Modular Panels in Cryengine

AlexCatMasterSupreme · Sep 2012

I have really been struggling with making modular parts for an environment. I have read this tutorial, makes sense, I've tried the the part discussed covering meter based engines, and mine still will not work, parts overlap, crap just doesn't look right, things don't align, ect. I would rather not use vertex snapping as that's just sloppy.

Anyway. I can post images but it's nothing really important or worth noting, just what measurements should I use. I tried going, say, 1.0m x .5 meter, then I line them up with snap to grid, they overlap slightly. I just used straight meters, still having the same issue. So I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Thanks in advance.

JamesWild · Sep 2012

The accuracy of both the games engine and the tools you're using is not absolute. Inaccuracies happen (you in fact cannot store the absolute value of 1 using floats - 0 is your only absolute and even then don't expect arithmetic to reliably land right on top of it) and are exacerbated by unit conversions, transformations, perspective transformations. For the most part the values end up close enough that when the vertices are hammered into integers for filling as polygons they line back up but this might be the source of some issues might be this on large maps. I've not read the tutorial as you've not linked it but generally it makes sense to build a series of blockout meshes that follow your design of how things stick together and build some test rooms out of those first so any miscalculations or problems jump out almost immediately.

Eric Chadwick · Sep 2012

Snapping to a grid works the easiest if you keep the panels aligned at 90 degree rotations. If you rotate 45 degrees, the grid won't line up anymore, so you need to either make special angled pieces or you need to scale them to fit. Rotating in other increments makes it even more difficult.

Also the origin is very important when setting up panels on a grid... the origin also needs to be on the same grid as the panel extents. UDN has a great page on this:
http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/WorkflowAndModularity.html#The%20Origin

AlexCatMasterSupreme · Sep 2012

Thanks I'll give that a try tonight.

AlexCatMasterSupreme · Sep 2012

I still am having trouble. If someone wants I can make a video to show it. And what I am attempting to get as a result.

choco · Sep 2012

You might want to stick to generic units (centimeters) and use power of 2 values such as (32,64,128,256,512 etc).
In order to sync your power 2 grid from 3dsmax or maya with CE3, you'll need to use a custom grid in CE3.

16 units = 16 centimeters
This should make things easier texturing wise and modeling wise.

e-freak · Sep 2012

from my experience: stick with meters, setup everything for 1 meter or 50 cm tiles. (and mutlipliers of that).

good starting point is 512 by 512 for 1 meter², depending on what platforms/scale you are planning for you can obviously go higher (or lower) from there on.

personally I think its easier to work with meters in max than to change the grid in CE3 and its also easier to work with real-world scales if you stick to the metric units.

and - what has been said before - try to think with 90° setups at least for the basic layout. once you are happy with spacing and everything, its always easy to make unique assets that can blend into your modular scene.

Modular Panels in Cryengine

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