[Jesse Moody]

you still have to do the padding on the inside though...just not near the edges.

[Ben Apuna]

Oh... It would be great if non-square texture sizes were allowed for lightmaps too. I hope Epic will release a new build of the engine to the public in the future, I'd love to play with lightmass and some of the newer material nodes.

[shabba]

Hi everyone,
My question regards UnrealScript, and Kismet.

I am wondering if it is possible to emulate Shadow Complex, by this I mean:

- side scrolling camera that follows the player
- limit the players movement to left and right only
- custom script for movement abilities (this is the least important)

I am curious if their are similar tuts around that are capable of this or something like it? Or maybe someone can point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance!

[Hourences]

Entirely possible with unrealscript yes. And theres a mod that does just that even. Google for UT3 UT2D.

Afaik there are no tutorials out there that focus on how to set this kind of game up though.


__________________________________________


I am hard at work updating my website. I introduced a snippet system for one, where you can ctrl+c kismet and level bits on the website, and then directly ctrl+v them into the editor.

So for example on my website is an elevator setup. You copy it. You paste it into the editor, and you got a working elevator!

http://www.hourences.com/book/snippetsindex.htm

Basic rooms and terrains. Many gameplay Kismet things. Also orbitting camera setups amd setups that remove the hud and all weapons from the player, probably handy if you want to showcase a model.

Official release and announcement following in a while, together with a slew of other things including new tutorials and a revamped job section focusing entirely on Unreal.

[shabba]

Great thanks! I'm downloading it right now And thank you for the quick reply.

[Lamont]

There is a tutorial on a top down shooter/maze game on 3DBuzz.com. Just create an account and have at it.

[|*BILLY$CLINT*|]

Originally Posted by Jesse Moody

Ben thats a pretty good tutorial except in the latest builds of unreal with lightmass and all that you don't need to have the padding on the edges of the maps anymore.

That's not entirely accurate as I have done many test cases using LM(Lightmass) and found that while you don't need aggressive padding on your light map UVW you do still need some or you will get bleeding.

[Evolution]

Hi all, thought I would post a quick question here that popped up today.

I have started playing around with making vegetation in Unreal 3 and I would like to know if I can make plants reactive to the player....and is it worth it?

I ask because I have large leafed plants I think may be better if they react to players and other things maybe?

anyway, thank you

[Neox]

i don't know if this is possible but we made a mistake with one of our packages, the name string is just too long, no problem on the pc but if we want to cook for ps3 it would be great to be able to change the name of the package and all references with it together, because if i just change it windows, unreal of course can't find the new package, so is there a way to do this, maybe via console or whatever?

@evolution: maybe create the plant as a skeletal mesh with a Physicsobject bound to it that reacts/collides with the player?

[Lamont]

Oh man, sorry to hear that Neox, I know that's a PITA. Even if you rename assets and place into another package UED keeps references and pointers in the old package. Back at Midway we had a tool that renamed packages and killed all references/pointers. I don't know of any consumer tools that can do that.

[wisebrownmonkey]

I was wondering in unreal 3 editor can you, in the material editor , do something like combining two textures. May not be exactly like this but something similar. Thanks guys

[Lamont]

Here you go WiseBrownMonkey, taken from my GameArtisans post:

Here you go:

Originally Posted by Lamont

The files are done. I will upload a link for you to DL all the source for this. I'll edit this post with info in a few moments.

----------------------------------

Ok, so I did something called a "grey pack". Each channel in a certain image controls where something will show up. I've never been able to get all 3 working in Maya, I test the tiling as I work on a section.



In UED, I set up my material as follows. You can set up a master material and use it for all your terrain bits by exposing certain params (tiling factor and images used).



The result is something like this. I pray you spend more time on it than I did.



-----------------------------

As for the terrain editor in UED. That's a whole 'nother ball game. It does all this pretty much the same (only better). But editing can be a PITA. I prefer bringing in chunks of meshes and creating collision for them.

You can download the source files here: ::LINK::

Originally Posted by Lamont

I use vertex colors every now and then, like if you can't tell, then I'd use it. Sometimes you can see that obvious vertex color blending between texture transitions.

In Maya, just paint with red, green or blue. Have some good blending.



Ignore UED not showing the node previews correctly.

Originally Posted by Lamont

Here are the files. What you want to look at is how I used the texture for the single and double. I can put like 3 road variations on the single road UV sheet.

As for the double, it's just easier to work with. Take a look at the UV relationship editor and the road material on that one.





Download the source files here (MAYA 2009): ::LINKY::.

If you want to see how this is set up in UED, let me know.

Here is how I do decals, colored grunge and debris.. err whatever you want to stick on a building. My whole take on material creation is to examine the scene and come up with a list of materials I'd need. From there I see what materials I can consolidate. And from there I make Master Materials, and anything that needs that material I make an instance and change only a few parameters instead of making whole new nodes.

So here is the wall in Maya, I have two UV sets: One for decals, one for the brick. And I liked the UV sets where map2 is linked to the decal, and map1 is for the diffuse. Don't worry about the alpha.






So in UED after I import all the assets, here is how I set up the node. Notice the "TilingFactor" labeled node. That dictates the amount of tiling.



I changed the "TilingFactor" node to 5, notice things still sync up. I didn't have to paint a new decal to match up with it.

The benefit of this is that I can pop in any decal image, any brick image and it will tile correctly and retail the nice brick/painted on look. And this can be used for the majority of my buildings. Add in an AO map and custom lighting if you need. Take this one more step further with a good parallax map network and tie in the second mask for the decal with the grout of the brick, where the edges around each brick shows more wear and tear on the decal.



Questions that may come up:

Q - So why don't you just have an alpha plane over it?
A - It doesn't really look like it's tied into the wall, like it's a part of it. I'd use alpha planes for things like posters and dynamic things. Or if the engine dictated that I needed to for things like this. Also, lighting, as objects in UED that are alpha'd don't get the nice lighting as the other objects. The only way is to have a 1bit alpha (either white or black, no grey) and you'd loose all the nice blended edges.

You can get crazy with this and have a spec value for the painted images in the alpha channel used by a second UV set. Take this value and add it to the spec of the brick. Also you can combine normal maps in UED, by pulling all the channels apart, then putting them back together. This may be overkill, but the surface variations you can get will look badass.

Download source files (Maya 2009/UED) here: ::LINKY::

[wisebrownmonkey]

Lamont thanks x1,000,000 for the quick reply and the answer

[moose]

wisebrownmonkey: you can also blend between two textures by using a linear interpolate, or Lerp node.

[Jesse Moody]

what moose said.... an easy thing to do. LERP can be quite handy for stuff like this and say stuff like damaged or breakables.

[Lamont]

Originally Posted by Jesse Moody

what moose said.... an easy thing to do. LERP can be quite handy for stuff like this and say stuff like damaged or breakables.

Breakables are in consumer UED?

[Jesse Moody]

Originally Posted by Lamont

Breakables are in consumer UED?

Oh not sure to be honest. I'm sure you could do them. I did a lot of breakables and multiple objects on Singularity.

[Lamont]

I dunno man, I've been looking. If it's in there, then it must be a PITA to get going and not all spiffy like I had at work. I loved making things break ::sniff::

[Dr Stench]

Holy crap, this is quite the MASTER thread!

[OBlastradiusO]

Is it cool to overlap uv's when doing architecture?

[OBlastradiusO]

Anyone?

[Neox]

well how should someone answer? depends... what do you want to do? its ok to overlap when you have similar things its ok to share uvs, but if you want to bake lights your then better have either unique uvs or a second uv set with unique uvs

[OBlastradiusO]

I have a empty room that shares one texture. The uv's are scattered and overlapped all over the place to cover this one texture. If I did bake lights for this room the bake wouldn't come out right?

[Lamont]

Then you need to either have the object set to be vertex lit, or a second UV set for baked lighting.

[OBlastradiusO]

Originally Posted by Lamont

Then you need to either have the object set to be vertex lit, or a second UV set for baked lighting.

Thanks. I'll probably go with the 2nd uv set to bake the lighting then.