im fairly sure you'd have to make edits to the fbx import to read any custom stuff you hide in the file. the options just aren't there in the importer. you could dump the data to a CSV and import it to a datatable or if it's per vert just encode it in vertex color or UVs
you'd need a way to group the verts that make up the top surface of each stone - vertex colour would probably work. I'm not familiar with DCM so I'm not sure what's exposed to it but presumably you could then apply displacement based on noise or random values etc.
Just combined, no need to merge the vertexes on anything if it looks fine separate. You don't need joined topology for most things. That starts to become an issue once you start animating things that will deform, like people (rigid mechs don't really have to worry about this).
Fixed it! It definitely was that extra face I had floating around in the background. Forgot I had changed the belly button a bit and didn't weld the UV's there. Changing it messed with the vertex order and caused some difficulties, but I managed to save my sculpting job. Everything is great! =]
Not much of an update, but I've got most of the meshes into UDK. Just need some toilets for the far end and some little things here and there. aajohnny suggested that I use a mix of vertex painting and decals for the walls and floor. Going to look into that workflow next and start texturing something.
Theres nothing specifically made to do that Buuuuuuut If you set the scale pivot to the vertex in between the other 2 you can mimic that feature a bit. Worked for me I tried using the Scale/Transform Along normals option but it only gave 50% of whats needed
Looking better :D did you make a whitebox first or are you just making it as you make the meshes? Here is that small tip. Its not that special but it helps for some things where a soft blended vertex mask fails. :) Ignore my terrible tiling textures. lol
I got the same or a similar problem (maya 2010), it happened always when I selected something (vertex,faces...) and then tried to rotate around. By luck I turned my AntiVirus program off (PC Tools Internet Security) and found out that it was the cause of it. stupid programs...
I think my problem with cages is here : you said "pretty much". If I'm using vertex normals I'm sure I get exactly 90 degress since I make sure that my normal are perfectly perpendicular to the face I'm baking on (in this example of course). :\
The roof supports should be curved, and the whole area is too narrow. You could use vertex painting (there are a bunch of examples on youtube) to blend between grating and fungus. The roots would probably be best as geo, and a couple of floating planes around the thickest parts for more volumetric fungus.