Blender Practice

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

RE: Blender Practice

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

Has anoyone using Blender 2.59 + MCampagnini's latest script get either of the following to work?

Vertex Painting. I was able to do it in 2.49, but I just tested it and while I can create the vertex paint in Blender, it doesn't work in the editor.

Light Map UVs that make your mesh look better than vertex lighting. I can make the UVs, but the mesh look terrible.

Achernar · Amateur UT mapper

Hey Champ.

Just did a quick check in the editor and noticed your UV's are fine, just need to set the "OverrideLightmapResolution" field to 32 (change from 0) in the "StaticMesh Component" within the mesh properties. Its appear the meshes have the lightmapping checked w/ resolution in the static mesh editor just need to tell the mesh properties to use it. wink

Hope this helps, - If not I'll makes some trials. smile

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

Actually it is this way:
If you double click a static mesh in the generic browser you can set the lightmap resolutions default value. After placing a SM in the level and opening its properties you can, if needed, change this default value to another number. 0 means the SM will simply use the default value... so setting it to 32 would make it worse actually because all of the meshes have a default lightmap resolution of 64 or 128 from what I've seen so far.

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

mAlkAv wrote:
Actually it is this way:
If you double click a static mesh in the generic browser you can set the lightmap resolutions default value. After placing a SM in the level and opening its properties you can, if needed, change this default value to another number. 0 means the SM will simply use the default value... so setting it to 32 would make it worse actually because all of the meshes have a default lightmap resolution of 64 or 128 from what I've seen so far.

If "bOverrideLightMapResolution" is checked, it will change the default value that you have set in the static mesh editor. And if you have "OverriddenLightMapResolution" set to "0", that disables your lightmap UV layer and uses vertex lighting.

Right now, all of the mesh "should" be set to 0. When I unchecked "bOverrideLightMapResolution and/or set "OverriddenLightMapResolution" to 256 (which I know is too high for most meshes), the meshes looked terrible.

See this thread for more info.

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

Thanks for the clarification, you are right of course :)
I was somehow mixing this up with the LOD Range settings and my experience from UDK...

Achernar · Amateur UT mapper

Did a very quick trial and these are my results for Blender 2.59 with 1.3 Export script.

Imported a mesh with 2UV maps ticking LightMapCooridinateIndex 1 and LightMap Resolution set to 64

0

32

64

128ye.th.jpg 128

256

I'm surprised such high values for light maps are needed to see decent results. I take it this is nothing like what you are seeing?

Still trying to figure out vertex painting confuse

-- Edited by Achernar on Sunday 11th of September 2011 02:31:34 PM

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

Actually this is similar to my experience, also I think 256 is not very high.
You might want to try to put your cylinder on a simple staticmesh plane and change the lightmap resolution for this plane. Sometimes the shadowing result on a mesh itself is difficult to compare with a shadow casted onto another mesh.

-- Edited by mAlkAv on Sunday 11th of September 2011 05:26:08 PM

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

I don't think the Vertex painting works at all. I imported some old meshes from 2.49, which worked fine with my material setup, but not the 2.59 version. I asked MCampagnini about it and he said that he hasn't touched anything from the original version of the exporter (from Rich is Bored). But you never know.

As for as your examples Achernar. I think you need an object between the test mesh and the light, so something is casting a shadow onto the mesh. In my test eamples and the ones that I have in my Temple map, they looked like crap compared to vertex painting. I even tried different UV layouts.

As for the resolution, 256 is actually very high for static meshes. I think 32 and 64 are the usual resolutions.

When I tested my Temple map with 256 sized light maps, my uncooked map file basically tripled!

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

I was doing a bit of practice and decided to see what I could do with the "Bake to Normals" option, but on an entire mesh. I created a simple box, with each faces a bit recessed. At first, it didn't work because it didn't recognize the flat edges. So I moved them in a bit so they were like a little ramp.

This is the "high poly" model, if I can even say that. You can clearly see the definition. I used a stock material.

Here is the "low poly" version, which is just a flat cube. As you can see, the definition isn't as noticeable. I had to create a new material and add the normal map to give it some depth.

Keep in mind that this would be ideal for a static mesh that uses 1 unique texture. The UVs you create to allow the normal to be baked can't change once you bake it. So you must place your other (diffuse, specular, etc) textures in the same places.

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

Out of curiosity, why are teh colors so "funky" in your latest example? In a way, it seems like you are getting sharper results with the higher LM resolution or is it just me.

I did a test using the same test meshes in UDK. Results were still a bit weird, except for 1 mesh, which got some what decent results. The more I increased the LM resolution, the sharper the shadows because. I wonder if it would look different if it was in a map that had proper lighting setup?

From my understanding, I though that each faces should have it's own UV island in the UV lightmap. That each faces should also have some space between the other faces, so bleeding doesn't occur. Also, all of the UVs should be in the positive space (0-1). The best result I got from the UDK test was when I use the same UV layout as the textures, but kept each island separate (there are only 3). I also kept them all in the positive space.

I also tested the Vertex Color thing in UDK and got the same results.... nothing happened. I think the exporter isn't set up properly (or at all) to handle vertex painting. In informed Campaganini about it, but I doubt he is interested (or maybe doesn't have the knowledge), to fix it.

As for baking the normals, you might get better results with a higher difference between the two "planes" (recess it more). But what I think is happening is that since I baked all 6 faces to one 1024 texture and and each UV faces is a bit small, that might make it smaller. Like I mentioned before, this technique is best for items that have one texture (and possibly very unique in shape, say a statue).

If you wanted to do the samep thing, you could just take a plane and shape it, then bake it to a 512x512 or 1024x1024 texture and use that as a normal for a material that will be place on the cube. It will be a higher resolution image/normal.

I am may trying what worked for the UDK LM test on DM-Temple and see if it makes a difference.

Sly. · Unreal Old Friend

Now there is something I'm curious about:
Does the texture have to be so big? Theoretically you can just take one of these 6 identical squares and just align it to the mesh, however, I'm not sure if this would make a big difference. I think, this could help reducing the size, at least I think it should.

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

Last report for the night.

I tried to improve the Lightmaps for my meshes in DM-Temple, but with no luck. They look like crap. One of them actually looks good, but I have no reason why.

As for the Baking to UV topic, I baked one of the faces to a 1024x1024 texture and added it to the same simple mesh as before (I had to redo the UVs).

While not as nice as the mesh with actual geometry, it's better than the other option (baking all 6 faces to oen 1024x1024 texture).

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

Sly wrote:
Now there is something I'm curious about:
Does the texture have to be so big? Theoretically you can just take one of these 6 identical squares and just align it to the mesh, however, I'm not sure if this would make a big difference. I think, this could help reducing the size, at least I think it should.

The texture can be any size you want/need. The picture with the 6 cubes was just to demonstrate that you can bake an high poly mesh normals to a low poly. A box with 6 identical sides isn't the best example. disbelief The bigger the static mesh, the bigger the texture may have to be.

In the post after yours, I demonstrated what you "theorized". While a 1024x1024 texture is a bit much for such a simple normal map, it's just a demonstration.

UV Light Map update:

Apparently, I don't know what I am doing or am not concentrating enough during some of these tests. I went to recheck the one mesh that looked good, rebuilt the lighting and all of the meshes which I redid the LM UV channel, look good and usually better than the vertex lit ones.

Here is a a wall (with the tree shaow) with vertex lighting.

Here is the same wall, with a 128 resolution light map. Much better?

I still don't know why it didn't work before. Maybe I had some UVs that overlapped and didn't realize it.

To the best of my knowledge, here is the best way (as I know of) to get a good light map.

Keep all UVs in the postive space (0-1).
Don't overlap any of the UVs.
Keep as many continous faces together. So for the visible part of my wall in the picture above, I did a "project from view" and all of the faces on the UV island were right next to each other, with no spaces). I did the same for the other side, each skinny side (that you can't see), one for the top, one for the bottom.

Ideally there should be 6 (1 for each extrude section (not the brick), 1 for each skinny side, 1 for the bottom, 1 for the rest (all connected)). The parts that aren't seen can be shrunk since you don't really care what kind of shadows are on those sides and leave more room for the visible part of the mesh.

Vertex Painting Update: I exported the same mesh I made in Blender 2.59 with the FBX exporter and it worked just fine. Becasue of the this, I doubt MCampagnini will bother to try and fix it, assuming he knows how. I guess this means no cave modeling for me? hmm

-- Edited by Odedge on Monday 12th of September 2011 07:16:50 AM

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

Lots of research giong on here, glad to hear you've got some decent results now

I was curious in what way it looks crappy exactly, so I just increased the lightmap resolution of all meshes in your map to 256 yesterday and lets say 50% were looking really good. Whilst some (mainly the wooden parts) had artifacts in the form of chessboard like shadows and others (like the bigger brick walls) were completely dark.

As for UDK .fbx is really the easy way if working with blender, also this is the format Epic focuses on if it comes to new developement & features...

Odedge wrote:
I guess this means no cave modeling for me?

Why not? You can use Lerps for multiple textures, or am I missing the point? Just need to create a texture for proper blending.

-- Edited by mAlkAv on Monday 12th of September 2011 12:35:56 PM

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

mAlkAv wrote:
Lots of research giong on here, glad to hear you've got some decent results now
I was curious in what way it looks crappy exactly, so I just increased the lightmap resolution of all meshes in your map to 256 yesterday and lets say 50% were looking really good. Whilst some (mainly the wooden parts) had artifacts in the form of chessboard like shadows and others (like the bigger brick walls) were completely dark.
Crappy is a good way to describe the chessboard and completely dark meshes?
As for UDK .fbx is really the easy way if working with blender, also this is the format Epic focuses on if it comes to new developement & features...

I don't plan on making any UDK maps any time soon. I think Blender via FBX to UDK is pretty solid now. Thankfully MCampagnini made a very solid ASE exporter for us UT 3 guys.

Odedge wrote:
I guess this means no cave modeling for me?
Why not? You can use Lerps for multiple textures, or am I missing the point? Just need to create a texture for proper blending.
Becaue a Lerp would combine both textures across the entire mesh. This is fine if you want to have a different looking rock/cave texture.
With vertex painting, you can use up to 3 textures on 1 material slot. You would have the basic rock texture all over the cave. Maybe a "dirst" texture for the place you walk on, and mabey a "moss" texture or similar to go on the walls in different places.
Vertex painting allows you to replicate the painting of terrain, but on a static mesh. It allows you to have gradual transitions between the two textures.

Reply in blue. smile

Achernar · Amateur UT mapper

That result does look better. I was tripping over light map resolutions, finding so many that needed high values to get sharp results. Testing 2.57 and 2.59 and getting similar results, so I compared Epic meshes and finding the same sort of thing. So malkav observations aren't too far off. It seems the size of the mesh seemed to influence how high a light map you need.

Good point about contiguous faces. I'm realizing sometimes light mapping has it's pit falls so needs to be used wisely.

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

The size of the mesh does influence the size of the light map. Most small objects probably don't even need it as you probably couldn't tell much of a difference.

Now the question is, what's a good rule of thumb for light map size for a given static mesh size? wink

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

I was thinking of making a custom collision mesh for the trees in DM-Temple, so I tried to export the mesh as an OBJ file. While it technically worked, it didn't import into Blender correctly.

So I tested it with my own meshes and it worked fine. You can export/import as as STL file as well. Don't know what the difference is, if any, between the two.

So I guess I can duplicate the tree mesh, export and and create a collision mesh. Or use a blocking volume? hmm

But the good thing about this is that you can converte brushes to static meshes, then export that static mesh. Then you can use as a guideline for creating static meshes.

Achernar · Amateur UT mapper

That's interesting about STL files. I think they only contain geometry data - no material references at all.

My thinking is the collision is fairly simple and can be easily created with blocking volumes but I guess if you going to use them later down the track perhaps the blender route would make more sense.

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

Odedge, thats not quite correct. You only combine 2 textures for the whole mesh if the Alpha Input of the Lerp is a simple grayscale texture. Usually you will use a black/white mask (and if needed grey for the transition) so that you will have 2 different textures on the mesh, not a combination of both.
Besides you can combine several Lerps to easily use 4 different textures on the same mesh - which is what you want to do. In addition you do not need a mask for every Lerp but you can create a so called super mask and use its red, green, blue and alpha channel as input for the Lerps.

The whole thing works as follows:

@thread topic
I just made another simple sword (Polygons on the pommel can be reduced further....)

Blender:

Textured (needs a slight rework since the UV seams become visible on distance in UDK):

reference:

-- Edited by mAlkAv on Tuesday 13th of September 2011 10:45:50 AM

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

@ Achernar

I will end up using a blocking volume. But I am glad to know the OBJ and STL file option is available for other purposes. Both imported with out materials and used the coordinates of the editor for Blender (it wasn't placed at 0,0,0).

@ mAlkAv

Regarding the materials, I didn't know you could do that with a LERP. You learn something new everyday. Unfortunately I can't see how this would help with a cave. The base texture would have to repeat over the entire cave. If you could some how figure out where to "paint" the other textures on the "Super Mask", they would repeat as well?

I do thank you for sharing as I have learned something new.

Regarding the sword, that is looking very nice! I haven't even model something that complex, much less try to UV map. Did you do that for practice or a future project?

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

I don't know if I got it correctly but if you talk about repeating do you mean the tiling?
You might also take a look at this: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TerrainAdvancedTextures.html#Terrain%20Advanced%20Textures
(I just realized that the term supermask is only used if it comes to texturing of lrge terrains/landscapes... ^^)

The sword is made for practising but I wouldn't mind if it finds a proper use aww

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

I do mean the other textures will repeat/tile. That's a good thing about vertex painting a mesh... it's basically the same thing as painting your terrain with textures, you place them were you exactly want them.

I bookmarked that page. It gave me a small headache looking at all the options. Is this for the UT 3 and/or UDK?

Just an idea, if you can package up the sword (.ase/texture files that will work with UT 3/UDK), I can add it to my site and place it on my Resources page.

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

All textures are treated the same. You can use a TexCoord for every texturesample to adjust the tiling for your needs.

I think most of what is shown on this UDN page will work fur UT3, too.

Sounds like a good idea but bBefore sharing this I'll have to bake a normalmap first :)
I've already made a slight rework to the mesh and exported it as .ase and .fbx. The texture itself does look quite ugly but it's ll about the material to get the look of the metal.

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

mAlkAv wrote:
All textures are treated the same. You can use a TexCoord for every texturesample to adjust the tiling for your needs.

True, but since the mesh will have only 1 UV layout for the texture and it's likely the base texture will tile many times on a cave mesh, that means the other textures will tile with the base texture.

Since you can't accurately place the different colors in the "Super Mask" and have them fit exactly where they need to be, this technique probably won't work for a cave mesh, though it could work just fine for a ground mesh?

Achernar · Amateur UT mapper

Nice work malkav, the only thing I'd say is the blade could use some more luster / specular on the blade - looks a bit mat form the photo.

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

@Odedge
It seems I don't understand the problem... all textures can have a different tilling on the same mesh, but I suppose that's not what you mean
Besides I would say just paint the mask in Blender (UV Image Painting with only RGB colors) and you will have the colors where they need to be.

@Archernar
Actually i reduced the specularity & reflectiveness alot because I don't like it that much. With a material instance everyone should be able to adjust specular power, reflectiveness, fresnel to suit his own taste. The normalmap will also improve the metallic look alot I think.

Edit:

Material setup:

-- Edited by mAlkAv!An on Wednesday 14th of September 2011 05:44:23 PM

stevelois · ...

Wow, those swords look damn nice !

Would be perfect for a medieval map :D

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

mAlkAv!An wrote:
@Odedge
It seems I don't understand the problem... all textures can have a different tilling on the same mesh, but I suppose that's not what you mean
Besides I would say just paint the mask in Blender (UV Image Painting with only RGB colors) and you will have the colors where they need to be.

I think your second sentence may solve the issue. If I can paint the mask in Blender, using the same UV layout as the textures, then once I apply it in Unreal, those RGB colors will place the materials exactly where I want them.

Then all I have to do is scale each texture individually to get it looking correct? If this works, I didn't think about that when you originally told me about this technique.

One question, does your material setup with the "Super Mask" support gradient RCG colors? Meaning, can you lower the strength of the of each color so they blend?

This is what I like about discussing stuff, you learn and figure new things out. Good stuff!

p.s. Your sword is looking very nice indeed.

Bl!tz · ...ǝp¡s ɹǝɥʇo ǝɥʇ uo

yeah thoses swords have a nice "excalibur" looking

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

Thanks guys smile

Odedge wrote:

If I can paint the mask in Blender, using the same UV layout as the textures, then once I apply it in Unreal, those RGB colors will place the materials exactly where I want them.
Then all I have to do is scale each texture individually to get it looking correct? If this works, I didn't think about that when you originally told me about this technique.

That's it. You can also make the mask at lower resolution or resize it afterwards to save some KB since it doesn't have to be at 1024px² or 2048px².

I already made this pic regarding the scaling/tiling yesterday but forgot to upload it: http://h4.abload.de/img/mask3textures_36pof.png

Odedge wrote:

One question, does your material setup with the "Super Mask" support gradient RCG colors? Meaning, can you lower the strength of the of each color so they blend?

Yes, blending is possible. If you think about what the single channels look like (black/white and greyscales for blending) this is more obvious:

The same mask used for a material preview:

-- Edited by mAlkAv!An on Thursday 15th of September 2011 10:03:14 AM

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

I will test this as soon as I can. I just need to find a decent cave model though (I will check BlendSwap) and report back. Thanks very much for sharing your knowledge and taking the time with posting pictures as well. It's appreciated greatly. biggrin

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

Odedge wrote:
Here is a a wall (with the tree shaow) with vertex lighting.
Here is the same wall, with a 128 resolution light map. Much better?
I still don't know why it didn't work before. Maybe I had some UVs that overlapped and didn't realize it.

Knowledge is an interesting thing, isn't it.

I think I know what I did "wrong" to get different results. On the wall pictured above, I had the same layout as the texture, I just rearrange it. The other tests I have made, I redid the UV layout from scratch, but tried to get as many faces together.

So, I think, the key is to duplicate your texture UV layout and take the existing islands and rearrange them so they all fit in the postive space (0-1) and don't overlap them. The arrangement of the islands don't seem to make a difference, but keeping the islands in tact, is the important part. Also, you should be able to resize any faces that won't be seen, but I haven't really tested this.

Edit: But then again, maybe it's a just luck whether or not it works properly. disbelief

Edit Edit: But maybe it's not just luck. I have found out that when you overwrite an existing mesh, you may get very bad results. If you clear the "BodySetup" in the static mesh editor, it seems to correct the problem (after another rebuild).

Super Mask Related: I couldn't find a cave, but I tested the technique on my tree planter and a plane (that could be used for terrain). While the planter worked, I don't think this technique is ideal for a hard edge item, unless you want to maybe add some dirt or something.

For the terrain plane, it worked well. The one thing is that you don't want to have to low of a strength value or it might display a different texture.

-- Edited by Odedge on Friday 16th of September 2011 07:49:55 AM

Bl!tz · ...ǝp¡s ɹǝɥʇo ǝɥʇ uo

sure the second one looks better

gj^^

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

Odedge wrote:
If you clear the "BodySetup" in the static mesh editor, it seems to correct the problem (after another rebuild).

It also removes your collision models as well. Good show Epic!

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

OK, another update in my struggle to understand proper lightmap UV layout!

Chris Albeluhn helped via email and dukejib sent me a video tutorial that helped as well.

Here is how the wall looked yesterday. It's very dark on the top, especially since the sun is behind you and to the left (shinning right down on the wall). It's also hard to see the shadow from the tree branch.

Here is the current version and as you can see, it's lit much better and that tree shadow is more visible. It looks better in the game.

Here is my lightmap UV layout. The red sections are the brick walls. These are marked with hard edges, so they are shaded flat. The rest of the mesh (the grey parts), belong to one other smooth group. Chris A. said that it shouldn't really matter if a UV island contains faces that are on seperate smoothing groups (which means I can connect the brick faces to the rest of the wall mesh).

The bottom section is the bottom of the wall. Since this will never be seen (in addition to the side pieces on the right of the picture). These can be shrunk to all more room for the rest of the UVs. I will try this next.

I also noticed there was a white "gap" in the middle of my UV layout. I never noticed that before (I use either a test grid or a black texture for UV light maps). While this probably won't be noticeable on the texture UV layout, it might effect the shadows? I corrected it, just to be safe on both UVs.

Keep in mind the scaling of the UVs for light maps aren't as important as they are for textures. Once I connect the red squares and scale down the other 3 grey islands, I can then scale the main island as much as the space will allow me.

Hope this is clear enough to understand and helpful as well.

EDIT:

I went ahead and scaled down the parts that won't be seen. I also connected the red sections to the rest of the wall and made one "super" UV island.

Here is the same mesh that I posted before (at a different angle).

Here is the wall with the newest layout. It might be hard to see, but from what I can tell, the shadows are more accurate. If you save each picture it and open it in Windows Photo Viewer and use the directional keys to go back and forth. You can see the difference better.

There are fewer shadows on the bottom of the wall and more defined shadows right above the brick texture (which makes sense given the position of the sun and the geometry of the wall).

Here is a picture of my new layout. The smaller sizes for the islands on the right didn't negatively effect the results. That gave me more spae for the stuff that matters. Plus, I think it helps having the other faces connected. Keep in mind that UV light maps can have seems too!

-- Edited by Odedge on Wednesday 21st of September 2011 06:12:33 AM

Achernar · Amateur UT mapper

Those results are quite an improvement. Excellent update, and very informative. So are you still using 128 light map resolution?

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

Achernar wrote:
So are you still using 128 light map resolution?

I used a 64 in this example. I will test with different resolutions (32 is a bit too small for a wall?), 64 and 128) and see what the visual difference is vs. the file size.

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

I have continued to redo all of the UV light map layout for my DM-Temple meshes. So far, I am getting great(?) results.

I also found out that you can Mirror Light Map UVs with out a negative effect. In the UV editor, select the UVs menu, then Mirror, then either X or Y axis. This can help compact the UVs a bit more and use your spaces more efficiently. I haven't tested what happens when you do this with a regular texture.

EDIT: Here are some pics of light map UVs that work. Lightmaps on static meshes FTW!

-- Edited by Odedge on Sunday 25th of September 2011 09:02:37 PM

Sly. · Unreal Old Friend

Looks really nice! At least as good as shadows on BSP. Good job! biggrin

Wait...

Holy Nali Cow! How did you make your water material? confuse It's actually what I was searching for! All these stock grey water materials totally don't fit the theme of my map.

Bl!tz · ...ǝp¡s ɹǝɥʇo ǝɥʇ uo

"great" fits like a glove...nice job mate

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

Thanks guys. I am really happy I have a good understanding on UV light maps.

@ Sly

That water is actually a "tweaked' stock material. I found a water that was close to what I wanted, then opened it up in the Material editor, selected everything, then created a new material (in my map file), then pasted everything, reconnected it, applied to my water mesh (Rendering > Materials section), then tweaked it. There are areas where you can tweak the transparency of the water (to see the ground/rocks), change the color (to a bluish color).

You can also change the scale of it as well as maybe a few other things. Understanding the Material Editor can really allow you to create some "custom" looking stuff, with stock assets. Steve has done this a lot in his most recent maps.

If the material is setup "properly" using parameter nodes, you just create a Material Instance Constant in your map file, then have it reference the stock material. These parameter nodes will allow you to change certain parts of it (like I mentioned before) with out effecting the original material. The Material Instance Constant is much "cheaper" to use than duplicating the material and tweaking it, but the original material must use certain nodes.

If you make a custom texture/material, you basically have similar textures made from it (say for a CTF map with the red base and blue base) with this setup.

Achernar · Amateur UT mapper

Those are some great results! With all the tips and tricks you have accumulated it would make for an awesome tutorial.

The only thing I'd say is the last pic could benefit form some higher lightmap resolutions. This would be a very welcome boot to visuals imho.

Excellent progress :)

stevelois · ...

Very nice impovements Odedge, really :)

Your modeler skills are getting better everytime bud :D

-- Edited by stevelois on Tuesday 27th of September 2011 12:07:29 AM

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

Thanks for the kind words Achernar and Steve.

@ Achernar
I will make some sort tutorial/tips for what I have learned so others can benefit from it and I can reference it if I forget!

@ Steve
I have been focusing on the overall workflow and getting a good understanding of each area of creating static meshes. I still need to learn a lot about modeling (these meshes are fairly basic) and learning how to create "real" textures.

Random Tip: If you are trying to combine faces to create a island in the UV editor, make sure the edges you are snapping together have matching vertices. I would see the faces snap, but when I select the island, that faces I just snapped wouldn't be selected.

stevelois · ...

About LM rsolutions, just to mention that 256 for a small to medium SM is to much. I'm messing with LM since my early days with UE, after many observations & guidelines from pro mappers, this is what I came up to :

Size LM

Small 16 - 32
Medium 32 - 64
Large 64 - 256
Very large & complex 256 & +

Hope it help :)

Odedge · Feedback-Master ..

stevelois wrote:
About LM rsolutions, just to mention that 256 for a small to medium SM is to much. I'm messing with LM since my early days with UE, after many observations & guidelines from pro mappers, this is what I came up to :

Size LM

Small 16 - 32
Medium 32 - 64
Large 64 - 256
Very large & complex 256 & +

Hope it help :)

After playing around with the walls, I think your guidelines are solid. I made my smaller walls 64 and my larger walls 128. Columns are 64. I maybe bump it up, if it doesn't hurt performance.

I have to reread DG Unreals Lightmap to see what's a good total number for all your lightmaps combined.

stevelois · ...

Well, when I said pro mappers, it involved DGUnreal in the list héhé wink

Indeed, I think you get the right settings with your columns / wall smile

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

I just finished another prop (low poly) which is kind of training for a coming project.

It is a simple non-wheeled medieval plow. Polycount: 394 Verts / 796 Tris

Render

UDK

Next step will be proper texturing, creation of a high poly model, baking normal/height/specular maps.

-- Edited by mAlkAv!An on Friday 30th of September 2011 09:07:37 PM