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SFAM - Arhurt


arhurt

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

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

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:

Stair003.jpg

Books002.jpg

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:

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 :D

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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?

tiles.jpg

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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.

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Hey guys, having a lot of trouble here :/

My imported meshes aren't showing on some viewports!

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...

issue02.jpg

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?

issue.jpg

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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:

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.

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:

crappy01.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

lol thanks that umm... fixed it :P

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

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 :)

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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.

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.

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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.

SFAM_002.jpg

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.

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