Learning Modular Design

ArchieVision · Feb 2012

Hello,

I have decided to teach myself modular design, and the 3d modeling pipeline and workflow for hard surfaces from 3DS Max 2012 to UDK. For texturing I am using PS CS5. The model is very simple, only 22 total verts.

I pick a very simple road to start with, and would like some input and some critics on my overall workflow or some hints on the right direction to continue with.

I am still working on the UV's, and I keep getting the UV's Overlapped error, but I intentionally overlapped them to keep the texture and model modular in both direction. Should I do this another way? Will this give me errors?

Also, why are the lines glowing on the road when I do not even have an emmisive channel hooked up?

mole420 · Feb 2012

Your texture has way to much noise , I would go back and add a lot of work to the texture there as loads of tutorials online for creating road textures inside of photoshop. The mesh looks like it tiling nicely your not getting any errors that i can see. The lighting needs to be rebuilt in your level try doing that and see if it fixes the glowing lines, if not post a screenshot of how your material is set up.

ArchieVision · Feb 2012

I rebuilt the lighting in preview mode. That is the picture above. And the Material is just a texture connected to the diffuse. I am going simple, and learning along the way. So I can catch the problems easier as I go.

mole420 · Feb 2012

Try rebuilding the lighting in a higher quality than preview, as your scene is very simple it should be really quick to see if that solves it.

Jessica Dinh · Feb 2012

I think the lines just appear to be glowing because there is Bloom turned on in your UDK World Properties settings maybe. Go to the View tab at the top, World Properties, and from there you can play with the Bloom settings. That may or may not be it, but check it out.

ArchieVision · Feb 2012

Thanks, I will check that out. Also, I was going to use Shadermap Pro to do the Normals, but it is not creating them correctly. So, do you guys know of a tut that teaches you the correct way to create normals for a mesh texture?

mole420 · Feb 2012

There are several programs that can create normals from textures personally I find NDO2 gives the best results really lets you get the what you want. Crazybump is another option really easy to use.

cptSwing · Feb 2012

There's also the xNormal plugins for Photoshop, and the older Nvidia tools. Both convert heightmaps to normal maps (black: low areas; 127 grey: no Z change; white: high areas).

ArchieVision · Feb 2012

Thanks guys. I knew about the xNormal and Nvidia. I have the original NDo tool, NDo 2 is just too rich for my blood. But the problem I am having is the edges keep getting raised when I try to render the Normals. Is there a setting or something that I need to change?

Edit:

I figured it out. Now I have to go back and finish with fixing the Light maps. They are overlapped and you can see it very clear after the light is baked in Production. It is looking better, but the Rocks are still coming out very bright and splotchy to me.

Oniram · Feb 2012

you may want to do a very slight "blend-if" in photoshop on those lines on the road to make it look like they've got some wear in them. and there shouldnt really be a need to make the road have unique uvs for something like this. a flat 2:1 texture (essentially what youve got in the top of your uvs) could work for the asset.

ArchieVision · Feb 2012

Thanks, for the advice. I will try the Blend-if, and see what it looks like. Never used it before, so will be a learning experience.

Learning Modular Design

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