Learning UE4

Yes you can tweak pretty much everything in parameters. Don't really see what's the point. It's not like you will reuse that material a hundred times in the same level. The reverse engineering is pretty difficult because the material is so complex that it takes a minute to recompile after every change. That whole material setup feels like it's going a bit against the trend of making things easier for artists. I mean i've spent a couple days now already to work out a workflow from world machine to ue4 and i'm still kinda stuck at the basics inside ue4. I don't remember exactly but how long did it take me to figure out terrain layering in cryengine. 1 hours, 2 hours maybe? Granted there is a shitload of control in UE4. It's just that in my opinion it's complete overkill for basic stuff.

Quote from 2d-chris

does the material editor not have presets for basic material types like terrain blends? even when I used UDK i had to make the basic shader graph for a terrain setup, surely this could be a preset of some kind.

It's easy to set up a very basic terrain layering. The fun starts when it gets a little more complex. I managed to get my layers in from WM and the albedos also blend well from a distance. But on close up there was just one normal for everything. Adding more meant i went over the 16 texture input limits. So now i first have to scale down from WM. Reduce it to 3 maybe 4 layer outputs. Then figure out in UE4 how to blend everything nice and crisp on closeup, make different materials for close and near distance using the same texture inputs and also how to create a couple more diverse extra layers for level designers to work with (also via the same texture inputs and magic).

They put everything in parameters so you don't have to recompile the shader everytime you want to tweak something. I think if you want great detail up close and far away, you should just make a separate landscape and shader for each. They said in the latest stream that they are working on some new solutions for really big terrains though.

Good point there about the parameters and recompile. Didn't thought about that. It's a new way of thinking about how to texture my stuff after having worked for so long on source engine and only briefly on cryengine.

I read on Unreal forum they plan to raise the texture input limit to 32. That would solve most of my problems.

I didn't know where I could post this so...videos about lighting rendering in UE4 :

Saw this this morning, the author said all scenes were running around 60 - 80 fps, incredible renders, this is truly what i expect when i hear next-gen.

Solid move in VFX community for this guy

Well yeah there's nothing else in the scene so if it's running anything less than that I'd be a bit worried!

Really good, always loved good lighting combined with simple geometry, this isn't about looking "real" as far as i'm concerned, but rather well directed in terms of artistic lighting. Real life lighting is usually very boring - hence why we have cinematographers and photographers who specifically look for the "right" kind of light for the scene they are working on, often or not if it can't be done naturally it's added in artificially. Very cool and a step forward.

Interesting reading through his thread on how he put it all together, quite simple lighting generally with some clever tricks (shining a spotlight at a plane facing away from the room to generate indirect lighting/GI within the room for example) and also simple BSP brushwork, quickly unwrapped and textured:

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?28163-ArchViz-Lighting 

Quote from Em

Saw this this morning, the author said all scenes were running around 60 - 80 fps, incredible renders, this is truly what i expect when i hear next-gen.

Solid move in VFX community for this guy

But the geometry is all static and there is no game logic running.

Quote from 0kelvin

But the geometry is all static and there is no game logic running.

That was my point Pretty low FPS for an empty scene

I don't think you can say that, unless you have knowledge of what a scene is with nothing in it, on his PC

Sorry if this is the wrong thread but I don't fully understand the subscription thing yet. If I subscribe now, get Unreal 4.4. Stop subscribing and in 5 months I subscribe again for one month, do I get all the changes in between version 4.4 and whatever version we'll have at that time? Free of cost? How does porting go, will my project be compatible or will "hopping" over a whole set of updates make that difficult?

Yep, subscribe whenever and you get the latest version and all updates in between. They also have an auto-updater which updates your projects to the new version automatically, though some stuff may break.

hmm, I was wondering about the upgrading too and whether it would break your projects.

I am so close to paying.

Quote from Vilham

hmm, I was wondering about the upgrading too and whether it would break your projects.

I am so close to paying.

In my experience so far I've updated two editor versions and transferred my project between both. The only issue so far has been that a blueprint door with a timeline in it now throws up errors on load, which I can't find reference to online. The door works fine though, so I'm not sure if it's a massive issue. I tried re-making the timeline but the error persists. Annoyingly also you have to re-download any tutorial projects every time you upgrade, as they all change to work with the newest version, and some of these are 2-3gb.

All else seems ok, though my project isn't that complex yet. I'd say give it a go and buy a month's subscription, cancelling it straight away. It's pretty cheap and a month should include at least two different editor versions.

Quote from PaulH

In my experience so far I've updated two editor versions and transferred my project between both. The only issue so far has been that a blueprint door with a timeline in it now throws up errors on load, which I can't find reference to online. The door works fine though, so I'm not sure if it's a massive issue. I tried re-making the timeline but the error persists. Annoyingly also you have to re-download any tutorial projects every time you upgrade, as they all change to work with the newest version, and some of these are 2-3gb.

All else seems ok, though my project isn't that complex yet. I'd say give it a go and buy a month's subscription, cancelling it straight away. It's pretty cheap and a month should include at least two different editor versions.

Just one addition/catch from my side: If you want to build a level for the new UT, keep in mind that you will need an active subscription to get access to the GitHub repository/latest files.

Quote from PaulH

In my experience so far I've updated two editor versions and transferred my project between both. The only issue so far has been that a blueprint door with a timeline in it now throws up errors on load, which I can't find reference to online. The door works fine though, so I'm not sure if it's a massive issue. I tried re-making the timeline but the error persists. Annoyingly also you have to re-download any tutorial projects every time you upgrade, as they all change to work with the newest version, and some of these are 2-3gb.

All else seems ok, though my project isn't that complex yet. I'd say give it a go and buy a month's subscription, cancelling it straight away. It's pretty cheap and a month should include at least two different editor versions.

you can convert these the same way you convert your own projects, or just keep the engine version you downloaded them with

Quote from Pampers

In my experience so far I've updated two editor versions and transferred my project between both. The only issue so far has been that a blueprint door with a timeline in it now throws up errors on load, which I can't find reference to online. The door works fine though, so I'm not sure if it's a massive issue. I tried re-making the timeline but the error persists. Annoyingly also you have to re-download any tutorial projects every time you upgrade, as they all change to work with the newest version, and some of these are 2-3gb.

All else seems ok, though my project isn't that complex yet. I'd say give it a go and buy a month's subscription, cancelling it straight away. It's pretty cheap and a month should include at least two different editor versions.

you can convert these the same way you convert your own projects, or just keep the engine version you downloaded them with

Good to know, where is the conversion option though? As I think my mate who I'm working with has been doing the converting manually. Opening the launcher I can see, for example 'Shooter Game' says it's compatible with 4.3 (which I still have installed), but there doesn't seem to be an option there to convert to 4.4

I think you need to launch 4.4 first, then pick the projcect from the vault to convert it.