UDK Foliage Lighting Woes

[robert.briscoe]

So i've been repeatedly banging my head against a wall for the past two days trying to get my custom foliage model to light properly with the instanced foliage paint tools. Basically all I wanted to do is use a non-directional lighting mode and disable shadows on the foliage so that it will better blend in with the landscape materials at a later date (I dont want the grass to fade out to reveal big black baked in shadows!) The problem is, when using MLM_NonDirectional in the material settings it goes completely wonky when lighting is baked. At first I thought it was an issue with my mesh, but everything seems to be in order, and it bakes perfectly fine as a normal static mesh:

This led me to believe there might be an incompatibility with using MLM_NonDirectional and the foliage instancing together, so I tried switching to MLM_Phong instead, and edited the mesh so that all of the normals point straight up (reproducing the same lighting effect) However the results were the same: worked perfectly as a normal static mesh, failed in instanced foliage mode.

So far i've tried the following to try and fix it:

• 
  [*:2n4c8d6f]changed the lightmaps value in the mesh to 0 to try and force vertex lighting - but it ends up completely black using both NonDirectional and Phong
  [*:2n4c8d6f]checked the lightmap uvs were ok - they were fine
  [*:2n4c8d6f]tried automatically generating lightmap uvs in the static mesh viewer - no change

EDIT: just tried it with just a normal cube - the issue is still there! Out of curiosity I then tried turning cast shadows back on in the static mesh properties and the lighting seemed to correct itself, so as far as i can tell it seems to be an issue with having shadow casting disabled. As a result this has left me completely stuck as I really need to be able to disable shadows on my foliage sprites!

If anyone has run into this before I'd greatly appreciate any help you can offer!

Thanks.

[robert.briscoe]

Ugg it seems to be an issue with the latest build of UDK, reverted to an earlier version and the lighting works...

[Skjalg]

Ugg it seems to be an issue with the latest build of UDK, reverted to an earlier version and the lighting works...

I feel for you man, I hate wasting time like that too.

[Pampers]

I've had the same problem, thought I had it fixed before a hand-in, and did a production quality lighting bake, only to get really weird shadows and colors

[Warby]

i am disturbed that baking lightmaps is still "a thing"

[Skjalg]

i am disturbed that baking lightmaps is still "a thing"

Its not really surprising when you think about all the people who still need to compile their bsp maps...

[robert.briscoe]

i am disturbed that baking lightmaps is still "a thing"

As much as I wish compiling were a thing of the past, until there's a truly convincing fully-dynamic solution, it's the only way to go for convincing results imo.

I'm still evaluating the engine, but so far UDK has come off much better in terms of flexibility, stability and efficiency. CE3 lacks proper implementation of it's GI and it's been pretty damn unstable for me, I also miss the shader editor and after speaking in length with one of the CE3 engine developers a while back at the Develop Awards, it sounds like they have no plans to update the engine in the future which is a shame. I really think they need to follow Epic's lead and do regular updates tbh. (even if Epic do tend to break things once in a while!)

[Vilham]

Not updating the engine? The kind of defeats the purpose of having a licenced engine. I think there may have been some miss communication there.

[Pampers]

I'm guessing its the free model he's talking about

[Skjalg]

i am disturbed that baking lightmaps is still "a thing"

As much as I wish compiling were a thing of the past, until there's a truly convincing fully-dynamic solution, it's the only way to go for convincing results imo.

I'm still evaluating the engine, but so far UDK has come off much better in terms of flexibility, stability and efficiency. CE3 lacks proper implementation of it's GI and it's been pretty damn unstable for me, I also miss the shader editor and after speaking in length with one of the CE3 engine developers a while back at the Develop Awards, it sounds like they have no plans to update the engine in the future which is a shame. I really think they need to follow Epic's lead and do regular updates tbh. (even if Epic do tend to break things once in a while!)

If you want frequent updates, then I can suggest unity. Its really shaping up to be a really great engine for bigger scale projects.

[robert.briscoe]

I'm guessing its the free model he's talking about

Correct!

I've looked at unity a bit, and I noticed that they now have a node-based shader editor plug-in and a kismet-type plugin for non-coder types like me, has anyone tried them?

Im a little cautious about approaching unity as the vanilla version (minus plugins) doesnt look very artist friendly

[Skjalg]

I'm guessing its the free model he's talking about

Correct!

I've looked at unity a bit, and I noticed that they now have a node-based shader editor plug-in and a kismet-type plugin for non-coder types like me, has anyone tried them?

Im a little cautious about approaching unity as the vanilla version (minus plugins) doesnt look very artist friendly

I'm not a fan of the kismet-type plugins, but that might be because Im a coder so I dont need them and I just find them a hassle to work with

As for the shader editor plugin, I know warby made some really powerful stuff with that and was really happy with the tool. When it comes to other editor plugins you can find almost anything you need or would ever want on the unity asset store. With that being said, theres built in terrain stuff, lightmapping, lod, occlusion, path finding (navigation), particle effects, physics (that I think is used a lot in the new rovio game bad piggies?), networking etc.

When it comes to actual level design, theres the built in terrain tool that can be used, but other than that you need to model everything in your favourite 3d program and just place them in unity. Everything game play wise like a character that can walk needs to be either taken from the example scripts or from the asset store if you actually want to "play" your level.

Or you could just make a movie

[Warby]

yeah strumpys shader editor is very very good the "usability" of the interface is not quite up to the unreal node based shader editor but it is just as powerful if not even more so.

the kismet look a likes i only tried uscript not playmaker and uscript is actually better than kismet O_O

[madgernader]

I've also used uscript and am really liking it. Its definitly no replacement for traditional coding but I'm really liking it.

[Froyok]

As much as I wish compiling were a thing of the past, until there's a truly convincing fully-dynamic solution, it's the only way to go for convincing results imo.

I would smack you everywhere if I could.