you need to watch for is if you have a texel partially shadowed that can create a larger shadow than you want. Like if some mesh is overlapping another.
A quick explanation of what changed about lightmaps, previously they used directional lightmaps which stored light intensity and color from 3 pre-defined directions in texture space. This means that if a lightmap texel wrapped around a thin object it wouldn't be correct, it would look like the light kept changing direction which gave it a flat look. Now we store a world space spherical harmonic per lightmap texel. Think of it as a super super low res cubemap aligned in worldspace. This more accurately describes the lighting direction.
Oh crap, I better learn normal maps!
That would be basically all of them, then
God yeah, get with the times Justin