Unreal Engine 3 updates

yeah for prototyping! BSP is where the party is at

Quote from 2d-chris

yeah for prototyping! BSP is where the party is at

Why do you think so? I really see no advantage that bsp has these days. Maybe a bit more control and freedom for the level designer but thats something that gets lost anyway with the job becoming more and more specialized. Visualy it doesn't make a difference on what your engine is based as long as the renderer, art assets and everything is top notch. The main difference is in the workflow and in that regard bsp is just a painfull thing from the past.

I strongly disagree, I have years of 3d modelling experience and if you are blocking out and prototyping a level there is a high amount of iteration and testing and bsp is the most durable, fast and efficient method of doing this. Going back and forth between two programs and reimporting etc is not good workflow.

I've had plenty of experience with U3 and source to make a good comparison. Unreal's BSP is a hard beast to tame and lighting bsp surfaces in is hideous - no smoothing or curved surfaces, big ugly Lightmaps seams everywhere where the BSP unncessarily cuts up faces and the texture/alignment tools are terrible, and of course rebuilding to see your changes is not efficient. Like i said it wins in every other aspect as far as im concerned but Epic have really neglected the BSP side of things, I mean they even removed some BSP features that were from the 2004 engine.

Modeling a mock up IS easier, but as said, export importing etc is indeed not exactly very fun. I rather rebuild/compile BSP than exporting importing meshes all the time really.

So for me the way to go would be an engine that can read for example .max files, and auto reload that file as soon as it is modified. That way you can just do ctrl s in Max, and your changed floorplan shows up in the game. Unity does this I believe, and I believe this is the next big thing for tools to do really. It is a shame Unreal, however simple its importing process is, doesn't allow you to speed up that process even more.

Also I dont think BSP is a bad thing to have. I think UE3 does it pretty well really. You dont HAVE TO use BSP in UE3, it is just one of the options available, and I like that really. Options are good. Tools shouldnt force a choice on you, or at least as little as possible.

What you discuss now is really more of concern for the artists. In Diesel engine i don't necessarely have to switch around modeling program and level editor as a level designer. We have like a set of legos (different sized and shaped models) that we use for doing the map layouts. This works _a lot_ faster then doing the map layouts with brushes.

And i would estimate that if all art assets are provided i can create a whole map in like 10-20% of the time that a similarly detailed map would take me in Source or Radiant.

Using modular content is not modeling. Well it was made through modeling of course, but if you say "model a mock up" that for me means doing what you would have done with brushes, but in a modeling package. Using existing modular meshes is more like a third way of building a mock up/real level. Could work as well of course.

I dont see why modeling an entire floorplan is such a bad idea. Plenty of studios do this. It would basically work the same as using BSP in combination with some meshes. There are certainly some cons to this approach, just like there are also some cons to using just modular bits and pieces everywhere. Kind of depends on the situation really. Indoor basement level vs large open landscape for example.

uhm... bsp is just a way of storing visual clusters... i am wondering what format you people are using if you're not using bsp, because you make it sound like you've found a better way to store clusters...

Quote from Sentura

uhm... bsp is just a way of storing visual clusters... i am wondering what format you people are using if you're not using bsp, because you make it sound like you've found a better way to store clusters...

Most modern engines are based on deferred rendering which is different to BSP methods that Source quake and other older engines use. For unreal BSP is kind of a bridge between the UE2 and UE3. In Unreal 3 you really dont need BSP at all if you dont want it which is probably why the BSP feels neglected.

I don't think anyone suggested that BSP is still alive from an artistic or even performance point of view. The only real advtange of using solids for game development is for fast prototypes of layouts, scales and player leading.

It's not about level designers being lazy or not wanting to learn modeling, it's about understanding what part of game development you are expected to master. With a AAA title, the days of one guy making a layout, art pass and scripting are almost gone.

Yes you CAN use max/maya for rough layouts, but i'd rather have the option to adjust everything in seconds than have to fart around in a 3d program. I've had experience making everything in maya and exporting to Unreal, it's not a bad approach but defintely slower. it depends on what stage of a project you are working on, how much your expected to change a layout and when you consider a whitebox ready for an art pass.

Lets also not forget 3d max per license isnt exactly cheap, where as a UED lisence can be shared for anyone on the project.

Just when you consider the game engine and pipeline to be so important, take a look at Valve ... the ability to change a layout drastically AFTER an art pass is done undoubtably helps them create some of the best games in the industry.

Chris, as i already wrote for Diesel we use a set of lego like models for the rough layout. That is way faster then brushing because we will just overlap and wildly angle stuff to get the shapes that we want. It doesnt matter at this stage because it will be replaced anyway. And there is no fear that something could break the map or hurt performance like this would be the case for bad brushwork.

Quote from 2d-chris

Just when you consider the game engine and pipeline to be so important, take a look at Valve ... the ability to change a layout drastically AFTER an art pass is done undoubtably helps them create some of the best games in the industry.

This is a really bad example because this is exactly where i feel that source is way behind. You have to fix so many tiny things afterwards alone to make the map compilable again. I did some serious layout changes for bionic commando within a couple of hours. When i was on Insurgency stuff like this always took 1-2 days to fix and was a real pain in the ass to do.

Quote from Pericolos0

again, im not saying to create an entire layout in max or maya, I also think thats a very bad workflow. I'm suggesting using modular meshes to create your layouts with. Quick pieces of geometry you block out in a modelling program and place as if they were brushes. This way it also takes seconds to move around stuff in your editor, except your not working with blocks but nicely defined pieces of geometry that can be made into good artwork. No flat surfaces everywhere with tiling textures but an organised set of instanced geometry. Nicely defined pieces of geometry you can give to an artist. This is where level design is inevitably heading, and alot of companies are working this way. But yeah you guys can be the dinosaurs of game development and keep using brushes, sorry to sound like hessi here .

Anyway i'm just saying i really believe this is a way more efficient way of creating levels, and you should really try it more, good recent example i've seen on mapcore was nurb's unreal3 level in the wip thread.

this actually gets me thinking. it could be cool if you could import modular pieces from another file to the current one, and then, if you change the piece itself, the reference would also update. if it can be done within the sphere of programming, then why not in the sphere of modeling?

Yeah but my point being even with a pretty dated pipeline you can make the years best game it's not about what you use but more about what you do with it.

There are tons of ways you can make levels, but suggesting that BSP (solids) is a dated and doomed method is not really correct, if you keep it in perspective of what it's used for

Quote from 2d-chris

Lets also not forget 3d max per license isnt exactly cheap, where as a UED lisence can be shared for anyone on the project.

You dont neccy need Max though if you are only going to do some simple floorplans. Plenty of other and much cheaper programs can also do that. Silo for example.

So Peris, exactly how would you build a large open landscape with a large surrounding mountain ring a la demon army camp in SB with using just modular pieces and lets say you had no actual unreal terrain available to make the floor with? Sure it is doable, but would it be that much easier/nicer in that specific situation? I dont think so really.

Thats where modeling the entire thing comes in, even when it is only just a mock up. Now the details on top would be modular of course.

The same thing can be extrapolated to small indoor levels. And that is what Unreal does, and has been doing for 6 years now. Unique shells, with modular details. Instead of all modular.

If you go all modular, you get a game like Oblivion or Fallout, and it is cool, but it does look less defined sometimes.

The bottom line is that it is not just black and white. This sucks, that rules. This depends on the specific game, the specific needs, the skills of the artists and designers, the budget, the time, etc. A game like Fallout benefits from it as they need this approach to save time since the game is so huge. A game like Spellborn benefits from it because it is lower budget and a small team, thus you need to speed it up as much as possible. A big budget title however does not neccy require this. They can take the time to get a higher level of quality going, and that is good. Killzone for example was built like this, even its mockups. And I am not saying that is the best game ever, or that they had a very speedy production, but if you have the budget and money for it is not neccy a bad thing.

Quote from Steppenwolf

Why do you think so? I really see no advantage that bsp has these days. Maybe a bit more control and freedom for the level designer but thats something that gets lost anyway with the job becoming more and more specialized. Visualy it doesn't make a difference on what your engine is based as long as the renderer, art assets and everything is top notch. The main difference is in the workflow and in that regard bsp is just a painfull thing from the past.

Modding.

Quote from Pericolos0

Well having to compile a level and then start up the game to play it is not a good workflow either imo. Working in unreal editor with max open next to it to work on the geometry of your meshes works pretty well i think, importing and exporting takes just a few clicks, and you'll be doing most of the actual leveldesign work in unrealed anyway, moving around modular meshes. I've felt alot more free and capable doing leveldesign once i stopped using brushes. And yes you'll be doing iterations on the geometry, but changing around geometry is way faster in a modelling program than changing around brushes, so the extra 5 seconds it takes for importing/exporting is no problem at all really, you can set up a really good workflow for this if your editor has good asset management. Like unreal's unit browser or cryengine which will export it straight from max into the editor basically.

How about creating collision hull for all of these modular pieces ? Does it consumes much time since the way Unreal handles collision through any modeling package is a real pain in the arse ? Or do you simply use the Collision Tool in the Static Mesh Editor ?

did i miss something or are the NEW features not public yet ?

did the announcement of the announcement alone really yield a 5 page thread ?!

It's more of a _how do I like to make levels_ disscusion than about Unreal Engine

http://g4tv.com/trailers/hdvideos/37413 ... ailer.html

i never had a beef wit hthe old content browser but dragging materials on obejcts to assign is nice to have !

- emmisive textures emitting light ( asthe name implies)

- and penumbras

- and golabl illumination in their ligthmaps

all that should have been there since 1998 !!!