UDK foliage tool help!!!!

gartht3d · Nov 2012

Hi.

Is there any way to convert instanced meshes placed via the UDK foliage tool, to normal, moveable static meshes?

Also, the meshes placed by the foliage tool have all kinds of shadowing issues after building lights. Is there a way to fix this?

Thanks

Santewi · Nov 2012

As far as I know, you can't convert them to static meshes. The performance would be much worse anyway, as the meshes are instanced in foliage mode and therefore result in less draw calls.

What kind of shadowing issues do you have?

gartht3d · Nov 2012

The issues are only with my small low poly rocks and SOME ont eh white flower meshes I have. It's making them shadow dark and inconsistently. I've circled where the issues are. The flowers should all be that blazing white colour. They are receiving the same light coverage. The rocks....who knows what that is. The only rocks that shade strangely are these, which are low poly version of the medium poly rocks I used everywhere and they all shadow well. Check the images. Cheers Santewi.

Santewi · Nov 2012

So some of the flowers are white just like they should be and some are grayish? Are you using lightmaps on them and is the resolution high enough?

As for the rocks, what does your lightmap UV layout look like (as well as lightmap res)?

gartht3d · Nov 2012

Santewi wrote: »

So some of the flowers are white just like they should be and some are grayish? Are you using lightmaps on them and is the resolution high enough?

As for the rocks, what does your lightmap UV layout look like (as well as lightmap res)?

1. yeah that's exaclty whats happening. I'm using light maps on all foliage. The average resolution is 128

2. the lightmap UV layout is the same as the texture map, with plenty of space between shells. It is only happening on the instances I shrunk, using the inbuilt setting in foliage tool.

thanks again

leleuxart · Nov 2012

I've noticed building the custom lighting with the material works a lot better for foliage. And, up until you create the highlight(following the 3D Motive tutorial, also which foliage doesn't really need), the instruction count is a little bit cheaper than just using a spec map.

I guess it's worth a shot if you want. Lightmaps drive me crazy.

gartht3d · Nov 2012

leleuxart wrote: »

I've noticed building the custom lighting with the material works a lot better for foliage. And, up until you create the highlight(following the 3D Motive tutorial, also which foliage doesn't really need), the instruction count is a little bit cheaper than just using a spec map.

I guess it's worth a shot if you want. Lightmaps drive me crazy.

I didn't use the phong lighting for my foliage like in the 3d motive tute. I found it wasn't as good with transmission for what I wanted.

It's only really happening on a few plants I'm just going to deal with it I think. Maybe play with the normal directions and lightmaps and see what happens. I read somewhere it's an issue with July build of UDK. May was bugged for foliage too. I think I might find an engine without this lightmap/bake business.......

gartht3d · Nov 2012

For anyone interested. This issue was solved by making a scale change to each rock painted with the foliage tool. For some reason, if the mesh is too small, it shades weirdly. No idea why but it fixed it as soon as I increased the min max size from 1-2.5 to 1.5-3. Totally fine, actually looks better. Also, the flowers issue was normal direction related.

Thanks

samohickey · Apr 2014

gartht3d wrote: »

Hi.

Is there any way to convert instanced meshes placed via the UDK foliage tool, to normal, moveable static meshes?

Also, the meshes placed by the foliage tool have all kinds of shadowing issues after building lights. Is there a way to fix this?

Thanks

I'm having this issue, and I've tried what you've mentioned with the sizing used in the foliage tool, however that did not help.

If I don't build the lighting the grass looks fine, but of course, that's not practical:

Once I have built the lighting in UDK, the shading goes extreme. So much black! Although, I'm still learning about lightmaps/normals. On this mesh, for the grass, that was used with the foliage tool in the screenshot below, all I have on my materials is a Diffuse UV map. So I guess that's my problem?:

What I'd really like is for the grass to have no shading at all, but I don't know how to do this with UDK... or if it's an issue with my mesh itself/uv mapping or lack there of?

I've been looking through a few games and how they've done their grass, and a couple that I enjoy don't allow it to give off shadows at all. The games of which I speak of are being run on my PC at their highest graphics setting: simply no shadows applied.

samohickey · Apr 2014

I'm still having an issue with shadows while using the Foliage brush in UDK and I'm not sure if it's because of my static mesh or the UDK foliage brush itself.

I don't have a lightmap for this mesh, wasn't sure if it were needed since it's just grass. All I have is a diffuse on my material.

When I don't rebuild the lighting:

When I do rebuild the lighting:

I would prefer my grass to have no shadows at all, let alone how extremely black it becomes once I've rebuilt the lighting in UDK.
If I don't use the foliage brush to paint the grass onto my environment, then I don't have this issue..
But placing the grass as an individual static mesh repeatedly is not very practical.

I've also tried increasing the min-max size in my foliage tool, no difference for me.

UDK foliage tool help!!!!

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