One question. Is there a way, in the material editor, to combine three grayscale images into one RGB image? I know there's a way to use a single channel of an RGB for a texture, but that doesn't help me.
Basically, I'm trying to find a way to invert the green channel of a normal map within Unreal4, without having to edit and reimport the texture. But if I send the green channel through a oneminus, I have no way of getting it back into a 3 channel RGB, and back into working order.
One question. Is there a way, in the material editor, to combine three grayscale images into one RGB image? I know there's a way to use a single channel of an RGB for a texture, but that doesn't help me.
Like ZacD metioned, mask out RGB, do your operations, then do an append node with R and G as the inputs with the output of that going into a second append with B.
Is there area lights or use emissive for lightmass?
When you open advanced settings in the material editor there is an option for "Use Emissive for Dynamic Area Lighting." Other than that emissive is useless for static lighting.
I'm gonna come out and say it: Lighting seems like one of the weaker parts of UE4 right now.
No current area light implementation
No specular highlights on translucent surfaces
No lighting contribution from emissive materials?
No IES input for gobo/volumetrics ...?
Unreals lighting has been lagging behind since Cryengine launched. I seriously thought with these new consoles we could finally get rid of lightmaps, but no, seems there still gonna be common place in most UE4 games.
On the light properties there's a divider with a little triangle for advanced settings. There you can set light source radius(area light) light source length (line lights) ies profiles (some should be provided in the engine) light fuctiond( you can provide a 2d texture as a gobo or an animated material). Specular is available on translucency if it's lighting type is set to surface rather than volumetric in the material.
finally got the time to go through the example content last night, was extremely impressed, especially by the particle effects and persistent levels, cloth looks a little buggy though.
gonna have to start bashing my way through the tuts.
On the light properties there's a divider with a little triangle for advanced settings. There you can set light source radius(area light) light source length (line lights) ies profiles (some should be provided in the engine) light fuctiond( you can provide a 2d texture as a gobo or an animated material). Specular is available on translucency if it's lighting type is set to surface rather than volumetric in the material.
I'm especially interested in the mini games and some of the materials - for example the video material samples (don't have a credit card because I pay mostly with paysafecard or by payment on delivery, so I don't have UE4 yet).
Is there a way to download and tun the example content as free standalone applications ? It would be a great way to let users get a feel of what can be achieved with the engine, without having to commit to the purchase - exactly like the citadel iOS app from back then.
Anyone know if I can just copy paste the folder over to a new computer? Havent tried it yet. Back from GDC and cant wait to dive into the source actually.
I'm especially interested in the mini games and some of the materials - for example the video material samples (don't have a credit card because I pay mostly with paysafecard or by payment on delivery, so I don't have UE4 yet).
The mini-game examples are part of the Content Examples asset pack that you can download from the Marketplace after installing UE4, but they're bundled as part of a Blueprints Demonstration Level, so you don't get the same map as the GDC showcase.
I'd also like to get access to that map though, primarily for the camera-to-texture binding stuff and texture filters. I'll ask on the official forum and see if I get anything.
Anyone know if I can just copy paste the folder over to a new computer? Havent tried it yet. Back from GDC and cant wait to dive into the source actually.
I built UE4 on a laptop (a really low-end laptop that took me 3.5 hours to build... but I was just really excited), then I moved the folder with all the built source onto my PC and it just ran normally.
The only problem is that the editor binary will still create project files inside the user folder by the name of the place you moved it from, so if you moved it from a computer with user A to a computer with user B, all project files will be installed under /users/A/Unreal Projects. There may be a way to fix this, but I've not really looked.
Sonshi... all you have to do is set your project folders default option to something else. Say C:\UE4_Projects\"SUBFOLDER / PROJECT NAMES"\ and keep that as default on each machine and it should be easy to go back and forth.
Ah awesome Sonshi and Jesse. Wanted to know if I could save some download bandwith on my end haha :P and working at work/home. Assume the same UPK/Maps workflow is the same from UDK. Got some ideas I wanna tackle though definitely gonna have to brush up on my C++.
On the light properties there's a divider with a little triangle for advanced settings. There you can set light source radius(area light) light source length (line lights) ies profiles (some should be provided in the engine) light fuctiond( you can provide a 2d texture as a gobo or an animated material). Specular is available on translucency if it's lighting type is set to surface rather than volumetric in the material.
Although changing the lighting type to surface does provide some specular highlighting, I've yet to figure out how to get a nice glossy highlight on translucent materials... It's just always this huge wide/rough highlight no matter what I change.
I'm doing this all on materials with no normal maps on simple shapes like spheres/cubes, but it still seems like something that should be possible. Anyone have any luck with this?
On the light properties there's a divider with a little triangle for advanced settings. There you can set light source radius(area light) light source length (line lights) ies profiles (some should be provided in the engine) light fuctiond( you can provide a 2d texture as a gobo or an animated material). Specular is available on translucency if it's lighting type is set to surface rather than volumetric in the material.
The mini-game examples are part of the Content Examples asset pack that you can download from the Marketplace after installing UE4, but they're bundled as part of a Blueprints Demonstration Level, so you don't get the same map as the GDC showcase.
I'd also like to get access to that map though, primarily for the camera-to-texture binding stuff and texture filters. I'll ask on the official forum and see if I get anything.
Thanks for answering that. I watched a video in which someone walked through some of the example levels, but never saw the minigames. Great to know they are in the example pack.
Awesome, I saw your thread and will keep an eye on it. ^^
Is anyone else having issues with lightmass? Swarm keeps crashing even with the most basic of scenes. If I am lucky I can get preview lighting work but nothing really higher. I saw that my firewall was blocking swarm so I disabled it and am still getting issues. My friend mentioned that it might be CPU related. I have and I7 so I dont see how that is the case. I do however notice that the CPU jumps to 100% when baking. Is that normal?
Although changing the lighting type to surface does provide some specular highlighting, I've yet to figure out how to get a nice glossy highlight on translucent materials... It's just always this huge wide/rough highlight no matter what I change.
I'm doing this all on materials with no normal maps on simple shapes like spheres/cubes, but it still seems like something that should be possible. Anyone have any luck with this?
You should check out the Material properties map in the content example project. They added some metallic values to one of the transparent materials to get the reflections to show up.
I also noticed that using a point light will get a specular highlight on the mesh. Although it seems that roughness is not doing anything to the specular highlights from the point light. When I change the values of the roughness the highlight does not get broad or sharp, only the reflections change. So if I wanted to make frosted glass, how would I achieve this in UDK?
Ah awesome Sonshi and Jesse. Wanted to know if I could save some download bandwith on my end haha :P and working at work/home. Assume the same UPK/Maps workflow is the same from UDK. Got some ideas I wanna tackle though definitely gonna have to brush up on my C++.
UPKs are no more. The map is still its own asset, but every asset is a unique file - .uasset. You organize your content via directories as you would with any file on your computer in the content browser. These unique files are also individually saved, source controlled, and loaded.
For anyone doing textures, I highly recommend automatic texture reimporting, and setting up your hotkeys how you like them in preferences. Was able to almost make pairity with some max settings to make it easier and faster to work with the engine. Its much easier to set up in UE4 than it was in UE3 (ini editing, bleh). The setup can be improved, but right now you have to manually copy/paste or type in the listen directory. You can add multiples too!
You should check out the Material properties map in the content example project. They added some metallic values to one of the transparent materials to get the reflections to show up.
I also noticed that using a point light will get a specular highlight on the mesh. Although it seems that roughness is not doing anything to the specular highlights from the point light. When I change the values of the roughness the highlight does not get broad or sharp, only the reflections change. So if I wanted to make frosted glass, how would I achieve this in UDK?
that sounds like a bug to me...the point light shape should change due to roughness.
UPKs are no more. The map is still its own asset, but every asset is a unique file - .uasset. You organize your content via directories as you would with any file on your computer in the content browser. These unique files are also individually saved, source controlled, and loaded.
For anyone doing textures, I highly recommend automatic texture reimporting, and setting up your hotkeys how you like them in preferences. Was able to almost make pairity with some max settings to make it easier and faster to work with the engine. Its much easier to set up in UE4 than it was in UE3 (ini editing, bleh). The setup can be improved, but right now you have to manually copy/paste or type in the listen directory. You can add multiples too!
Thanks for that Moose. Btw in the buffer visualization, there is a composited texture option (sorry forgot the name) but is there a way to re-arrange them? Probably didnt see it after running through it quick at lunch.
not sure if you can rearrange them. However, you can dump out a screenshot of each using the HighResScreenshot tool off of the viewport menu dropdown.
You can box-drag an area to get a specific area, or just hit the button and the viewport will be captured. Setting that slider will set how many times the screen is duplicated to create your shot - ie a 1000x1000 viewport set to 6 will capture a 6000x6000 px image based on the 1000x1000 viewport. Also, all gbuffers will be dumped at that res too.
I recommend caution when using this, save before you do it, in case you run out of memory while screenshots are being saved. They can get massive! It works great, just if you get too happy with your number your machine will get very sad.
not sure if you can rearrange them. However, you can dump out a screenshot of each using the HighResScreenshot tool off of the viewport menu dropdown.
You can box-drag an area to get a specific area, or just hit the button and the viewport will be captured. Setting that slider will set how many times the screen is duplicated to create your shot - ie a 1000x1000 viewport set to 6 will capture a 6000x6000 px image based on the 1000x1000 viewport. Also, all gbuffers will be dumped at that res too.
I recommend caution when using this, save before you do it, in case you run out of memory while screenshots are being saved. They can get massive! It works great, just if you get too happy with your number your machine will get very sad.
This is only kinda related to using UE4 but how does the Unreal 4 download manager work? Do you run it and it downloads and automatically installs the engine?
I have a super low bandwidth cap and there's no way I can download all 8 gigs. Support's no help but all I need is a separate .exe that I can download elsewhere and install locally.
Getting tired of just looking at all the new toys and not getting to actually use them.
This is only kinda related to using UE4 but how does the Unreal 4 download manager work? Do you run it and it downloads and automatically installs the engine?
I have a super low bandwidth cap and there's no way I can download all 8 gigs. Support's no help but all I need is a separate .exe that I can download elsewhere and install locally.
Getting tired of just looking at all the new toys and not getting to actually use them.
you could try downloading the source and building that from github. not terribly difficult.
Wouldn't I need to compile it in Visual Studio then? No clue what I would be doing there at all.
It's really not hard. Download source, in either zip file, or by using any git client (or github client).
Click on GenerateProjectFiles, open project in Visual Studio 2013 (recommended) either Pro or express.
Select Development Editor compilation option on top and Win 64. Under Debug Menu click Build. Take 20min break, and when you will be it should be compiled .
Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. It was very easy to build the sources.
There is a video on the youtube channel of the Unreal Engine that explains everything, and the tutorial on GitHub is also very clear.
Imported my first 3DS Max file! It's just a basic room I modeled in centimeters.
I will add more complex objects and give it texture today. I'm just happy the room is receiving light from the skylight/sun.
I also got nasty streaking artifacts on the walls for not importing smoothing groups. I now know for the future.
Found out point lights with source radius and length work decently well for area light substitutes.
Anyone figure out if there's a way to reduce lightmass seams between flat modular pieces? I'm just using the default architecture assets with snapping.
Replies
Thanks! Here is the difference when plugging in a constant node into the material editor for the spec in UNLIT mode.
One question. Is there a way, in the material editor, to combine three grayscale images into one RGB image? I know there's a way to use a single channel of an RGB for a texture, but that doesn't help me.
Basically, I'm trying to find a way to invert the green channel of a normal map within Unreal4, without having to edit and reimport the texture. But if I send the green channel through a oneminus, I have no way of getting it back into a 3 channel RGB, and back into working order.
There is a checkbox for that now in the texture settings
Hm, how do you open that window? I can't seem to find it.
Like ZacD metioned, mask out RGB, do your operations, then do an append node with R and G as the inputs with the output of that going into a second append with B.
Emissive lighting from lightmass has been removed.
Any good workarounds or tricks to to imitate area lights? Guess I'll have to drop another $20 when that update comes out :P
Open your texture in the Content Browser.
When you open advanced settings in the material editor there is an option for "Use Emissive for Dynamic Area Lighting." Other than that emissive is useless for static lighting.
No current area light implementation
No specular highlights on translucent surfaces
No lighting contribution from emissive materials?
No IES input for gobo/volumetrics ...?
Definitely room for improvement
It is slowly catching up: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?530-How-to-enable-Light-Propagation-Volumes-GI-WIP-AND-BETA
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Resources/ContentExamples/Lighting/index.html
gonna have to start bashing my way through the tuts.
ZING!
That's great to hear, thanks for setting me straight!!
I'm especially interested in the mini games and some of the materials - for example the video material samples (don't have a credit card because I pay mostly with paysafecard or by payment on delivery, so I don't have UE4 yet).
The mini-game examples are part of the Content Examples asset pack that you can download from the Marketplace after installing UE4, but they're bundled as part of a Blueprints Demonstration Level, so you don't get the same map as the GDC showcase.
I'd also like to get access to that map though, primarily for the camera-to-texture binding stuff and texture filters. I'll ask on the official forum and see if I get anything.
I built UE4 on a laptop (a really low-end laptop that took me 3.5 hours to build... but I was just really excited), then I moved the folder with all the built source onto my PC and it just ran normally.
The only problem is that the editor binary will still create project files inside the user folder by the name of the place you moved it from, so if you moved it from a computer with user A to a computer with user B, all project files will be installed under /users/A/Unreal Projects. There may be a way to fix this, but I've not really looked.
Although changing the lighting type to surface does provide some specular highlighting, I've yet to figure out how to get a nice glossy highlight on translucent materials... It's just always this huge wide/rough highlight no matter what I change.
I'm doing this all on materials with no normal maps on simple shapes like spheres/cubes, but it still seems like something that should be possible. Anyone have any luck with this?
Awesome, I saw your thread and will keep an eye on it. ^^
You should check out the Material properties map in the content example project. They added some metallic values to one of the transparent materials to get the reflections to show up.
I also noticed that using a point light will get a specular highlight on the mesh. Although it seems that roughness is not doing anything to the specular highlights from the point light. When I change the values of the roughness the highlight does not get broad or sharp, only the reflections change. So if I wanted to make frosted glass, how would I achieve this in UDK?
UPKs are no more. The map is still its own asset, but every asset is a unique file - .uasset. You organize your content via directories as you would with any file on your computer in the content browser. These unique files are also individually saved, source controlled, and loaded.
For anyone doing textures, I highly recommend automatic texture reimporting, and setting up your hotkeys how you like them in preferences. Was able to almost make pairity with some max settings to make it easier and faster to work with the engine. Its much easier to set up in UE4 than it was in UE3 (ini editing, bleh). The setup can be improved, but right now you have to manually copy/paste or type in the listen directory. You can add multiples too!
that sounds like a bug to me...the point light shape should change due to roughness.
Double click your texture
https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/10362/reflectionsspecularity-on-translucent-materials.html
Thanks for that Moose. Btw in the buffer visualization, there is a composited texture option (sorry forgot the name) but is there a way to re-arrange them? Probably didnt see it after running through it quick at lunch.
You can box-drag an area to get a specific area, or just hit the button and the viewport will be captured. Setting that slider will set how many times the screen is duplicated to create your shot - ie a 1000x1000 viewport set to 6 will capture a 6000x6000 px image based on the 1000x1000 viewport. Also, all gbuffers will be dumped at that res too.
I recommend caution when using this, save before you do it, in case you run out of memory while screenshots are being saved. They can get massive! It works great, just if you get too happy with your number your machine will get very sad.
I get a corrupt image, no matter what.
That is a known bug. You need to use highresshot console command for now.
I have a super low bandwidth cap and there's no way I can download all 8 gigs. Support's no help but all I need is a separate .exe that I can download elsewhere and install locally.
Getting tired of just looking at all the new toys and not getting to actually use them.
you could try downloading the source and building that from github. not terribly difficult.
Wouldn't I need to compile it in Visual Studio then? No clue what I would be doing there at all.
It's really not hard. Download source, in either zip file, or by using any git client (or github client).
Click on GenerateProjectFiles, open project in Visual Studio 2013 (recommended) either Pro or express.
Select Development Editor compilation option on top and Win 64. Under Debug Menu click Build. Take 20min break, and when you will be it should be compiled
There is a video on the youtube channel of the Unreal Engine that explains everything, and the tutorial on GitHub is also very clear.
I already made some little changes, like :
Wow, is that an in-game shot? Maybe I am easily impressed, but that with the gloss looks great, have to check this out when back from hols :O
I will add more complex objects and give it texture today. I'm just happy the room is receiving light from the skylight/sun.
I also got nasty streaking artifacts on the walls for not importing smoothing groups. I now know for the future.
Anyone figure out if there's a way to reduce lightmass seams between flat modular pieces? I'm just using the default architecture assets with snapping.