SFAM - Arhurt

arhurt · February 24, 2009 at 6:16 AM

So I've decided to enter the Scene from a movie competittion from Gameartist.net

Here's my moodboard, should be self-explanatory:

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/Moodboard.jpg]

I decided to take this opportunity and also learn a little bit about the Unreal engine. I've never done such a large scene before and it's proving to be quite a challenge, I'm really enjoying this!

Here is some of my progress so far:

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/Stair003.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/Books002.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/006.jpg]

Now I have a couple of questions:

Does it matter if my mesh is all broken up into pieces for the engine to render? I'm sure this will never become a playable level, but at least the lightning must work correctly (I can use engine created lightmaps). I guess what I want to know is if I can leave holes and open seams in my mesh (I know they are bad for occluding, but performance is not a priority here).

For example. Look at the way I made the bookcases and collums:

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/mesh.jpg]

As you can see they are all separate meshes just meeting at the edges, their vertices are not welded. Is that a problem or is that ok to be done?

I'll likely have a ton more questions later

Scinbed · February 24, 2009 at 10:19 AM

There's no problem with doing it that way. You MIGHT get light leaks under the edges where meshes meet, but I don't think its common enough to worry about. Just make sure everything is aligned correctly and the lighmap uv layout is neat.

Looks nice so far.

arhurt · February 24, 2009 at 5:37 PM

Thanks Slainchild!

What do you mean by a lightmap UV? Do I need to have one extra set of UVs for the lightmaps for any reason, can't I just use my basic UVW mapping for it just as I do for diffuse etc?

Also, here's a question concerning UVWs:

How do I make a section of my model use a small tileable texzture (if even possible)

For instance: The whole pillars and platforms are one big mesh, say that I wanted to make this trim here use a small portion of my texture sheet, how can I do this? Any links to tutorials or examples?

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/tiles.jpg]

KungFuSquirrel · February 24, 2009 at 6:38 PM

You only need to worry about separate lightmap UVs if you're tiling anything on the texture, or if you're not getting the desired results from the normal texture UV (lighting seams, density issues, etc).

Also, don't forget you can set a default lightmap resolution scale in the static mesh properties - it's helpful to do this rather than manually setting via the overridden resolution property on each mesh, though you'll still have to uncheck the override lightmap resolution flag.

Scinbed · February 24, 2009 at 9:03 PM

Yes, you can use your standard UV layout for lightmaps as long as none of it overlaps, else you will get errors in the results.

There's a simple tutorial on Hourences site here: http://book.hourences.com/tutorialsue3lightmap.htm

arhurt · February 24, 2009 at 11:26 PM

Thanks guys, it's really a leap from Source to UnrealEd. The material editor is sooooo neat I love it!

Now another modelling question. Should I bevel the edges of my models, like the pillars below (low and hipoly models in the image)

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/Pillars001.jpg]

arhurt · February 26, 2009 at 1:55 AM

Hey guys, having a lot of trouble here

My imported meshes aren't showing on some viewports!

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/issue01.jpg]

Also, my model looks like crap ingame. I wonder if it's my normalmaps that are the problem, they seem messy to me...

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/issue02.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/issue03.jpg]

Any help is much appreciated

Edit:

I just went back to max and noticed that something is very wrong with the model/maps, I don't know what. Take a look at a render with no lights on the scene (the default max lightning) and how strange it looks. What could cause so much inconsistency between surfaces like that?

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/issue.jpg]

arhurt · February 26, 2009 at 5:35 AM

Ok, managed to fix my normalmaps problems after some reading, and also nailed a few problems with my UVW mapping. Here is the current mesh rendered in max:

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/pillar004.jpg]

But then I imported it in UnrealEd, setup my materials and I still get some freaky stuff. For instance, take a look at the two bottom viewports. I don't know why but they won't display correctly. No meshes show up in them, but the two top ones are fine. I couldn't find a solution anywhere. Now that I know the issue is with UnrealEd and not my model though, I could move on to other things.

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/wtfO_o.jpg]

Now I still get the black lines despite the fact that my normalmaps are ok, check out the difference from UT3 to Max render with the same textures and materials:

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/crappy01.jpg]

robert.briscoe · February 26, 2009 at 9:07 AM

If you cant see meshes in a viewport you probably turned them off by pressing W which toggles meshes on/off

arhurt · February 26, 2009 at 9:09 AM

lol thanks that umm... fixed it

Yeah I'm that new to things.. .and sleep deprived

-HP- · February 26, 2009 at 11:00 AM

Good progresses so far dude, keep up!

Scinbed · February 26, 2009 at 11:38 AM

The black areas on the meshes look like lightmapping errors to me. Like the UV's arent packed well into the UV space and are outside slightly.

KungFuSquirrel · March 8, 2009 at 5:13 AM

Quote from arhurt

lol thanks that umm... fixed it Yeah I'm that new to things.. .and sleep deprived

It's a surprisingly common error with all of the filter types in unreal. I've done it way more times than I care to admit, whether models, volumes, terrain, etc. At least the bigger and farther along your map gets, the more obvious it'll be at a glance

arhurt · March 12, 2009 at 12:44 AM

I've been sidetracked by other stuff but finally I got some more time to work on my entry.

The problem I'm having is that the scene is just so darn big that I have to do a lot of work before I even have a little piece done and presenteable. I'm now working on each piece's UV maps and the basic textures.

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/SFAM_001.jpg]

So far this is the corner I have already implemented on Unreal and ready to be tweaked. I'll have a lot more time to work on this next week so I hope I can make up for the time lost.

Thanks for the help all, I'll keep you posted on it.

arhurt · March 12, 2009 at 3:44 PM

Small update. This morning I managed to get the basic geometry on one side into Unreal, I'll close off the other side and tweak a bit with the lightning later today.

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/SFAM_002.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/SFAM_003.jpg]

BTW: Don't mind the water it's just a placeholder. If anyone has any leads on how to make realtime environment reflections on Unreal I'd really appreciate a few hints.

Lee3dee · March 13, 2009 at 7:01 AM

If you want your meshes to have good lighting, you'll need to create a second UV channel for each mesh exported. I had to learn this from the artists on BIA: Hell's Highway which helps to produce good clean light maps. The light map cannot contain overlapping uvs, you can use automatic unwrap, as long as they are contained in the 0-1 uv box. In 3dsmax its relatively easy, you just change to UV2 in the unwrap modifier.

arhurt · March 13, 2009 at 3:28 PM

Thanks Lee3dee, but if you mean the weird lightning on the double staircases it's because I mirrored them but the normalmap got inverted because I rotated those faces 90º on the UVW, pretty dumb thing to do.

Here's where I'm at now:

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/SFAM_006.jpg]

Now comes my favorite part: Texturing!

JeanPaul · March 13, 2009 at 6:27 PM

The sky feels very quake 3 like (no, thats not a compliment, its kind of flat)

But the rest is looking lovely

arhurt · March 13, 2009 at 11:55 PM

Thanks JeanPaul, that sky is just a placeholder.

Managed to get some more done today:

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/SFAM_007.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b183/Arhurt/3D%20art/SFAM_008.jpg]

There are a few flipped faces on the ceiling, but I like how it turned out. Now I need to start filling those shelves with books and making the centerpiece fountain as well as the boat and a few floating tables and candles.

cincinnati · March 14, 2009 at 9:18 PM

haven't seen the film, but that's straight outta Étienne-Louis Boullée from the 1700s, btw

[Blocked Image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fd/%C3%89tienne-Louis_Boull%C3%A9e_Nationalbibliothek.jpg]

looks good so far.

SFAM - Arhurt

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