I was under the impression he wanted the image mapped to the object to be oriented to the camera kinda like the macro UV texture for particles, I could be confused.
I was thinking he wanted the object to always face the camera, but I see what you mean now too...
Rasmus - WTF do you want! haha
Anyway, this may be a question for another forum BUT:
Do you know how I can get a meshes surface normal in UnrealScript? The only variable I need is which direction a plane is facing but I have no idea how to reference to this in UnrealScript...
Aww, you guys Not deforming the geo, Neox, Jordan is on the money. Care to illustrate how you'd do it, Jordie luv?
Grimm: That might be what I want, will try it, kind of hard to say without seeing it move I suppose, but involving post fx, I dunno... Ultimately what I'm looking to do is to be able to have a solid "center" of an object defined with a radial gradient bitmap that's always looking at the camera, and stays roughly within the bounds of the object.
Aww, you guys Not deforming the geo, Neox, Jordan is on the money. Care to illustrate how you'd do it, Jordie luv?
Grimm: That might be what I want, will try it, kind of hard to say without seeing it move I suppose, but involving post fx, I dunno... Ultimately what I'm looking to do is to be able to have a solid "center" of an object defined with a radial gradient bitmap that's always looking at the camera, and stays roughly within the bounds of the object.
Ah...Then no what I put up isn't what you want. It basically just takes a texture and slaps it on the camera. I worked at a Mat using what Jordan was suggesting, but I got hit with a case of ftw, and couldn't figure it out. I'll keep at it and if I figure it out I'll throw it up here. If you or someone else does before me though (more than likely what will happen), I'd like to see the shader set up
Hey guys - question. Is there really any advantage to using UDK's terrain, as opposed to a static mesh? I'm sure it all is contextual, but could someone explain the reasons for using terrain as opposed to static mesh, and vice versa?
Hey guys - question. Is there really any advantage to using UDK's terrain, as opposed to a static mesh? I'm sure it all is contextual, but could someone explain the reasons for using terrain as opposed to static mesh, and vice versa?
Thank you!
Performance. Unreal terrain would be faster. No reason you can't mix the two though.
I am trying to light an animating mover and static mesh. I did a quick search and nothing came up so apologies if this has been solved before.
I have a generator with an animating wheel. They are imported as two static meshes with the wheel then being converted to a mover in the editor.
As you can see, the wheel is awfully dark and has poor lighting in comparison to the static mesh.
We tried several different materials, lighting conditions and stock UDK assets to see if the problem was with my mesh/material but the problem is still present.
SM left, Mover right;
Is there a way to fix this? I would really like to keep the wheel animating if possible.
The light environment was already enabled and this is the new lighting build with sythensize SH light on. It's a little better but not much of a difference =(
does anyone know how to make it so the in-game character moves slower?
I think you can do it in the animation editor or matinee. Or go to actor properties>Skeletal Mesh Component>AnimNodeSequence>Rate Scale. This is per instance and per actor. You can do it in the Animation Set Editor and set the Rate Scale, this one is for all actors using the animation.
You can trigger events to slow animations down too.
I am pretty sure .ase does support exporting normals (at least max has the option to export them). Unreal does not import them though, which sucks. I would be surprised but happy if .fbx works.
I had a problem recently on almost all my pictures that used tiledshot in UT3:
This is really annoying as I cant do anything with this material. I'd like to know if you guys know a workaround to this. It may be caused by some decals further away on my map, at close range ingame it does this when the camera enters a decal volume:
Ok UDK is driving me nuts right now. I am importing an ASE file but it is simply not showing up in the browser afterwards...
It uses 2 UV channels. The second one is all properly unique no overlaps..
I removed all the vertex channels...
Its also a closed mesh now even though I wonder why it needs to be since many assets in the UDK builds are open meshes. "why did they bring this back since we never had to do this in Ut3..."
Also has an actual material assigned to it inside 3dsmax. Yet it refuses to import the evil SUCKER. Before I had the Vertex Ratio 25 percent warning but that went away with a second UV and closed mesh. Now its just not importing at all... Sigh
Any ideas what else can trip up importing static meshes in the new UDK builds that has changed from normal Ut3 guys?
THANKS!
!!UPDATE!! Note to self... the new UDK navigation can be very useful if you are use to it... and if not certain text filters will make it so you dont see what you just imported.. DOH!.. so it worked in the end. Just had to turn off ALL filters... sigh..
So if anyone else runs into an issue like that also make sure to check that you did not have some name filters on my mistake hehe.
"Skiffy the junkyard monster tosses the computer off into the distance..."
Need help get the mirroring to work. Arms working properly.
The knee and hips getting twisted.
Also I have joints at the tip of the fingers,toe and head, but the udk skeletons doesnt have them. Does the joint orientation matter on those bones? Or should I just get rid of them, isn't it easier to keep them for the skinning.
I was wondering if there are any tutorials about on creating cube maps in UDK, im trying to get a wall to give off a slight reflection, but am unsure how I would go about it.
I was wondering if there are any tutorials about on creating cube maps in UDK, im trying to get a wall to give off a slight reflection, but am unsure how I would go about it.
I have a few questions. Hoping you guys can help!
1. When using a prefab, can you move the prefab origin so when you duplicate it, you don't have to mess with moving the object origin all over again? Im talking about the square P symbol.
2. Is there any other way to group objects other than using a prefab? I'd like something similar to grouping in Maya, just so I can move a set of objects around for modular use.
If I can get a prefab/group (or even a selection marquee tool) going on, it'd save me tons of time when selecting objects to be duplicated (modular pieces).
Now that Max 2011 has a node based material editor, would it ever be possible to create custom material nodes that convert directly to UDK? Like some sort of UDK material plugin that gives you all the nodes found in UDK.
Just thinking out loud, this would be neat, but I think I remember reading that a lot of Slate isn't exposed to Maxscript so it might not be possible at this stage...
I had a problem recently on almost all my pictures that used tiledshot in UT3:
This is really annoying as I cant do anything with this material. I'd like to know if you guys know a workaround to this. It may be caused by some decals further away on my map, at close range ingame it does this when the camera enters a decal volume:
Any chance to get rid of the black box ?
Hey I think I sort of fixed it myself, I just set the cull distance of the decals to make the decals disapear within range and now I can tiledshot without a problem.
I was playing around with it but I get the seam on the mesh.
**Nevermind, I think I may have figured it out. I was importing my normal map under the wrong compression setting. It's instead of TC_default, it should have been using TC_normalmap.
Does any of you know a way to export a skeletal mesh from unreal back to 3dsmax? I dont care about the rig, skinning, smoothing groups, not even if the triangles are attached to eachother. as long as it still has uv's its fine.
It comes with UDK april release, although it's mainly a small walk around area to show off some effects then a cinematic trigger that flys around and shows off everything else in the level (which looks really good).
yea it looks dope. I was a bit suprised at some of the polycounts of objects, 20k tris for one of their trees, but i guess its for the demo, those huge background rock elements look awesome.
Is there a way to increase tiling of Terrain Materials?
I know increasing the tesselation results in more tiling but I'm sure that's not the correct way if you just want to up the tiling on the material itself.
Is there a way to increase tiling of Terrain Materials?
I know increasing the tesselation results in more tiling but I'm sure that's not the correct way if you just want to up the tiling on the material itself.
Thanks
You can edit the scale in your terrain material, which you autogenerate when creating a new terrain layer.
Im having trouble with shadows across multiple objects.
1) Im guessing its the ground creating this shadow. Could disable 'recive shadows' to fix I guess.
2) My biggest problem is incorrect shadows. Here the ground is reciving the right shadow, but the stairs are not. Solution? The lightmap uvw is fine afaik. Tried to increase the resolution, to no avail.
Did anyone check out the P_FX_SmokeCollum particle system included in the GDC demo package? It shows a new feature that is awesome for creating some realistic and volumetric effects.
I have tried recreating it, and I've got a pretty good handle on the material shader. However, looking at it in the Cascade editor, there is a Dynamic expression with four parameters. In trying to recreate this, I was unable to conjure up these parameters to work for me.
Anyone else have any luck with it, or care about this?
Im having trouble with shadows across multiple objects.
1) Im guessing its the ground creating this shadow. Could disable 'recive shadows' to fix I guess.
2) My biggest problem is incorrect shadows. Here the ground is reciving the right shadow, but the stairs are not. Solution? The lightmap uvw is fine afaik. Tried to increase the resolution, to no avail.
Have yet to download the april release, so we'll see I guess. Strange part is that its the only region causing problems ( black spots), the same stairs are reused elsewhere w/o this problem.
scumworks: Off the top of my head that looks like some vertex-lit stairs, which would explain why occluded (buried) verts get 100% black. Or, on second thought, it also looks like you have some seriously messed-up smoothing groups going on. Try hardening the smoothing.
I did a search and can't seem to find anything on this subject, but does anyone know of any tutorials on how to make rocks like you find in the gdc 2010 udk demo? I know theres a billion rock tutorials out there, but these are so spot on, i'd like to try to recreate it.
Seems like it may be a problem with the terrain. I tried reshaping it to see the results, only to find that the lightmaps on the stairs didnt update/change (this is with a 'build all'). Wasnt until I did a specific 'build geometry' that it updated. Strange no?
I did a search and can't seem to find anything on this subject, but does anyone know of any tutorials on how to make rocks like you find in the gdc 2010 udk demo? I know theres a billion rock tutorials out there, but these are so spot on, i'd like to try to recreate it.
Seems like a lot of people are making rocks right now!
I linked a couple of suggestions in another thread earlier:
and as was mentioned already, the Wiki has some great stuff too.
I don't know how those rocks in GDC demo were made for sure but they look pretty straightforward to replicate.
Just get a huge block basemesh into your sculpting app and start sculpting. Claytubes/PlanarCut/Polish and Surface Noise with tweaked curves are gonna be your main weapons of choice. Then just retopo, bake and texture.
CGTextures has some amazing rock textures as well as some good ref so you should be able to produce some nice looking results without too much effort.
Replies
I think Neox's way would be the first thing I tried, although I'm not very smart with advanced materials either :P
Rasmus - WTF do you want! haha
Anyway, this may be a question for another forum BUT:
Do you know how I can get a meshes surface normal in UnrealScript? The only variable I need is which direction a plane is facing but I have no idea how to reference to this in UnrealScript...
Screen Space Mask
You apply the material to a material effect node in the 'PostProcessing_console' chain in the Hit FX package.
If not, an illustration would be helpful.
Your link no worky sir!
OK nevermind it does now...
Grimm: That might be what I want, will try it, kind of hard to say without seeing it move I suppose, but involving post fx, I dunno... Ultimately what I'm looking to do is to be able to have a solid "center" of an object defined with a radial gradient bitmap that's always looking at the camera, and stays roughly within the bounds of the object.
Ah...Then no what I put up isn't what you want. It basically just takes a texture and slaps it on the camera. I worked at a Mat using what Jordan was suggesting, but I got hit with a case of ftw, and couldn't figure it out. I'll keep at it and if I figure it out I'll throw it up here. If you or someone else does before me though (more than likely what will happen), I'd like to see the shader set up
Thank you!
I am trying to light an animating mover and static mesh. I did a quick search and nothing came up so apologies if this has been solved before.
I have a generator with an animating wheel. They are imported as two static meshes with the wheel then being converted to a mover in the editor.
As you can see, the wheel is awfully dark and has poor lighting in comparison to the static mesh.
We tried several different materials, lighting conditions and stock UDK assets to see if the problem was with my mesh/material but the problem is still present.
SM left, Mover right;
Is there a way to fix this? I would really like to keep the wheel animating if possible.
Thanks!
You can trigger events to slow animations down too.
This is really annoying as I cant do anything with this material. I'd like to know if you guys know a workaround to this. It may be caused by some decals further away on my map, at close range ingame it does this when the camera enters a decal volume:
Any chance to get rid of the black box ?
It uses 2 UV channels. The second one is all properly unique no overlaps..
I removed all the vertex channels...
Its also a closed mesh now even though I wonder why it needs to be since many assets in the UDK builds are open meshes. "why did they bring this back since we never had to do this in Ut3..."
Also has an actual material assigned to it inside 3dsmax. Yet it refuses to import the evil SUCKER. Before I had the Vertex Ratio 25 percent warning but that went away with a second UV and closed mesh. Now its just not importing at all... Sigh
Any ideas what else can trip up importing static meshes in the new UDK builds that has changed from normal Ut3 guys?
THANKS!
!!UPDATE!! Note to self... the new UDK navigation can be very useful if you are use to it... and if not certain text filters will make it so you dont see what you just imported.. DOH!.. so it worked in the end. Just had to turn off ALL filters... sigh..
So if anyone else runs into an issue like that also make sure to check that you did not have some name filters on my mistake hehe.
"Skiffy the junkyard monster tosses the computer off into the distance..."
The knee and hips getting twisted.
Also I have joints at the tip of the fingers,toe and head, but the udk skeletons doesnt have them. Does the joint orientation matter on those bones? Or should I just get rid of them, isn't it easier to keep them for the skinning.
I was wondering if there are any tutorials about on creating cube maps in UDK, im trying to get a wall to give off a slight reflection, but am unsure how I would go about it.
Thanks.
Check out the render to texture stuff on UDN.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/RenderToTexture.html
1. When using a prefab, can you move the prefab origin so when you duplicate it, you don't have to mess with moving the object origin all over again? Im talking about the square P symbol.
2. Is there any other way to group objects other than using a prefab? I'd like something similar to grouping in Maya, just so I can move a set of objects around for modular use.
If I can get a prefab/group (or even a selection marquee tool) going on, it'd save me tons of time when selecting objects to be duplicated (modular pieces).
Thanks!
EDIT:
It only works in orthographic viewports though.
April UDK Beta is out!
Just thinking out loud, this would be neat, but I think I remember reading that a lot of Slate isn't exposed to Maxscript so it might not be possible at this stage...
Hey I think I sort of fixed it myself, I just set the cull distance of the decals to make the decals disapear within range and now I can tiledshot without a problem.
I was playing around with it but I get the seam on the mesh.
**Nevermind, I think I may have figured it out. I was importing my normal map under the wrong compression setting. It's instead of TC_default, it should have been using TC_normalmap.
Does any of you know a way to export a skeletal mesh from unreal back to 3dsmax? I dont care about the rig, skinning, smoothing groups, not even if the triangles are attached to eachother. as long as it still has uv's its fine.
this isnt possible, I had this problem a while ago aswell and it was discussed with one of our programmers who told us it isnt supported
The april one comes with the GDC Demo..
here are some pics.
These pics look very similar to uncharted chapter 2 level.
Thanks Haiddasalami, I will get a read through that.
Damn, that UDK map looks great. Where can you download it?
Cheers.
Is there a way to increase tiling of Terrain Materials?
I know increasing the tesselation results in more tiling but I'm sure that's not the correct way if you just want to up the tiling on the material itself.
Thanks
You can edit the scale in your terrain material, which you autogenerate when creating a new terrain layer.
Can find it in your level package.
1) Im guessing its the ground creating this shadow. Could disable 'recive shadows' to fix I guess.
2) My biggest problem is incorrect shadows. Here the ground is reciving the right shadow, but the stairs are not. Solution? The lightmap uvw is fine afaik. Tried to increase the resolution, to no avail.
I have tried recreating it, and I've got a pretty good handle on the material shader. However, looking at it in the Cascade editor, there is a Dynamic expression with four parameters. In trying to recreate this, I was unable to conjure up these parameters to work for me.
Anyone else have any luck with it, or care about this?
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ContentBlog.html#Cascaded%20Shadow%20Maps%20and%20_DominantDirectionalLightMovable
Have yet to download the april release, so we'll see I guess. Strange part is that its the only region causing problems ( black spots), the same stairs are reused elsewhere w/o this problem.
Seems like it may be a problem with the terrain. I tried reshaping it to see the results, only to find that the lightmaps on the stairs didnt update/change (this is with a 'build all'). Wasnt until I did a specific 'build geometry' that it updated. Strange no?
Will do some more test and post any finds.
/casp
@gannonroader
Theres some tuts on the wiki .
http://wiki.polycount.net/Digital_Sculpting
Seems like a lot of people are making rocks right now!
I linked a couple of suggestions in another thread earlier:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=72349
and as was mentioned already, the Wiki has some great stuff too.
I don't know how those rocks in GDC demo were made for sure but they look pretty straightforward to replicate.
Just get a huge block basemesh into your sculpting app and start sculpting. Claytubes/PlanarCut/Polish and Surface Noise with tweaked curves are gonna be your main weapons of choice. Then just retopo, bake and texture.
CGTextures has some amazing rock textures as well as some good ref so you should be able to produce some nice looking results without too much effort.