Unreal Engine 3 - MASTER THREAD [Archive] - Page 2

quyeno

03-24-2009, 10:11 AM

Hi guys,

I'm looking for some help and would be grateful if someone could point me to a tut or explain the workflow. I basically want to create an outdoor level with buildings which have interiors (similar to call of duty per say). What I would like to know is what would be the best way to create those buildings?

Should it be created as one basic static mesh which is the building and roof with basic rooms and corridors then use instanced details like windows, doors, columns, pipes, etc..to detail it?

or

Should the building be modularised? How should the building be broken up? Should modular sections include the internal walls?

I'm understand the modular concept but a bit confused as to what extent it should be used and how to break up a building into modular parts....again a tut explaining the concept in detail would be most helpful.

thanks
Quyeno

nrek

03-24-2009, 06:37 PM

This may be a stupid question but I have looked at various tuts and still cant figure it out. How would I add specularity to a semi transparent object. For example a hose that is semi transparent, or like a decal of a number that I want to have some spec to it. I cant use BLEND_masked because it dosnt fade from transparent to semi transparent, and setting it to BLEND_translucent wont allow me to use my spec maps. If anyone knows what I am missing or how to work around it that would be great.

PixelMasher

03-24-2009, 06:54 PM

for semi transparent stuff you kinda have to fake specularity by adding a reflection via the camera vector and plugging it into a cube map and a mask node with R and G ticked not B though (so it tells it to use X and Y) to get a sense of specularity, kinda lame but thats the only way I know of.

nrek

03-24-2009, 07:09 PM

Ok cool, thanks for the quick reply PixelMasher.

Okt

03-25-2009, 03:57 AM

I'm getting an 3597 'unmatched Node ID' Physique skin vertex errors encountered. error when I try to export my model from max using ActorX, I have the mesh linked to the b_Root, when I can successfully get an export to not crash unreal it gives me the mesh, but with all the bip_ helpers as the associated bones. Anyone run into an error like this and has some sort of methodology to finding the error and fixing it?

Thanks.

00Zero

03-25-2009, 10:56 PM

how can I FORCE the "lighting needs to be rebuilt" message to GTFO of my renders? ive been building the lighting for my models in groups, so i think i might have missed a couple of objects, but i dont really care. is there a way i can make this disapear?...without rebuildling...

warby

03-28-2009, 12:33 PM

no you have to do a real rebuild

Reverenddevil

03-28-2009, 06:43 PM

Can someone show me a good setup for making this shader work properly? I just want to create some objects that fade when intersecting other objects but not sure exactly what to plugin and where. Thanks...

ImSlightlyBored

03-29-2009, 06:09 AM

opacity < depthbasedalpha

alpha node and bias should be a single vector (I think... only ever used constant1 on these)
alpha is strength of opacity, and bias I think is the strength of the feathering.
In the depthbasedalpha node, mess with the value of biasscale, I've normally used around 500.

Not sure if you can use this as a lerp mask or something, you most likely can, can't see why not.

Make sure your mat is unlit/translucent. I think UE3 will shout out a red warning at you if its not, so don't worry too much.

Reverenddevil

03-29-2009, 11:39 AM

Could you show a qucik node based representation? Thanks.

mLichy

03-29-2009, 02:53 PM

Does anyone know how to setup a material so that it has a static cube map/environment map applied to it? So I can get some decent looking reflections?

thanks,

Neox

03-29-2009, 03:01 PM

juss add a cubemap onto your diffuse o.o

ColinR

03-29-2009, 03:07 PM

Does anyone know how to setup a material so that it has a static cube map/environment map applied to it? So I can get some decent looking reflections?

thanks,

I got some help from Matroskin a while back on this as I was trying to simulate a mirror mat. I don't think he'll mind me pasting the info he sent me, and it makes sense to have it in this thread.

So credit to Matroskin for this.

Actually i had a bit of a pain in the ass trying to get real mirror thing.

In general there exist several ways that i discovered to get reflection fake or real. They give different effects so chose your poison :)

____1) Reflection vector.
This is similar to classical environment map. That is to say not a real reflection but a fake. Here is the way u can do it (image made by salman_fas, i just can't find where he posted it):

http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/2481/refletionvectorfy7.jpg

_____2) Cube or Shpere map.
This also gives fake reflection and shows only level geometry.
Here is a way u can do it (posted here http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=59574&page=2 by Pope Adam):

http://i189.photobucket.com/albums/z105/williafx/cubemaptutiz5.jpg

_____3) U can also create a sort of surface that gets what a camera captures.
Gives an effect on a security cam screen. Check a tutorial here:

http://www.hourences.com/book/tutorialsue3reflections.htm

_______4) Actual mirror :)
Honestly, i did not master it well enough yet and it keeps giving me some issues. For example, I cannot cook successfully my scene but i can view it in editor and play within the editor. If u do it just for portfolio it is ok, but for actual UT3 map it wont work. If you will get your scene cooked with this mirror please tell me, Ill be curious how u got it :)

U need to create SceneCaptureReflectActor form SceneCaptureActor group. In it's properties assign Render to Texture shader.

Basically you can assign any mesh to this reflection actor but the reflection in that mesh looks sort of wierd so i kept hte default plane.

I made my broken mirror mesh with alpha on its glass. Then, I placed reflection actor right under my mirror's glass surface. That's probably cheap but i wanted to have mirror and i did not know how to do it more efficiently. So in fact u don't see mirror with reflective surface but u see non-reflective mirror through which u see reflection actor. Dirt in mirror's alpha adds to the old mirror effect.
On the image u see my scaled and adjusted reflection actor and actual mirror mesh on the side:

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8774/mirrorii0.jpg

Btw, in "render to texture" shader u can set resolution of reflection. This way u can optimize rendering a bit.

Hope that helps you a little.

mLichy

03-29-2009, 03:29 PM

Sweet, thanks :). I'm not trying to create a mirror effect really, I just want to have a reflective metal surface. Specular only does so much, but adding the subtle reflection would be nice. I will try and setup what you have and see how that works.

Edit: I made the cubemap with no problem, but I'm a little confused on how to setup the shader... Here is what I have.. The texture sample connected to the reflection vector has the Cube material applied to it.

http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3097/materialn.th.jpg (http://img16.imageshack.us/my.php?image=materialn.jpg)
http://img16.imageshack.us/my.php?image=materialn.jpg

ImSlightlyBored

03-29-2009, 05:16 PM

hey man
basically your error says tex co-ord input is wrong, its a float3 (reflection vector is X,Y and Z) and you need to put in a float2, (X and Y in this case)
Add in a component mask node between the reflection vector and the texture sample node and tick R and G only. This'll knock it down to a float2.

Cannot see what your Lerp mask is doing (if its full black just throw in a constant1??) but it might just be that the window hasn't updated, if so ignore me : D

edit: little confused. What is your texture sample referencing? it should just be a normal bitmap, not cubemap laid out or anything, I think

@Reverenddevil (http://boards.polycount.net/member.php?u=21367)
I probably can't, not at work till tuesday and lack UE3 here so that was from my head. Someone else might get chance before I do, just don't want to seem rude, sorry!

mLichy

03-29-2009, 05:52 PM

Ok, well I kind of got it to work, but it only works if I put in my diffuse map from the object into that lower texture sample, instead of the cube map. Where does the cube map go into then?

thanks

Reverenddevil

03-29-2009, 07:27 PM

Thanks slightly...

|*BILLY$CLINT*|

03-29-2009, 10:56 PM

Sorry MegaMoogle I was at the GDC but I am back this week so I can try and help you out with your issue use less you got it working that is.

MegaMoogle

03-29-2009, 11:15 PM

Sorry MegaMoogle I was at the GDC but I am back this week so I can try and help you out with your issue use less you got it working that is.

Thank you Billy, I'm still having issues. It doesn't seem to work in any of Unreal's levels, but my character does work when I import her piece by piece as a skeletal mesh into my own custom level.

Minos

03-30-2009, 05:47 AM

I got some help from Matroskin a while back on this as I was trying to simulate a mirror mat. I don't think he'll mind me pasting the info he sent me, and it makes sense to have it in this thread.

So credit to Matroskin for this.

Hope that helps you a little.

Thanks a lot for reposting this, you saved my ass =)

Neox

03-30-2009, 08:45 AM

JordanW

03-30-2009, 08:47 AM

Could use a decal, If i remember correctly I think bioshock's presentation said they used modulate and went higher than 1

|*BILLY$CLINT*|

03-30-2009, 11:36 AM

hmmm is there any way to create caustics inside unreal? my best guess would be a light function, but are there better ways? light functions als always multiplying right? i guess caustics should be additive to look correct?

There is no way to do "real" caustics you have to fake it using a light function or decal. I would go light function as I get better results as decals tend to stretch and smear to much for my liking.

ImSlightlyBored

03-30-2009, 11:51 AM

I'd just go the way of hiding it in material shader with a 1/0 switch and apply it via world vector somehow?

to me it'd be the quickest/cheapest way... surely???
not sure of the expense of light functions though

Vredesbyrd

03-30-2009, 01:06 PM

mLichy

03-30-2009, 01:49 PM

Did you rebuild lightmaps and apply the new material to it? Or drop a new version of the model?

Vredesbyrd

03-31-2009, 07:30 AM

mLichy thanks for you effort to answer.
I fixed it by pressing Refresh, and cleaning the bsp.
And i haven't rendered or rebuilded the lightmaps.

|*BILLY$CLINT*|

03-31-2009, 10:00 AM

hello :
a question I imported my mesh and overwritten my existing package.
Instead of making a new material , I duplicated my existing material , the material network is pretty big.
I added the mesh which is a building as a actor in the scene, the mesh is still visible.
But when I play it in the editor , the mesh turns invisible

You need to re-save your map and your package and that should clear this up. Unreal makes a temp copy of your level when you do a right-click play from here so that might be what is happening here.

Minos

03-31-2009, 10:27 AM

mLichy

03-31-2009, 11:49 AM

Ya, I'm still not 100% sure on how to do reflections. I kind of got something working, but it's quite minimal. I think I just have a texcoord with the cubemap material with a camera vector linked to it into the diffuse. Then my model is textured with the spec map at the moment.... it works, but isn't right...

Slainean

03-31-2009, 02:35 PM

Minotaur0 - Did you create a new decal material and not a regular material? I don't know if it will work with a regular material. Also make sure the decal "box" overlaps with whatever surface you are trying to project onto with the correct orientation.

mLichy - Here is a basic cubemap I made. I used an alpha to mask the reflections to just the window and multiplied them to get a purple color. There's a couple other ways of doing this, so this is just one example.

http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/6629/ue3cube.th.jpg (http://img410.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ue3cube.jpg)

mLichy

03-31-2009, 03:03 PM

Hey, thanks alot man :). I will save that to my tutorials folder and try it out.

|*BILLY$CLINT*|

04-01-2009, 09:19 AM

I'm having a really hard time trying to figure out how to make a decal reflect a cubemap. I already managed to place the cubemaps in the scene but I can't get the damn decal to even show up ingame. And yeah I read hourences tutorial =/

I don't think that this will work due to the complexity of decals and reflection maps. I could be wrong but it sounds like this would be to much for the rendering engine to do.

Have you tried light functions to get the same result? Give those a try.

ae.

04-06-2009, 07:55 PM

Daaaave

04-07-2009, 05:10 PM

Neox

04-08-2009, 08:09 AM

and again i have some questions :7

number 1: i once made that work but it doesn't work anymore, i have a skeletal mesh that i want to have collision on, i added a physics asset and it shows the collision in in the game (consolecommand 'show collision') but unless i make the skeletal mesh use per poly collision the player doesn't react on the object at all fixed needed to turn some options inside the Phat editor on.... >_<

1.b - if i add the physics asset (kasset to the game it also doesn't cast a modulated shadow but the normal one, is there a way to turn that off? it destroys the shadow color ^^

number 2: is it possible to loop a particle animation over the lifetime? i made some insects and they work with random image but no i'd like to have some birds and i want them to loop an animation over their lifetime, and i can't figure out how to do that :/

|*BILLY$CLINT*|

04-08-2009, 10:11 AM

Hi All

I've been working on a custom character, however this utilises an entirely new bones hierarchy and animation rig. rather than the epic rig. This is due to the character being a quadriped crab character. see attached image.

so far i've got the skeleton and mesh imported into the engine as well as some of the basic animations. from this i've managed to get an animation tree set up as well as the animationSets

i've managed to get the mesh imported as an extension of UTPawn. however there are many errors; there's no animation and the mesh flickers and the player moves.

i'd really like to get this character working in game. any help with this would be appreciated and of course would be credited.

http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/ww242/daaaave/AnimationTree.jpg
http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/ww242/daaaave/animationSets.jpg
http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/ww242/daaaave/skeletonInUnreal.jpg

below is the example of the mesh in game the half of the image on the right shows how the mesh disappears
http://i724.photobucket.com/albums/ww242/daaaave/drawDistanceError.jpg

Okay a couple of things I noticed that you might want to take a look at.

1: In the picture that is split into two where you show the crab, I am not understanding what this is supposed to be. Is the crab disappearing or does it load up and then go away. Please explain this more.

2: Do you have a better picture of your anim tree as the one you have there does not show all the nodes you are using and I cant zoom in on it to see what nodes you might be missing/using incorrectly.

3: While extending off of UT pawn is a good starting off point it is going to give you errors as it was coded for biped like characters and not ones like yours. So with that said I would look at GOW I and see how they setup and spawned some of their creatures that are not human. If memory servers me correctly there are some non-biped creatures in GOW I. Also look at Grape Ape's Old Skool Monster Tools for UT2K4. While the editor is different than UT3 editor, the code is quite similar so many things that you did via code in UT2K4 can be done in relativity the same manner in UT3.

and again i have some questions :7

number 1: i once made that work but it doesn't work anymore, i have a skeletal mesh that i want to have collision on, i added a physics asset and it shows the collision in in the game (consolecommand 'show collision') but unless i make the skeletal mesh use per poly collision the player doesn't react on the object at all fixed needed to turn some options inside the Phat editor on.... >_<

1.b - if i add the physics asset (kasset to the game it also doesn't cast a modulated shadow but the normal one, is there a way to turn that off? it destroys the shadow color ^^

number 2: is it possible to loop a particle animation over the lifetime? i made some insects and they work with random image but no i'd like to have some birds and i want them to loop an animation over their lifetime, and i can't figure out how to do that :/

While there is no real way to say this without sounding like a total Dick so I am just going to say it. You really need to proof read your posts before posting them as they are a bit hard to follow. I used to just post with out reading my post but I found that you get a lot more help if your post are well written. If English is not your primary language then I apologize for this and you can disregard this. Now on to the help!

1: So if I understand you correctly you have an asset that you want to put collision on Via the PhAT editor? Is this correct? Or am I missing something here. If all you want to do is have the player collide with the object you need to make sure that they are both on the same collision channel under the collision proprieties in Unreal.

1A: Yes you can turn off the shadows of any actor by going under it's proprieties in the lighting section and un-checking the cast shadow option.

2: You can loop a particle to do what you are talking about but I am not sure where in cascade you would add that option. But I do know that you can do it.

Kovac

04-08-2009, 11:25 AM

Neox are you saying you want an animated mesh as a particle or just an animated sprite? Mesh particles are limited to just a static mesh so any skeletal animations won't be able to be imported and you'd be better off having a programmer look into the simple flock AI for it. If you're talking about an animated sprite:

Create a 4x4 or whatever texture
When creating the material, don't use a standard TexCord to plug your texture in, use Particle SubUV
Set respective masked/translucent blending options
In Cascade's required parameters scroll down until you see the SubUV section
Set the number of rows/columns (2, 2 in this case) EDIT: make sure you set the Interpolation Method as well to Linear or LinearBlend
Right click to add the subUV module SubImage Index
Leave the inValue as 0 and set the out value to the last frame of your sprite (4 in this case)

It should animate through the sprite now based on the lifetime of the particle... hopefully that is along the lines of what you were looking for.

Neox

04-08-2009, 04:16 PM

@|*BILLY$CLINT*| : i just wanted to create a skeletal mesh that the player blocks and i tried and tried and tried but i could always run through it, i just missed some options in the Phat Editor

for 1a: no i don't want to turn off the shadow i want it to cast a modulated shadow as it's the only object in the scene that casts a normal (black) shadow while all the others cast modulated (blue) shadows

@Kovac: as far as i know this is exactly what i did, but what it does is playing the animation once over the lifetime, what i want it to do is loop it over the entire lifetime, so lets say i spawn a flock of birds far away and let them fly over the level, this will take a while till they can fade out, so i need the particles to loop over that time and not start the animation and stay in the last frame for the rest of their lifetime.

seforin

04-09-2009, 01:01 AM

im not sure if someone asked this before, but is there a way to take high rez photos of things in unreal thats just the prop by itself/mesh by itself (ive seen people do this and show work before I just dont understand how they do this)

ImSlightlyBored

04-09-2009, 01:50 AM

its on the eat3d website as to how to get the screen as just your prop, no unreal watermark
and to take a high res shot, use PIE and console command tiledshot
it takes a huge screenshot.

Kovac

04-09-2009, 07:42 AM

@Neox: Ah... duh! Sorry for some reason I read your post and didn't even think about the actual problem. This will work though!

Import texture with FlipBook checked
Add FlipbookSample and use it as your diffuse instead of a TextureSample
Go to the textures properties (double click it) and set the horizontal and vertical image counts, as well as possible framerate adjustments
Add it as a standard material to Cascade (remove all that subUV crap)

It will continuously loop through the particle's lifetime with this at the framerate you set it as.

The one problem with this is that every particle will be in sync with each other (all birds flap at the same time) but having it spawn a different material could break that up a bit. If I find any solutions to that I'll follow up.

Neox

04-09-2009, 09:17 AM

thanks for the help, will add some birds to airborn now :D

|*BILLY$CLINT*|

04-09-2009, 05:13 PM

@|*BILLY*| : i just wanted to create a skeletal mesh that the player blocks and i tried and tried and tried but i could always run through it, i just missed some options in the Phat Editor

for 1a: no i don't want to turn off the shadow i want it to cast a modulated shadow as it's the only object in the scene that casts a normal (black) shadow while all the others cast modulated (blue) shadows

The PhAT editor is only for setting up joint's constraints, rotations, and limits. While it does play a role in your collision it's not the primary source of the collision.In the animation browser you should see an option to define collision bones(AFC ATM) and even turn on per-poly collision. I will look more when I get home to see if I can figure something out.

Gannon

04-14-2009, 11:00 AM

quick question, How do you make terrain double sided in UE3? I would like to see the texture on both sides and the materials already double sided so i know that's not it. :x

|*BILLY$CLINT*|

04-14-2009, 01:32 PM

rdmlegend[/LEFT];930941]quick question, How do you make terrain double sided in UE3? I would like to see the texture on both sides and the materials already double sided so i know that's not it. :x

AFAIK Can not do that as the terrain shader system will not allow you to. But what you can do is either take another terrain actor and turn it upside down or make a static mesh that does what you want it to do and use that.

What are you trying to do exactly?

Gannon

04-14-2009, 09:04 PM

just trying to make cutting holes in terrain easier really :p I'm making a Mine shaft and need an access for the elevator to descend from. Was mostly just curious to see if it was possible. It's really annoying trying to sculpt terrain looking up.

PixelMasher

04-14-2009, 10:35 PM

for something like that it would probably be best to model it and have it be a few static meshes.

Neox

04-15-2009, 12:30 AM

for something like that it would probably be best to model it and have it be a few static meshes.

would be my best guess too

having a new issue :/
i created a soundcue and start it with kismet when a certain actor is spawned, but no matter what i do, i can't seam to stop it once the actor is killed, i plugged everything into the stop plug, destroyed, death, and take damage, but it doesn't react it is still bound to the already dead actor and plays and plays

@kovac: that worked, thanks again, thought the particle sub uv would be the way to go with particles, but flipbook just works perfect :)

Apophis3d

04-15-2009, 10:35 PM

Ive started doing series of video tutorials for UT3, this sort of looks like a good place to post that info. The tutorials can be found on my community site here Apophis3D.net (http://www.apophis3d.net)

Neox

04-16-2009, 03:50 AM

thanks for the effort :)

and again a have an issue i can't seem to find help for on udn

in the anim tree editor you can define a look at to a bone, is it possible to get to that lookat via kismet so i can change it or trigger it at vertain points in a level?

and another one, i created a new package, imported all i needed, put the character into the level, saved the package, everything like normal, but everytime i load the map i get an error that it can't find the package, it loads every package in the same folder, when i load the package first the map loads correct, but thats totally annoying, so what did i do wrong this time? how can such a thing happen?

maestro

04-17-2009, 10:20 PM

Hey all! I have a matinee inside of a prefab. How do I call that matinee from another matinee?

Thanks!

maestro

04-17-2009, 11:55 PM

alas, remote event is the answer!

maestro

04-18-2009, 03:01 AM

OK, here is another one. When the models get far away from the camera (the necris in the below image), they start to glow their team color. Anyone know how to get this to stop happening?

http://www.treadster.com/images/glowproblem.jpg

Neox

04-18-2009, 07:17 AM

hm find out what shader they are using and change it or apply another one?

mheyman

04-21-2009, 05:05 PM

Hey, new to this forum, just a quick question. Neox I tried following your Post Processing outline tutorial and ran into some interesting things. In the end I couldn't manage to get it to work.

I believe I'm am doing all the math right for the scene Texture offsets, at least I hope I am. It's when I have to put it all together with the other math, it falls apart. One other question, how do I get the post process to actually appear in engine or in game. I know I must edit the UTEngine.ini file, but what do I edit?

DefaultPostProcessName=FX_HitEffects.UTPostProcess
I assume I replace this with my post process material?

Here are links to my shader network for the outline
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/5900/indnode.jpg
http://img23.imageshack.us/my.php?image=moremathcopy.jpg
http://img23.imageshack.us/my.php?image=moremathcopyo.jpg
Also, I realize I'm offsetting by a value of .01 instead of .001, I wastesting to see if it would make any difference.

Thanks

panic

04-22-2009, 04:31 PM

Hi,
When i save my level as DM- or CTF- and try to use the in-game editor after building the lights and such , the char drops down and loads his gun, after that i cant move shoot or even press ESC to close the window.
this happened after i installed the UT3patch4. so i uninstalled and re-installed and still this problem came back. If i save my level without a game type [ie. myFirstLevel.ut3] and i run the in-game editor i can run and fly thru it fine. the problem only seems to happen when i save with a game type, DM,CTF

a fix for this is greatly appreciated :)
Thanks.

Neox

04-23-2009, 12:47 AM

yep thats right

would be better to create your own mod, but you can do it that way, but sometimes UT is very buggy when you change that stuff for UT

mheyman

04-23-2009, 08:00 PM

How does one go about creating their own mod. Unreal certainly does not like me changing these settings because it keeps crashing.

Edit: Well I got other post process effects I've made to work so now I'm certain that the problem is within the material.

I guess I have a few questions for you.
If Zbuffer is the alpha of the scene texture, what is zdepth, I assume it's a constant, but what would the value be?

It looks as if my problem arises right when I add my textureCoordinate and my offset values together, I get a bunch of weird artifacting and geometric distortion in my scene texture, as you can see in my images.

I'm definitely doing something wrong that I can't seem to figure out, and I think its starting when I try to do the offset.

Reverenddevil

04-26-2009, 03:52 PM

I cant recall how to enlarge a fog volume icon. Where do i go to enlarge the dinosaur head so it is easier to select int he scene? Thanks.

ablaine

04-26-2009, 03:52 PM

Hey all, just learned how to bring skeletal meshes into ue3 and I've been able to resolve most of the issues I've run across with the help of this thread and some of the great tutorials out there. But I am having an issue that I could use some help with. One of the character's I'm working on is a female with long hair, down to about her waist. The character is already textured and has an alpha for the opacity.

I'm not sure how to get the alpha to work for the character in-game, though it works just fine in the editor. I know others have had this same issue and there was a suggestion earlier in this thread but, as I'm new to the unreal engine and the material system in it, I was hoping someone could possibly elaborate on how to uncook a MIC and set up the shaders so that the alpha will work correctly.

The only other issue I'm having is that I'd like the hair to be two-sided, if possible. It's just a character I'm doing for fun so the poly budget isn't a big deal, but if someone can instruct me on whether or not that would be possible as well (and how to go about setting it up), I would appreciate it.

Thanks a bunch!

Reverenddevil

04-26-2009, 03:55 PM

Crap, just figure dit out, sorry...

glib

04-27-2009, 02:03 PM

I'm getting smoothing errors once my mesh has been lightmapped in the viewport, but when I view my material in the material editor with 'Use selected StaticMesh in Generic Browser' on my mesh it looks fine.

Any ideas? I baked the normals with max, since my initial tests with xnormal didn't look as good. Should I try again with xnormal? It's not the normal map, because it looks perfect in Marmoset.

[edit] Screenies to explain better (http://imgur.com/296B.jpg)

GCMP

04-27-2009, 05:38 PM

Just started using ut3 editor and have imported all static meshes and textures okay but can't get to view any of the static meshes in the editor. They are invisible, the gizmo is visible after adding the actor but nothing else is. Thought it may be my meshes at fault but it's the same even with the game assets.

glib

04-27-2009, 09:35 PM

Trying pressing 'W' to toggle visibility of static meshes.

Anybody know what's going on with my mesh's normals that I posted a bit above this? It's got me kinda stuck.

PixelMasher

04-27-2009, 10:37 PM

GCMP

04-28-2009, 07:19 AM

Thanks glib, it worked :) Actually tried that before but neglected to realise that you have to have the mesh selected as I just presumed it would toggle visibility for all static meshes.

Another problem now is adding the custom shader to the static mesh, it works fine on bsp's but not on my mesh, can't seem to google the answer either. *Edit figured it out...

Had to right click the object in the viewport and select "StaticMeshActor Properties" then it was "StaticMeshActor" > "Rendering" > "Materials" > "Add New Item" - the small green cross. After that just selected my material in the generic browser and pressed the "Use Current Selection In Browser" small green arrow button, voila!

Seems like a long winded approach just to add a material to a mesh, doesn't it? I was stunned that there is ZERO out there that actually confirms this process, not even a mention.

glib

04-28-2009, 08:05 AM

hmmm the only thing I could really think of Glib is if you mirrored the texture on the channel where its using the normals, I think if its mirrored there, you have to split that edge in the lightmap uvs even if they are not mirrored.

usually it only really creates a lightmap seam, but thats the only thing I can really think of, seeing as it shows up only when you bake.

That would be a strange requirement. No, the main chunk isn't mirrored in the normal map's uv layout, but the 3 little side chunks are. It feels like there's something I'm missing here though, since it's fine in the model viewer, and fine in marmoset... it just fails once it's added to the scene itself in unrealEd. I included that lighting only shot to show that the lighting isn't causing the artifacts... it lights normally, but it's being shaded wrong.

WTF!

GCMP

04-28-2009, 09:41 AM

Getting more problems here, sorry for my noobness in advance!

Lighting - Some lighting properties have been altered for static meshes along with the point light but the changes are not seen/updated in the viewport even after rebuilding the lighting with no errors/warnings.

Also when playing the level the player falls and keeps falling into 3d space, is this something to do with the static meshes being non-collision models? If so checked for collision in the properties (block all) but the generic browser still reads a non collision model.

panic

04-28-2009, 10:27 PM

you can always just make a collision using blocking volume
*************
When i save my level as DM- or CTF- and try to use the in-game editor after building the lights and such , the char drops down and loads his gun, after that i cant move shoot or even press ESC to close the window.
this happened after i installed the UT3patch4. so i uninstalled and re-installed and still this problem came back. If i save my level without a game type [ie. myFirstLevel.ut3] and i run the in-game editor i can run and fly thru it fine. the problem only seems to happen when i save with a game type, DM,CTF.

Seaseme

04-30-2009, 03:39 PM

Hey guys,

A friend of mine is having a problem with his characters mesh in UT3. All of his edges appear as hard edges in UT3 and there doesn't seem to be much information on this problem.

His edges are all 100% softened on export from Maya, and all seem to be 100% hardened when imported into UT3. Any ideas?

GCMP

05-02-2009, 10:42 AM

Got the lighting sorted out, just started a new level then reloaded the saved one and then the changes were updated :)

Made a custom collision mesh from seperate boxes all labelled with the correct prefix according to unreal forums within max, now the level won't play, player starts can't be layed down but the mesh does show collision.

More annoyingly though the textures seem a bit blurry, had a good google and found that some people edited the ini file but there are mentions of unreal becoming unstable after this! Haven't tried editing the actual in game settings yet...

(Defer compression + compression no alpha checked, lod bias set to -1)

Anybody have any tips on how to display textures keeping the original resolution?

vik

05-02-2009, 04:58 PM

...
More annoyingly though the textures seem a bit blurry, had a good google and found that some people edited the ini file but there are mentions of unreal becoming unstable after this! Haven't tried editing the actual in game settings yet...

(Defer compression + compression no alpha checked, lod bias set to -1)

Anybody have any tips on how to display textures keeping the original resolution?

Defer compression means your textures got compressed only when you save the package and not right away, saves time but doesn`t affect compression quality
Compression no alpha again doesn`t affect compression quality, you use it when you have no alpha info stored in your texture
lod bias and texturegroups on the other hand can affect quality

If you`re using 1k maps a lod bias set to -2 should work in all cases. With 2k textures you could assign them to the Skybox texturegroup(instead of World), thats what I did for my portfolio.I `m not entirely sure you would use this in production(because of performance hit) but for folio work where you dont want to see blurry textures this methods works fine

Slum

05-03-2009, 07:57 PM

I'm curious if anyone knows how to force a material to skip sorting, and always draw on top of everything in the scene. Is this possible? I'm using UT3 right now.

edit: I should clarify. This would be on a particle, I guess you could compare it to a lens flare.. Super bright flash that draws over everything.

whats_true

05-03-2009, 09:08 PM

They have a lens flare in the Engine itself. Check out a outdoor level like Torland and it should be there, so you can see how they did it.

Not the best answer hehe, but thats how I learn and figure out things in UT3. Just check out what they did.

Slum

05-03-2009, 09:47 PM

Yeah, I don't need a lens flare, I need a material that acts in a similar way :)

Neox

05-04-2009, 01:42 AM

hm if it draws over everything i guess it wuld not need a "3d" sprite in space, so maybe you can just do it with a posteffect?

ImSlightlyBored

05-04-2009, 01:38 PM

yeah, thats easy
in the material set up, where you'd normally set up what type of model it is (translucent, additive, etc) just under, in the translucency rollout is a check box saying bDisableDepthTest. As long as you have a translucent material, click it on and it'll constantly be drawn over everything. Quite nasty!
But obviously if you want it to be a consistent size, thats no good, just use a PP effect. It'd end up cheaper than a whole screen of translucency which sounds like what you are looking for...

anyway there you go, two answers.
And for a third, in static mesh properties, you could force it's translucency sort priority to a huge number, but that'll only give it precendence over other translucencys, not all models as the first solution would.

I have a question
is there a way to do vertex animation/morphs for skeletal meshes? I don't want to do a rigged model, but a pre-baked anim of a deforming mesh. Uses exact same verts throughout, doesn't add or subtract any. Anyone got any info or UDN links for this? If it's not possible I've got a possible work around for it but I'd like to know the kosher way to do it, if it exists...

edit: cheers neox will log in to it tomorrow at work

Neox

05-04-2009, 01:51 PM

UDN - Three - MasteringUnrealAnimation
20.3 Morph Animation

should be what you need?

Slum

05-04-2009, 02:05 PM

Thanks Bored, I will give that a go!

Wahlgren

05-10-2009, 10:17 AM

Neox: Here´s a question aimed directly at you. Do you have any suggestion on how I should set up materials in UE3 to get a black outline on my models? Cell-shading basically. I saw that you succeeded with this on airborn and I´m curious :)

I´m after something similar (but maybe three times as thick) and so far i´m having no such luck.

Checked out your TF2 shader tutorial btw. Wicked cool.

ImSlightlyBored

05-10-2009, 10:38 AM

I'm not him but try offsetting a zbuffer sample in every direction by whatever thickness you want (tex co-ord add constant 2 [x,y]) so you have like up to 8 zbuffer samples going 8 different ways, up, down, left, right, and all the diagonals inbetween
add all these samples together (oh my!) then divide by the total (ie if you use 8, 8.) Instead of divide I found better results by using multiply (0.25 as I was using 4 samples)

Now do a check, take your 'blurred' zbuffer (all of them combined) and check if the pixel is the same as the original zbuffer
so subtract the combo by the original
IF pixel =/= 0 (ie .5-.5=0) then pixel=1
You'll be left with 0 or 1, pretty much your outline
then one minus if you need to

so basically all you do is get a blurred zbuffer sample (it's grayscale) and a normal grayscale, and run a check - anything that's not identical to the untampered zbuffer will be forced to 0, anything that is, will be 1, as a number divided by itself can only be 1. I think you can also do your check via a divide - so anything that's not perfect 1 you force to 0, as a number divided by itself can only be 1.

You can get better results by experimenting, and running a bit of process on your zbuffer before you use it (though this will bump up shader complexity)

Try offsetting screenpos z instead of zbuffer though, I get the feeling it gives nicer results (haven't done this yet as the editor build I am using is unstable :( )

if none of that makes sense wait for neox lol, but I think that's pretty similar, if not the same, as how he does it too?

EDIT: Quick question for anyone who's familiar with the workings of the material nodes. Is transmission calculated using light vectors? I have a dirty feeling it is, rendering it unusable on static meshes. I am right, aren't I, that light vectors are useless on any meshes that use static lighting? Given that built lighting is fake lighting?

FURTHER EDIT:
Anyone have the math behind photoshop filters like sharpen, etc? I thought I saw a site with it once (not blend mode math) but cannot find it now that it would be useful : /

Wahlgren

05-10-2009, 01:47 PM

Thanks alot bored. That´s a monster of a post. Very appreciated. :)
It makes sense and I get what you mean. Just need to put it into practice.

I don´t have an overly complex understanding of the material editor yet but that´s exactly why i do this ;)

Will get cracking on it and keep reading your post over and over and see what I can come up with.
To you others out there. If you have any alternate approaches. Feel free to mention them. Learning is golden! :)

Stradigos

05-11-2009, 11:19 PM

It all started while I was having trouble deleting a few mesh's, material's and textures. When I tried to delete them they said that they were "in use" and therefore couldn't be done. They are NOT being used inside the scene, nor do they show on the scene graph, so I am positive that this is not the case. The error talks about referrer's and what not, have no idea what it's talking about.

Anyway, I tried this trick of renaming the things I want to get deleted into a different package and then not saving the package when I close the editor. We'll, that did the trick except now the Decal group that I renamed items from (and essentially deleted) isn't there on the left hand side panel under packages. BUT it does show up when you go to use the binoculars to find a group when you import a texture. Also, when I import the textures I want, apparently they are overwriting older copy's because it asks me if I want to overwrite.

Here's what I mean:

http://content.screencast.com/users/SidSinister/folders/Jing/media/08130063-c029-4ca2-a939-7d5134682087/2009-05-12_0136.png

So, does anyone know what I could do sort this issue out? I mean I could always just make another group and start over in there, but it bothers me I have some data floating around that isn't being connected right. I'm also worried it could come back and bite me in the butt when I cook the map. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

EDIT:

In working with Vailias yesterday on IRC, here are a couple of things we tried:

Cooking the package via the command line - didn't work, just hung
Duplicating the items into a new package without the reference box checked (hoping to leave the old references behind)

Cooking didn't work, and duplicating didn't really do much either seeing as I can't get the damn package to load now. This is what it does: http://screencast.com/t/RwXbP1mUVjO

If you guys could help me with this, I would really, really appreciate it. I'm working on my capstone project for my animation degree, and this bug is driving me nuts and slowed my team down. Thanks in advance for any help.

PROBLEM SOLVED: I feel like a retard. Somehow this button got pressed and was showing "In use only" assets. http://content.screencast.com/users/SidSinister/folders/Jing/media/7e2c6ab9-dd69-4bd9-a16b-202792f3cad7/2009-05-12_1452.png Fear the button.

Brice Vandemoortele

05-12-2009, 03:59 AM

FURTHER EDIT:
Anyone have the math behind photoshop filters like sharpen, etc? I thought I saw a site with it once (not blend mode math) but cannot find it now that it would be useful : /

Sharpen is an unsharp mask with a small blur diameter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsharp_masking
It's basically the same as putting a copy of the image in overlay and running a highpass filter on it.
You can further break down the high pass filter into a blur of an inverted copy set to 50% opacity

katana

05-12-2009, 03:57 PM

Hey guys im going to start work on a vehicle pretty soon for a mod, and i got a few questions concerning how i would go about it in ut3 as the mods for ut3.

basically what im doing is making a vehicle but also making it full cockpit too, the cockpit is basically the hud and to see your health and ammo and switch weapons you need to go into cockpit view.

what i need to know is how i would go about modeling and implementing something like this in the unreal engine.

would i have to model the cockpit as a seperate object? or keep it with the main vehicle model?

how do they do it for car games that use the unreal engine/ any engine really? do they make the interior a different object and somehow attach them both ingame?

I won't have my new rig up and running until the weekend (Hence no Unreal yet), but in the meantime i'm working on a motorcycle for UT3. I think the whole thing will come down to doing the same thing as they do with weapons...that is a high poly "top" view of the vehicle (cockpit + whatever else you decide to add) , a mid detail model that everyone else sees and a lower detail model (probably with enhanced textures, that spawns. It's been my observation that the workflow of one class can be referenced to use in another...the words may be different, but the language is the same...

Two questions....

1. Destructive environments that change the meshes/textures...Sounds like a morph.

2. A spot on the ground plane that "activates" primary fire (or alt fire) for the character (ala "death race")

Do these sound like they can only be coded? Thanks.

Neox

05-12-2009, 04:05 PM

if none of that makes sense wait for neox lol, but I think that's pretty similar, if not the same, as how he does it too?

just what you said i'm just not using that if thingie and i'm blurring in 8 directions not 4 and also added distance dependant thickness :)

however, asked before in another thread, what formula did you use for the glossiness of your specular (that image with the 8 spheres with different shadings), i never really found a good one :/

ImSlightlyBored

05-13-2009, 01:56 AM

slipgatecentral

05-13-2009, 02:31 AM

sorry wrong thread

katana

05-13-2009, 02:36 AM

Personally I think you should leave it...the added pattern for that area looks cool....but thats just me.

Neox

05-13-2009, 10:56 AM

Nothing special man, I think alot of it is the clamping and corrections I threw in my PP. Other than that, a fairly tight (50??) spec power amount with a constant1 (1.x?) for specular. None of them were long to set up, just real basic functions to show differences in surface type, so theres nothing special going on :(

Couldn't you fake it with a dotproduct, though, then subtract x from that and multiply by, say, 200, and constant clamp it down to 1? If I'm right, it'll a fake highlight with a real sharp edge.

ah ok youre using the standard inputs for your specular, well those don't work when i use custom lighting, so i'm working with the dot product and had some nice modifictations but never really got it to be smaller and sharper, onlysame size but sharper, but maybe th subtryct is a nice idea, should test that :)

haha thats it, great

thank you, you'll get your name in the airborn credits :)

Okt

05-13-2009, 11:07 PM

Anyone know if the background colour for the Material Editor is held in one of the ini files?

rollin

05-14-2009, 12:16 PM

under the render tab..

Okt

05-15-2009, 01:34 PM

under the render tab..

I've taken a look and can't seem to find anything close to a render tab... maybe I'm looking int he wrong spot?

Also anyone know what version this is likely to show up in?
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsCompendium.html#Custom

ImSlightlyBored

05-15-2009, 02:06 PM

lol saw that last night and got excited.
Reckon it's been added by a studio in-house... not seen it in any of Epics builds yet (Gears, UT3) which you probably knew.

Neox; Awesome! cheers man

Question for anyone
best way to draw outlines on a static mesh, mesh-by-mesh basis? Opaque/Phong lighting, can't use destdepth/scenetexsample, and camera Z/Sphere mapping is a flawed concept for me, I do not want to draw to the deepest edges, but just inset the edges
Went mental, couldn't figure it out but hopefully it's possible?

Neox

05-16-2009, 05:08 AM

woah with transparency... uhm maybe an inverted and pushed model with a tricky shader would work, maybe multiplied shader for the outline and additive for the model itself? hm really hard as unreal doesn't sort alphas in the normal zbuffer, thats one of downsides on airborn outlines are always in front of softalpha, so soft alphas has to be placed wisely

ImSlightlyBored

05-16-2009, 05:21 AM

that's what I feared man, I can't really think of any way to do it right now. Ideally it'd be on a general basis without any sort of mesh-hackery involved. Any other ideas?

that's also the problem I had with PP outlines, they'd be drawn over unlit translucencys.

Neox

05-16-2009, 06:50 AM

i guess with custom code it would be possible but just modwise, all ways i can think of is the inverted mesh trick or fresnel thingie, the problem is, that won't work on flat surfaces

really no idea, these are the 3 techniques we tried out

do translucent models have normals? but it would need custom code to get those in to a posteffect i guess, i would have loved to use the worldspace normal instead of the zbuffer to create our outlines.

erik!

05-18-2009, 06:24 PM

Quick question (hopefully)! Is there a way to get dynamic "god" rays in Unreal like these shots in Fable II? Been thinking about doing an env with lots of trees. Would be nice to have this sort of effect!
http://xbox360media.ign.com/xbox360/image/article/901/901518/fable-ii-20080821102216901_640w.jpg

1 more (http://www.beefjack.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/fable-3.jpg)

Could it be some sort of PP effect? I have no idea, not too familiar with all the PP effects and lighting tricks in Unreal. Thanks!

ImSlightlyBored

05-19-2009, 01:34 AM

at a guess, I think normal god rays with a depth biased alpha on them, so when they intersect with geometry they cut out.
Bit expensive at the size you are looking for though, I think.

There might be a better way to do them though.

Neox

05-19-2009, 09:29 AM

ah alex,

did you try to not use the zbuffer but the scene texture as input for the outline instead? it will give you a outline around every contrasting pixel which means, in your case it might not work right, but maybe you can do it in the translucent shader too? not sure

ablaine

05-19-2009, 04:03 PM

ae.

05-19-2009, 08:09 PM

Hey there guys im having a huge issue!

i keep getting this error while trying to run ut3:

Assertion failed: BulkDataOffsetInFile == Ar.Tell() [File:.SrcUnBulkData.cpp] [Line: 610]

Stack:

RaiseException() Address = 0x767bf328 (filename not found) [in C:Windowssyswow64kernel32.dll]
CxxThrowException() Address = 0x74b38e89 (filename not found) [in C:WindowsWinSxSx86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e1 8e3b_8.0.50727.3053_none_d08d7bba442a9b36MSVCR80.d ll]
Address = 0xbb4f92 (filename not found) [in c:program files (x86)steamsteamappscommonunreal tournament 3Binariesut3.exe]
Address = 0xe874b94c (filename not found)
Address = 0xe874b94c (filename not found) Now i though there was something wrong until i deleted my utgame folder and let the editor rebuild itself.

when i open it then it runs perfectly.

the problem is im trying to make a MOD! and this is the second time this has happened. now i havent changed anything for the mod just building a level now.

but when i put my files back in there corresponding folders ut3 crashes again?

anyone know what the problem might be?

alright it seems to be something with my map i was working on if i dont put that in the folder everything runs :S

i have a props set up map where i put my props for beauty shots but that doesn't corrupt ut3? my only conclusion is that its has something to do with the terrain? as for all my other maps i have never used terrain and using it now i always get this corrupt files? anyone know what the problem could be?

Kovac

05-20-2009, 07:31 AM

Quick question: I brought my character into unreal engine 3 and it looks like the textures for the arms (shoulders, upperarms, lowerarms, and hands) are much more blurry than those of the rest of the body.. any idea why this would be the case?

The character is broken up into 5 pieces - head, torso, arms, legs, boots. I'm using one 2048x2048 texture for the head and one for the rest of the body. I didn't do anything differently for the arms than I did for the other parts of the body when bringing them into unreal editor and applying the materials. The textures look perfect in max, but in the engine they're so blurry.. and only really on the arms.

Any suggestons for how to fix this would be appreciated!

Which compression settings are you using while importing the character? TEX_Character allows higher mip levels so the character isn't shot down in resolution like you're having now. Also, there is an INI file in Engine\Config\BaseEngine.ini that has the TEXTUREGROUP section with maximum resolutions allowed... make sure it's not dropped to something lower than you're using (though it should default at 4096 regardless.

Let us know those import settings (image would probably work best) so we can get a better idea of where you're at.

radianceforge

05-21-2009, 04:14 PM

I have created a ship for unreal and used the code from the manta and replaced it with my own package files, ive sorted out 99.9% of the problems however when i try to enter the vehicle i cant, the log shows that "Accessed None SeatPawn" im guessing that that means there are no seats set up, my background in coding is a big fat 0. and was wondering if anyone could help me out, in case it helps ive posted my code to the _content.uc. here (http://pastebin.com/m227fc84e)

thanks for any help :)

ColinR

05-22-2009, 08:03 AM

Wondering if anyone can help me at all. Working with carlo_c on a UT3 map and it's got to the stage where we need a poster printed with some of our work on it.

What we're after is a high res Unreal Engine 3 logo like this. (http://www.igniq.com/images/unreal_technology_180805.jpg)

I've tried checking through Epic's press section but have had no luck there or anywhere else. Wondering if anyone has one to hand at all or knows where I could get hold of one.

If not then we'll have to deal with using a direct frame from the UE3 splash movie for UT3 which just about does the job, but is a little small for print.

Quite an 'out there' request knowing that this is all more tech focused in this thread, but I'm being hopeful! :)

Edit - Got hold of one now, just in-case anyone felt the need to reply.

kite212

05-24-2009, 04:30 PM

hey has anyone compiled actorx for max2010 or know where i could get actorx for 2010

kite212

05-24-2009, 09:06 PM

Stradigos

05-25-2009, 10:31 PM

Quick question: I brought my character into unreal engine 3 and it looks like the textures for the arms (shoulders, upperarms, lowerarms, and hands) are much more blurry than those of the rest of the body.. any idea why this would be the case?

The character is broken up into 5 pieces - head, torso, arms, legs, boots. I'm using one 2048x2048 texture for the head and one for the rest of the body. I didn't do anything differently for the arms than I did for the other parts of the body when bringing them into unreal editor and applying the materials. The textures look perfect in max, but in the engine they're so blurry.. and only really on the arms.

Any suggestons for how to fix this would be appreciated!

Sounds like your seeing a resolution change. Think about it, one 2048x2048 for the head, and one for the rest. Things in the body texture will be much more packed in that the head one, which would decrease the texels. That would be my guess.

Okt

05-26-2009, 12:35 AM

so we have to put a custom weapon in the engine for a class, im using the enforcers script, i get 0 errors when the scripts recompile, but i cant use the gun in the editator, and when in the game the mesh dosent show up, but in the behind view there are floating hands, any ideas?

Possibly some sort of offset to deal with the camera's output FOV? This is set in the AnimSet Editor if this is what it turns out to be. I'd take a look at the settings for one of UT3's weapon assets.

Hatred

05-27-2009, 02:14 PM

Guys anyone know how to get rid of this annoying seem?? THOSE are 2 separate meshes one near other! when i rebiuld lightning the seam appears, got normalmap backed continuously (like low poly where copied and attatched to both corners of base mesh so the vertex are ok), it looks like sth is going wrong in lightmap (vertex light sucks here). http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/8606/67617431.jpg

This is material without specular map, if a spec is for example like metallic it is worse!

edit: i forgot to mention that the seem apperars at some angle, not always (shoot is from the same angle :) )

kite212

05-27-2009, 03:53 PM

thanx for the post okt, i got it figured out for the most part, i added an offset var to the code and am tweaking little by little, now my problem is the first person muzzle flash isnt going to the socket and it all matches up in the mesh and code, so when i have time i need to dig through more vars

Hatred

05-28-2009, 04:10 AM

If someone is interested in my problem i found a solvation:
problem was in horizontal uv'd mesh, when i flipped it 90' and baked again now the bug dont ocure, I can now place aset next to other and there is no lightmap bugs

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/4214/22551884.jpg :D

Neox

05-28-2009, 04:54 AM

why didnt you just put the seam where it is instead of the middle of each stone? o_O
not that this would fix your issue but it'd hide it

Hatred

05-28-2009, 05:42 AM

you know i got it like that: http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8079/21428123.jpg
i didnt want to got each step with seam under the other you know, abowe (the normal map) you got only a litle sample of whole texture

EricV

05-28-2009, 06:09 AM

Quick question: I brought my character into unreal engine 3 and it looks like the textures for the arms (shoulders, upperarms, lowerarms, and hands) are much more blurry than those of the rest of the body.. any idea why this would be the case?

The character is broken up into 5 pieces - head, torso, arms, legs, boots. I'm using one 2048x2048 texture for the head and one for the rest of the body. I didn't do anything differently for the arms than I did for the other parts of the body when bringing them into unreal editor and applying the materials. The textures look perfect in max, but in the engine they're so blurry.. and only really on the arms.

Any suggestons for how to fix this would be appreciated!

a real quick way of fixing this is to double click on the texture itself from your package to open its properties and either;

check off 'never stream'
and/or set your lod level to -1 or -2

that will do the trick.

EricV

05-28-2009, 06:20 AM

Hey there guys im having a huge issue!

i keep getting this error while trying to run ut3:
Now i though there was something wrong until i deleted my utgame folder and let the editor rebuild itself.

when i open it then it runs perfectly.

the problem is im trying to make a MOD! and this is the second time this has happened. now i havent changed anything for the mod just building a level now.

but when i put my files back in there corresponding folders ut3 crashes again?

anyone know what the problem might be?

alright it seems to be something with my map i was working on if i dont put that in the folder everything runs :S

i have a props set up map where i put my props for beauty shots but that doesn't corrupt ut3? my only conclusion is that its has something to do with the terrain? as for all my other maps i have never used terrain and using it now i always get this corrupt files? anyone know what the problem could be?

hmmm sorry im not sure how to answer this, but have you tried checking the ut forums mod section?

http://utforums.epicgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=339

I believe I came across your problem or a similar one a while ago while going through there. Im certain if you post your problem there you'll have a much better chance at finding the solution

EricV

05-28-2009, 06:29 AM

k now does anybody know if its possible to hide the world orientation widget in the lower left corner in the perspective window? Its kinda annoying when wanting to take screenshots from the editor

Okt

05-28-2009, 10:02 AM

Anyone done any work with using the BINK encoded videos in the engine? We are running into issues consistently getting the audio to play from machine to machine. I wasn't able to find much documentation on the functionality of the feature or even some kind of best practice for working with it.

EDIT:

Okay so we were playing them using the following process, Import the movie into a package as an animated texture, call a UIScene and apply the material in there. Using Kismet we play the movie when we wish for it to be called.

From what I can understand our issues are coming from loading the large files into the current rendering thread.

What I just found out about was a little console command called 'TestMovie' it will play the move from the Movies directory in the UT3 root install directory. I think it's calling the GFullScreenMovie player which pauses the current game thread and processed the movie?

So now we are using the misc > consoleCommand Kismet node to call 'TestMovie MyMovieFile' in the level and it opens the player, plays the movie (With sound), and closes the player resuming Kismet/Level. (It seems to actually pause the current Kismet sequence resuming where it left off once the playback has finished)

Just thought I'd toss up what I was able to find, maybe it'll help someone else.

EDIT2:

Further research also says that the TestMovie command does not work when it's run from the Kismet node if the map has been cooked. :S

mheyman

05-29-2009, 01:23 AM

Alright, I have a fairly complex question that I'm sure will require more than a simple answer.

Basically what I want to do is have a model that can change both it's mesh and material in an animation. For instance, I want to make a tree that can transition from being withered and dead to alive and flourishing. I have nothing started right now so I thought you guys might be able to point me in the right direction to start with.

How would I handle the mesh's transition? Would I be able to accomplish this with just bones and animating it in Maya? If the rig I use to animate uses more than just bones will they not import into Unreal?

How would I sync the animation of the mesh to the change in material? What is the best way to animate my material? I know a lot of this is going to be dependent on my creative vision but was hoping that you could point me in a general direction. When I get to more specific problems I'll return with more specific questions.

I hope my questions were clear. Thanks in advance for any kind of response.

Neox

05-29-2009, 01:31 AM

you could do the mesh aniamtion with morphtargets and the material change would just be a triggered shader expression

hollaAtMe

05-29-2009, 07:51 AM

I just have a pretty simple question when it comes to Unreal, that I'm hoping someone can help me with.

I seem to recall hearing that when you UV an object that is going to go in the Unreal Engine that those UVs HAVE to be in 0 to 1 space.
So, essentially, if you want to do the tiling cheat that many people do for environment objects, where you stretch out the UVs outside of the 0 to 1 space, you can't do that for Unreal. You would essentially just have to overlap that UV space over and over again to get that same effect.

Am I correct in this thinking?

Thanks so much for any comments on this! :)

Neox

05-29-2009, 09:53 AM

Wrong :)
just do it, it works

hollaAtMe

05-29-2009, 10:02 AM

Wrong :)
just do it, it works

Nifty! Just tested it.

Though...I'm wondering why my Lead said that it had to be 0 to 1.

Is there any reasoning behind this that you know of?

I'm just interested because I noticed in Gears of War 1 that they didn't tile any of their environments like that. All their UVs were in 0 to 1 space.

Thanks alot! :)

mheyman

05-29-2009, 11:21 AM

Thanks for the reply Neox.

Would I be able to use Kismet to trigger the shader expression or would it require Unreal Script? I've never tried doing anything like this before.

Also do you know any good documentation I can read on morph targets. UDN didn't seem to have much if I recall correctly.

EDIT: Oh and another question, is it possible to achieve subsurface scattering in Unreal 3? Can it be faked within a shader?

Neox

05-30-2009, 07:51 AM

are you talking about public udn? because in the developer udn i know there is a chapter about that in masteringanimations

and about sss yes you can do this, just google up how to do a sss fake in hlsl and rebuild that with nodes, i just did it a few days ago for my airwhale it might not be perfect but its good enough for me

BTT: Does anyone know if and how i can turn on shadows for speedtrees?

Does anyone know if i could get a lightfuction to work with modulated shadows OR does any one know how to brighten up normal shadows without using modulate or another light (shader complexity is exploding when having more then one light)

mheyman

05-30-2009, 12:05 PM

Yeah unfortunately I only have access to public UDN I don't have a license. Do you have any screenshots of the SSS shader on the weather whale? I'm curious to see how it looks.

Neox

05-30-2009, 12:31 PM

00Zero

05-30-2009, 01:54 PM

mmm, man neox, that stuff is so beautiful.

mheyman

05-30-2009, 04:28 PM

Those look great, close to what I'm looking to do. I want to use SSS on leaves in bushes and trees and it's good to know it's possible.

I found this HLSL shader: http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=481494

And someone's GLSL equivalent: http://machinesdontcare.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/subsurface-scatter-shader/

Did you use methods similar to these? I don't know HLSL or GLSL, though I want to learn some sort of shader language to ease the workflow of translating them from code to a node based system. Do you have an extensive knowledge of either of these, would you recommend learning one over the other? Does it really matter?

EDIT: Well I've looked over both of these and with the moderate programming logic I have and the little knowledge of Unreal's material editor I've been able to decipher some things.

I decided to use the GLSL version as I found it easier to read. However I've reached a roadblock. I don't exactly know how to translate GLSL's distance function. From the research I've done the distance function finds the scalar difference between two vectors. If you look at the code, I'm assuming the one vector called lightPos will use the Light Vector node, but I have no idea what the other vector is. I see it declared but it's never assigned a value. I also don't know how to find the scalar difference of something.

Any ideas?

RodrigoB

05-30-2009, 11:40 PM

Hey everyone! First time postin' here :D however I've been around for a while as a guest :P
Anyway, I'm having a little problem with UEd3. I started 'sketching' a map with BSP and then I exported it to obj. The problem is that when I import my .obj into 3DSM all I get is some kind of plane...an screenshot will explain it better.

http://i177.photobucket.com/albums/w201/RodrigoB_album/obj.png

Hope you can help me :thumbup:

Neox

05-31-2009, 12:43 AM

the first one is what i did.not every part but yeah thats the one

mheyman

05-31-2009, 01:39 AM

How did you calculate the attenuation, I can't seem to figure it out :(

Neox

05-31-2009, 02:05 AM

i didn't :)
but if you want to lower or increase the effect based on the distance, just grab a scenetexture, take the alpha out of it (scene textures alpha = zbuffer) and use this as a multiplier, you can divide it further to have it in a smaller range etc.

mheyman

05-31-2009, 02:20 AM

How did you get around using the world normal, eyeVector and the max() function? My biggest problem is I cant look at these things and say, oh this is what they are doing, I can just do this in Unreal. I can pull out all the math, it's fairly simple I just don't know what is what when moving it towards unreal.

Neox

05-31-2009, 02:45 AM

i can't either, look at the first post its all written down, reading code to me is like reading a european language i don't speak i can understand some words but it doesn't make much sense to me, i have to think a lot and go back and forth to understand whats going up in code, way to abstract for me :)

1) A dot product between the inverse surface normal and the light, clamped from 0 to 1, and finally distance attenuated;

this is the core, basicly a dot between ne normal and the light is a gradient that goes between the brightest spot and the darkest spot, in verting this is just the basic mask for the SSS, it shows where the light is not and therefore where the SSS should come through. Remember its just a simple fake there is no real light transmission going on, but SSS always happens in the places that are opposed to the light direction

2) Another half-lambert term between the inverse normal and view, also distance attenuated;
This is just a fresnel i didn't do it the way he did it, because i want to control it like a fresnel, what i did is a 1 - dot between the normal and a camera vector (could use a reflection vecotr, im not sure what the real difference is the result looks exactly the same, camera vector is just a few instructions cheaper.
And raised the contrast of the result with a power node, the power in that case gives me control of the fresnel falloff

3) Scaling of subsurface color by red, green and blue extinction coefficients. The final shot demonstrates the effects of tweaking these to produce a blue scatter color.
I just multiplied the result with a color

then i just added another multiplier that gives me control over the "thickness" well just a mask that scales down the effect, white = thin black =thick surface

ImSlightlyBored

05-31-2009, 03:26 AM

reflection vector takes in to account the surface normals, camera doesn't.
What's wrong with the old transmission function in shaders? Theres a tutorial about SSS on UDN, pretty basic but shows you how to reproduce without using the transmission function. Also, could you not just swap out zbuffer for screenpos z? At least, that would get around having to have a translucent material, surely?

Problem is needing to use lightvector, which if I'm right, isn't considered on static meshes? Tried it once, and upon baking lighting all the lightvector info is gone. Great forr characters, not so much for props.

@rodrigoB:
When I've exported BSP, the only real way I found useful was to delete every static mesh/anything that isn't BSP, take the level containing BSP (if you've got a multi-level map set up) and purely open that in UE, not the main map, and then export ALL to .obj. It normally imports fine for me, from there, but it could be an engine build thing if that's what you do.

Neox

05-31-2009, 03:39 AM

What's wrong with the old transmission function in shaders?

it doesnt really work with my custom shading, thats why i added sss by myself into the airborn shader, with normal UT phongshading it surely works

mheyman

05-31-2009, 04:17 AM

Thanks a lot for the reply! Funny, I had a lot of what you said already made but not put together properly, I was so fixated on trying to perfectly replicate what they did in they code I didn't really bother reading his explanation more than once. It's looking pretty good so far, I'm excited to try some thickness masks.

Is yours also directionally based? Looks like a lot is coming from one side.

Neox

05-31-2009, 04:31 AM

its based on the light direction and as i only have one direction lightsource in the level and didn't rotate the whale, of course its only on one side ^^

aerynSun

05-31-2009, 10:13 AM

I'm probably going to sound like a ridiculous noob right now, but I have to ask because I find this look that you guys are creating really nifty.

How do you even accomplish that look?! :P

I can understand basic cell shading. I use Maya, and have created similar effects. When I did it in Maya, I just used a Toon Shader, which is basically just a hard edged ramp texture.

What I don't understand, is how to apply something like that in unreal. I really have a hard time grasping how to use different Material Expressions.

I tried to follow Noex's TF2 tutorial

http://www.realityengine.net/tutorials-2/unreal-engine/tf2-unreal-3-shader

The term "half lambert" boogles me. What does that term even mean? I can understand that a lambert is just a matte materal. So what is half a matte material?

I suppose I'd need to get more kung fu with shader creation in order to really understand this. Do you guys have any advise on where to start?
Where did you start? Did you just start fiddling and eventually get amazing? :P

Hopefully someone can help me with noob questions. :P

Thanks! :)

Neox

05-31-2009, 10:33 AM

http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2006/SIGGRAPH06_Course_ShadingInValvesSourceEngine.pdf

:)

its awesome how your referring to me with my tutorial on that site, haha who ever needs credits :P

wisebrownmonkey

05-31-2009, 01:15 PM

Neox

05-31-2009, 01:18 PM

select everything and export it? ;)
i think there is a export to obj and stl option

Okt

05-31-2009, 05:47 PM

I tried searching this thread, but it's to long. I just have a simple question. I made a simple level in unreal, i was wondering how I could export it out to maya. I want to make some props and texture some stuff. Thanks.

select everything and export it? ;)
i think there is a export to obj and stl option

This is correct, there is an export function in the file menu, I'm not sure how the OBJ interpreter in Maya is but I've had limited success in getting usable geometry out of Unreal and into MAX. There is usually a good chunk of cleanup before anything becomes manageable.

Definitely give it a go and see where it gets you though.

wisebrownmonkey

05-31-2009, 09:35 PM

Thanks for the quick reply guys. I got it into maya. For some reason I thought it was harder then that. Do I feel dumb now :)

Wahlgren

06-01-2009, 10:28 AM

So I´ve been messing around with your TF2 shader too neox In an attempt to learn but i´ve stumbled onto a problem and I wonder if anyone has a clue what I´m doing wrong. As far as i can see i´ve done it exactly like the tutorial.

I seem to have an issue with the parmcube (I put a simple flat color texture into it aswell).
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/469564/halp.jpg

And if i just remove the parmcube and the add and connect it directly into the multiply everything pops up. Well. Except in the left view as you can see. PItch black.

So yeah... sniff. Halp. :(

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/469564/halp2.jpg

Neox

06-01-2009, 10:45 AM

errr errrr either turn on custom lighting... oooorrrr unplug everything and plug in result by result til you have the mistake

the cube is a real cubemap if you just want one texture why are you plugging the surface normal into ha i did this in the tutorial... should clean that part :D if you use a cubemap you need a normalized reflectionmap as the source of the uvs :)

the tutorial is old and has some mistakes, especially in the specular term... i should do a "airborn shading tut" some time in the future because i learned alot over the past months and quite some stuff changed, even though the tutorial still works its not perfect

Wahlgren

06-01-2009, 11:04 AM

Thanks alot neox for the fast response. Yeah i forgot to change the phong to custom. I thought it would be automatic. I guess i got my answer about the cube aswell. Ended up popping in a constant there instead. :)

I would be very interested in seeing the Airborn shading tut and I think the rest of the 3D world would be too. :)

Just a quick question. What´s the difference between a "TextureSample" and "TextureSampleParameter2D". It looks the same to me. :/

EDIT: Here´s the result. A simple test wooden club to try out shaders with. Way unfinished of course so dont mind the bug topright. This is your TF2 tutorial all the way through except the cube-thing and dang. You really made me want to play around with shaders more.

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/469564/halpresult.jpg

Neox

06-01-2009, 11:11 AM

a Texturesample Parameter gives you the ability to change the texture inside Material Instances (MIC), so the idea is, that you create a Mastershader with Texturesample Parameters that are just shared textures (in case of airborn its a greying albedo, a clean normalmap, a generic cubemap etc.) and then you create a MIC apply it to your asset and exchange the parameters with the tweaks and textures you want.

Wahlgren

06-01-2009, 11:24 AM

I see. Sounds like a smart way of doing it... but tricky. Won´t even pretend to know what it is. Live and learn. :)

Is there any downside to doing it this way? I guess the positive thing is that you won´t have to mess around to much once the "Master" is done.

Neox

06-01-2009, 12:01 PM

well it also good if you want to keep everything up to date, i changed the shader heavily last week, doing it on a "per asset" base would have been a crazy waste of time. so i only have to change one shader and every MIC updates automaticly.

Proxzee

06-01-2009, 02:08 PM

I wish I knew MAX better. I was trained in Maya and getting Maya into engines is a huge pain.

Neox

06-01-2009, 02:42 PM

hu? maya has actorX and ASE possibilities too o.o

Proxzee

06-01-2009, 02:44 PM

I dont..understand...explain what those are to me.

Neox

06-01-2009, 03:40 PM

actorX= unreal skeletal meshes and ASE = unreal static meshes with those you can easily get any model from maya into the engine...

mheyman

06-01-2009, 04:07 PM

Do a google search of ActorX. Install and enable the plug-in. Select the geometry you want to export and then type 'axmesh' into the command line.

A pop-up will prompt you with some options and once you export you'll be left with a .ase file. You can import this easily into the Generic Browser. I have always felt the workflow between Maya and Unreal was fairly simple.

I'd also love to see a tutorial on the Airborn shader. Actually I would love if you guys compiled a pdf with your whole artistic philosophy and direction. I've loved reading all of the Valve papers I can find, learned a ton of stuff from them.

But then again, at the very least a simple tutorial or a fix to the TF2 tutorial would be amazing.

Neox

06-02-2009, 01:02 AM

no time right now but its on my list for things to do in the future

mheyman

06-02-2009, 01:07 AM

When you create ambient cubes, what exactly do you place in the 6 texture fields of the texture cube? In reading the Illustrative Rendering paper they say that the values for the cube are chosen by some outside source depending on the environment colors like the sky and ground colors.

Did you guys keep the ambient cube and are you also just putting in colors that match your environment?

Neox

06-02-2009, 01:12 AM

right now we have a very simple selfmade cube, its one blue tone for the top, one brownish for the bottom and and gradient between the two for all sides, once we have the env done we can create real cubes that we can use to integrate the dynamic assets better in the prebaked env.

aerynSun

06-02-2009, 07:25 AM

Thanks Neox for that valve link! It's been quite helpful! :)

I have a question though. What exactly is albedo?

I did a google search on the term and it was defined as reflectivity. Though in that Valve paper it looks to be just diffuse shading. And the TF2 unreal shading example appears to be just a diffuse texture as well.

Thank you so much again! :)

Neox

06-02-2009, 07:40 AM

albedo is if i remember the amount of diffuse light thats been drawn back by a surface as opposed to selfilluminating surfaces, damn my english... its the diffuse color of the object :P

Okt

06-02-2009, 12:08 PM

I have a bunch of UIScenes that I am loading textures into the backgrounds on, when they load up they are all pixelated and take a second to "pop" into the actual resolution/quality. How can I get them to load up full quality from the beginning?

Neox

06-02-2009, 12:14 PM

turn off streaming in the textures options :)

Okt

06-02-2009, 12:53 PM

turn off streaming in the textures options :)

Cheers man! I made the change and it thought it would work, but someone else forgot to update the packages from the repo! DOH! Looks great now.

mheyman

06-02-2009, 02:02 PM

Is there anyway to obtain the licensee only information from the UDN network without buying a full license? I know one of doing so is working at Epic or a company that has already purchased a license. Is there any other way?

I'm willing to spend money but not extravagant amounts.

maestro

06-04-2009, 03:33 PM

I am having a serious problem with skeletal meshes clipping in and out depending on camera position and need to know the work around. It makes making cinematics the way you want nearly impossible. I have tried updating my actorx to the latest version, updated drivers etc, latest UT3 patches but still the same story. The only work around is to set bRotationOnly in the anim tab but keyframing movement looks un-natural. If anyone knows a work around for this I sure would appreciate it. Thanks!

see image http://www.treadster.com/images/meshProblem.jpg

aerynSun

06-05-2009, 08:58 AM

I have a question about using BSP.

Is there such a thing as TOO much BSP in a scene? Like for an environment, could I make all my buildings bases be BSP and then just have window, door and trim meshes that I place around that BSP to make it decorative?

I'm just curious if this is considered bad form or not.

Thanks! :)

mheyman

06-08-2009, 06:40 PM

In public documentation on the UDN network there is information on the Custom material node. However, I don't seem to have access to this and a few other nodes from within my Unreal Editor.

Is this something only available to license holders? Is there any other way to integrate HLSL into the material editor?

Wahlgren

06-09-2009, 02:19 AM

You mean the customlighting node? I got that and i use unreal tournament 3. It´s at the bottom of the material-thingy. Look at my images on the previous page to see what i mean.

mheyman

06-09-2009, 02:58 AM

Nah I don't think it's the custom lighting option that you can plug into/ turn on.

It's a node that allows you to input HLSL code and you can set how many input parameters it takes etc. This would be extremely useful for me but I can't figure out how to get it, I'm hoping its not an engine only node.

Neox

06-09-2009, 03:00 AM

could you link to the udn file? well i guess its not integrated in UT3 but i'd like to read more about it

mheyman

06-09-2009, 03:13 AM

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsCompendium.html#Custom

Enjoy... I wish I had access to this.. It would open up a world of opportunity for me now that I'm learning HLSL.

Ugh... I also wish I could read the license only Create Material Expression link on UDN :(

ImSlightlyBored

06-09-2009, 04:11 AM

hey man
yeah it's not in UT3 or GOW builds (or any public ones I dont think), it's some in-house build feature from whoever added that. Or maybe it's an upcoming feature (hopefully!)

Though of course, in a studio, anyone could add custom stuff to it...

@aerynSun (http://boards.polycount.net/member.php?u=28361)
You can indeed have too much BSP imo. It's nowhere near as easy to edit and re-iterate as static meshes. There are other, performance related issues for it as well. But all of this still just comes down to studio workflow, and how you are expected to work there. There may indeed be people who create pure BSP levels with minimal static mesh decos, who knows!

But it's a path I wouldn't like to take.

Neox

06-09-2009, 10:03 AM

woah that node would be great ^^

aerynSun

06-10-2009, 01:20 PM

http://nonpublic.airborn-game.com/wip/neox/shaders/sss_fake_04.jpg

what currently is not added but what i tested here

http://nonpublic.airborn-game.com/wip/neox/shaders/sss_fake.jpg

is a map to mask thickness which you can paint or generate with xnormal i think

Hey Neox,
I was just wondering how you went about putting an outline around the whale in your airborn game.
I'm just having a rough time wrapping my mind around how it would work in unreal. I've been trying doing something with a fresnal and a dot to isolate the edges, but I can't figure out how to get a outline to draw around a character.

Any tips would be great!

Thanks!

Neox

06-10-2009, 01:28 PM

its a post effect and i'm pretty sure i posed here how i did it :)

almighty_gir

06-11-2009, 01:47 AM

Neox, are you working with the license holder stuff? or the basic, comes with the game, out of the box editor?

are you using a custom lighting plugin? or did you program it yourselves?

Neox

06-11-2009, 02:10 AM

mheyman

06-11-2009, 01:36 PM

Do you guys not have access to the licensee section of the UDN?

Neox

06-11-2009, 02:34 PM

i do, yes but still its only a UT3 Build we are working with, so we can't do wnything more that you can do besides I can find informations better then you can :P

but most of the stuff that defines airborn is very basic once you get how it works, the shading and outline is really no magic, i'm totally bad with math it takes me ages to analyze the formulas behind it but once i get it, its mostly very simple stuff

Ryan Smith

06-11-2009, 06:02 PM

Hey guys, does anyone know the console command to take high-resolution screenshots?

whats_true

06-11-2009, 07:20 PM

Their are actually several different ways.

tiledshot 2 (with 2 stating that you want the image to be twice as large as the screen resolution. If you put 1, the screen resolution is the screen resolution. If you put 3, it is 3 times the resolution and so forth. )

tiledshot 6 128 (this is good for post effect heavy level. it will generate a resolution that is 6 tmies the screen resolution, and overlap an area of 128 pixels for each tile. It creates tiles that overlap a little bit to ensure that fullscreen blurring or distortion post-processing effect will match)

F9 (if your in game, i believe this is the default for screen shots without using the consul command)

Ryan Smith

06-11-2009, 08:04 PM

Wow, thanks for that, i really appreciate it

whats_true

06-11-2009, 08:28 PM

NP mate!

Alternatively, you can just print screen in the Engine itself. You risk getting steps, but with the right video settings, it should be all good.

aerynSun

06-13-2009, 06:24 PM

Its all just UT3, no fancy new features, lighting is baked in maya and i created a shader in unreal that can read the directional lightmaps and use them in cooperation with the normalmaps. But in those screens its just one light source with dynamic shadows really nothing fancy.

Directional lightmaps? How does that work? I'm still a little shady on light maps. I know that for unreal I need to create a second UV set that doesn't have any overlapping UVs. But that's the extent of what I know to do with them. I'm unfamiliar with what else can be done.
I assumed that Unreal just uses this second set to store shadowing information on that particular object.
You light your scene in Maya before hand before taking it into unreal? Or was this project just a special circumstance?
I remember reading somewhere that someone used an ambient occlusion pass render as a light map. I don't know if that makes any sense to you, because it most certainly is over my head.

When I went back and read over the post concerning the outline in unreal, I came across you discussing the "zbuffer" quite a bit. I guess really the whole discussion was a bit over my head. I'm just a little confused as to how a zbuffer could be utilized. The only way I know how to get a zbuffer render is from checking it on in the Render Settings in Maya and rendering out an image of my model. I'm quite unsure has to how a static render could be used for a model going into unreal. Is it baked in some way?

When ImSlightlyBored gave his explanation of what to do for the outline, I just got quite lost. :P It sounded like that a Texture2DCubeParameter could be used for his 8 way zbuffer? I guess just what nodes to use and where and how to use them is really my problem.
You mentioned a "soft alpha" as well. What exactly is a "soft alpha"?

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all my questions. I really really do appreciate all your help! :)

mheyman

06-13-2009, 09:33 PM

I'm also not entirely sure about the directional lightmaps either. You may want to read Valve's Siggraph 2007 Efficient Self Shadowed Radiosity Normal Mapping publication. I don't know if this has anything to do with what the Airborn team is doing but it may help? If this ends up having no relation to what they are talking about, well, it's still an interesting read.

As far as the zbuffer goes. Using the alpha channel of the Material Editor's SceneTexture node acts as your scene's zbuffer. You're going to want to mimic a blur by offsetting the zbuffer in 8 directions. Go back and read Neox's post, it pretty much covers exactly how to do it. I learned all this from him haha.

Hope some of this helped.

hollaAtMe

06-25-2009, 10:03 AM

I have a seam problem in Unreal that I can't seem to solve. This is a specific mesh normals seam too. I have 2 meshes that, when in Maya, flow together fine in both regular and high quality rendering. I import it into Unreal using the collada exporter, and snap the 2 pieces together. Pop a point light in and boom! Seam.

It's a seam that looks like the normals are inverted, but that just isn't so. Both meshes have the same smoothing groups, which is smoothed tangents. All I have on the material is a constant at .5 plugged into the Diffuse. No normal map or anything.

They are both water tight pieces as well. I've tried not making them water tight, like deleting out the pieces that snap up to one another. I've tried using multiple smoothing groups, by hardening the corners.

Nothing seems to work. It seems to be that I'm either exporting it wrong or that I'm missng a setting on the material. I really have no idea. So I'm hoping someone can assist me with this.

Below are some screens from Maya and UT3
http://i880.photobucket.com/albums/ac1/HollaBack1334/mayanoHighlight.jpg

http://i880.photobucket.com/albums/ac1/HollaBack1334/mayaHighlight.jpg

http://i880.photobucket.com/albums/ac1/HollaBack1334/unreal.jpg

These screens are with my trial run with not having it be water tight. You can see in Unreal it looks like the normals on one are going in the opposite direction. Which in Maya says they are not.

Here are my export settings out of Maya for Collada:

http://i880.photobucket.com/albums/ac1/HollaBack1334/exportSettings.jpg

Let me know if you want to see any more screens. Thanks a lot for any assists I can get with this!

Harryscary276

06-26-2009, 12:15 PM

How exactly does one go about making a light map in Unreal, I made on in Photoshop (just changed to grey scale and render clouds over everything) but for one the import keeps saying it is bad (targa format) and I cant find any instructions on how to set it up in the material editor

Also I am trying to find the render double sided option because I got some meshes you will need to see inside of, I found something calls Forcesdoublesidedshadow, is that it?

Thanks in advance for the help

nrek

06-26-2009, 12:23 PM

Not sure what your asking for with the lightmap stuff but this is a great tut about baking lightmaps out in unreal.

http://www.hourences.com/book/tutorialsue3lightmap.htm

Then for the double sided question, go into the material editor of the mat that will be on your object. And its right here...

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/6397/capture2omc.jpg

Harryscary276

06-26-2009, 12:29 PM

/facepalm

that explains it, I was looking in the mesh properties not the material

hum okay I will look into that hopefully I can get this working

thanks big time nrek

mheyman

06-26-2009, 07:07 PM

Is it possible to use a custom Material Post Process effect in a Post Processing Volume?

Harryscary276

06-26-2009, 11:09 PM

hay me again, first off let me say thanks for all the help I have been getting, thanks to you guys this class project has been moving along on schedule, but as with anything one thing gets fix and another breaks, this problem I have had since the beginning, its been nearly a month and I still cant figure it out

as you can see in the images

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v168/harryscary276/untitled.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v168/harryscary276/untitled2.jpg

I have random faces missing, I checked the normals and they where fine. All over the level I have small parts of meshes missing or I have just random faces missing and there normals are just fine, like bolts to big to make from normal or displacement mapping so I made them from meshes just gone or dials piping missing some of their faces

I thought it was a size thing like things to small where not just exporting over but the screw in the first picture, size wise, is bigger than the player

I have no idea what is going on, and this is really bad because several important things are suffering from this

help

hollaAtMe

06-27-2009, 07:23 AM

I had that problem once before as well. Though for me it was because I beveled certain corners in my geometry without re-sewing the UVs and re-baking my normal map.
You can also check and make sure your normals aren't locked. Just do a quick unlock of them, set them to face and then reapply normal angle to your object. If you have Maya then all of this is under the Normals menu in the Polygons submenu, if you're a Max user then I have no idea what the equivalent of that is. :P

Also, once you do a re-check of your geometry, re-export and re-import into Unreal with a different name. Don't override the previous static mesh. I've had issues where it'll just keep the previous problem even though it had been solved. Re-importing a fresh mesh seemed to help.

The one main thing you can check if it IS a normals issue is to turn on Two Sided on the material like nrek showed previously.
If they show up when you turned on Two Sided, then it's a normals issue, if they don't, check your UVs. If it where me, I'd just redo the UV map on one piece that's messed up to test it really quickly.

Hopefully that helps you. :)

Also for my previous post as to the problem I was having, I got it solved. It was a light map/geometry issue. The light map res was too low and I had colliding faces in my geometry.

Thanks Moody for the help with that! :)

Neox

06-27-2009, 07:55 AM

Is it possible to use a custom Material Post Process effect in a Post Processing Volume?

as far as i know it is only possible on a script base

Harryscary276

06-27-2009, 10:55 AM

I had that problem once before as well. Though for me it was because I beveled certain corners in my geometry without re-sewing the UVs and re-baking my normal map.
You can also check and make sure your normals aren't locked. Just do a quick unlock of them, set them to face and then reapply normal angle to your object. If you have Maya then all of this is under the Normals menu in the Polygons submenu, if you're a Max user then I have no idea what the equivalent of that is. :P

Also, once you do a re-check of your geometry, re-export and re-import into Unreal with a different name. Don't override the previous static mesh. I've had issues where it'll just keep the previous problem even though it had been solved. Re-importing a fresh mesh seemed to help.

The one main thing you can check if it IS a normals issue is to turn on Two Sided on the material like nrek showed previously.
If they show up when you turned on Two Sided, then it's a normals issue, if they don't, check your UVs. If it where me, I'd just redo the UV map on one piece that's messed up to test it really quickly.

Hopefully that helps you. :)

Well I tried what you suggested and still no luck, none of my test provided favorable results, so back to square one thought at this point we can pretty much rule out Normal issues unless their is something more I am missing

Thanks for the help anyway man, really appreciate it

mheyman

06-27-2009, 09:28 PM

Ok, what I'm trying to do is add a post process effect that gradually makes the screen darker starting from the corners.

Right now what I've tried is creating a gradient texture in Photoshop and multiplying it with the scene texture. This successfully game me darkened corners. Next I multiplied the texture with a Sine/Time combination. What this got me is a screen that starts with dark edges, then fades into black and then does the reverse, fading back to normal.

I know how a Sine wave works but was wondering if there was any way to stop the wave from going back down and brightening the screen again. My first thought was to track time in Kismet and when the screen goes black (after say, 10 seconds), switch out the material being used in the post process with one that just makes the screen black.

Also, is there anyway to control how slowly it fades to black. If anyone else has any completely alternative ideas I would really appreciate them. This seems to be a very messy procedure and I can't think of a better way to do it yet.

Edit: Thanks Neox for the reply! Yeah i realized I couldn't get it going with a volume so now I'm trying to trigger a material change in the scene Post Process so it only happens at desired locations.

Neox

06-28-2009, 01:49 AM

well multiply the sine with 0.5 so it will have half the speed ( i think thats the way hwo i did it, not sure right now, would have to test it, or maybe change the time input for the sine by lowering it, not really sure now) and as fr the brightening up thing why not just clamp the result of the sine?

DEElekgolo

06-28-2009, 01:54 AM

Is there any way to use custom lightmaps in unreal engine? I like to bake my lightmaps in 3ds max for the last game engine I worked with.

Neox

06-28-2009, 02:56 AM

sure you can, you have to build up your own shader to read them as you wish

mheyman

06-28-2009, 03:02 AM

When I tried multiplying the Sine it didn't exactly change it's speed, it just altered the wave, changing the intensity of the texture. Clamping it also seems to only control the range in which the wave moves.

I want to go from 100% --> 0%. Right now I'm still getting a wave that goes both ways. Even if I Clamp from 0.0 to 0.5 it goes from 0% --> 50% and back to 0%.

ImSlightlyBored

06-28-2009, 06:40 AM

erm if you want to stop a sine wave from going from -1 to 1 and instead have it 0 - 1 (is that what you are talking about? I am not sure.)
multiply it by .5, which effectively halves the range of the wave ( -.5 to .5) then add .5 to it to shift the wave up.

to change a wave's speed, I believe it has the option to do that from within the node itself.

edit: alright so you want just a slide down from 1 to 0 then no change? I think you have to use cosine to start at 1 though I'm not sure.

Why not just control this with a material instance actor and matinee and a scalar parameter? It's cheaper (sine waves are quite expensive.) and much more controllable, than having to dick around with maths for something that can be done with just one expression and a custom curve

mheyman

06-28-2009, 10:49 AM

Ahhhh! You just gave me a great idea thanks alot. I've been trying to find a way to fake a post process volume that can have material post processes.

I was triggering a regular volume in kismet to change the material of an actor... but that wasn't working. I knew about the ability to change scalar parameters with Kismet but didnt think of having it set to 0 (opacity) all the time, until the volume is touched.

I haven't worked with Matinee much, does it have a lot of control in animating materials, or smoothly changing values?

ImSlightlyBored

06-28-2009, 11:02 AM

it has much more than the material itself tbh - its sometimes far easier and more efficient to set the material up and then just create the animated sections via a curve.

you control values via curves, so you can have bezier, step, etc, just really easy. Also set them to loop infinitely or play out only once, when the matinee has been told to play.

I believe it also lets you sync up your animated mat with sound fx too, but don't quote me on that. Basically, very useful!

nrek

06-28-2009, 11:08 AM

Hey Bored do you still plan on doing some small how to's of your materials that you mentioned in your sketchbook awhile back?

ImSlightlyBored

06-28-2009, 11:12 AM

plan to yeah
time is a cruel mistress but I haven't forgot
(I'd like to do alot more aside from those as well, but can't outside of work. fail.)

DEElekgolo

06-28-2009, 12:30 PM

sure you can, you have to build up your own shader to read them as you wish
So if I had my lightmaps already as .tga files, how would I make each specific object use them as lightmaps?

mheyman

06-28-2009, 12:42 PM

Ok ImSlightlyBored.. maybe you can walk me through this process, I seem to be having some trouble.

So I created a material that turns the scene black (multiplying the scene texture by a scalar parameter: SceneTexture * 0) I then made an instance of that material, so the parameter can be edited. I called this blackPP.

I plugged blackPP into the scene's default post process. I tested it and the scene turned black, that works.

Next I went into Kismet and and created a new event: On Level Start Up. I then created a new Matinee node and plugged the out channel of On Level Start Up into the Matinee's Play input.

Next what I did was open up that Matinee and created a new Empty Group. I then filled that group with a new Float Material Param Track. I set the parameter name to the same name as the parameter in my instance material. I then set the animation to go for 2 seconds and moved the end key frame of the curve from 0 to 1. So at 0 seconds the curve is at 0, and at 2 seconds the curve is at 1.

I then created a new variable Object in Kismet and set it to the blackPP in my Generic Browser, and set that as the Matinee's Float Material etc target.

I then plugged in the Complete output of the Matinee into the Play input, so it would loop.

When I tested it... nothing changed the scene remained black. I didn't change anything other than what I wrote in the above description. Am I going about this completely wrong? Any suggestions?

Neox

06-28-2009, 03:53 PM

So if I had my lightmaps already as .tga files, how would I make each specific object use them as lightmaps?

as said you have to create your own shader and use it how you want it to be used (multiplied, added, overlayed, whatever), best would be to create it with a texture parameter so you can just apply a Material Instance onto your models and then load the lightmaps into the instanced materials, it not like clicky clicky, load lightmap. You definitely have to dig a bit deeper into shader creation to create one that does all what you want.

Harryscary276

07-01-2009, 06:42 PM

How do I make transparency maps in Unreal, like for windows and glass

Lamont

07-01-2009, 06:56 PM

How do I make transparency maps in Unreal, like for windows and glassYou import a 32 bit image, or an image to act as a way to control transparencies and apply it to the mesh. In the materials you have an option to tag it as a material that uses transparencies.

Jesse Moody

07-02-2009, 01:25 AM

Don't know if it's already been made but would anyone be interested in a master material and instance based off Neoxs toon shader? Only of course if Mr. Neox will give us his permission.

nfrrtycmplx

07-04-2009, 01:48 PM

harryscary - there's several ways to do that... one being use the image like Lamont said, or you can simply apply a constant, constant vector 3, or a fresnel with a normal map plugged into it... all to the "Opacity" of the material.

So many ways to get transparency it's rediculous.

almighty_gir

07-04-2009, 04:59 PM

Question:
you talk about "making your own shader". i don't even know where to start with that in UE3. the only option i have, that i'm aware of, within the standard editor that comes with unreal tournament, is to create a material based on the shaders available within the engine.

is there some hidden command, or shader editor which most people aren't aware of?

also, would you mind sharing some of your processes on how you got your fake SSS to work?

mheyman

07-05-2009, 12:03 AM

The material editor is where you will construct your shader network. It is limited though, you won't have access to any external HLSL or GLSL commands/functions/methods (whatever they call it in shader languages). As far as the SSS goes, Neox explained it a bit earlier in this thread.

When I made my SSS fake I referenced the same code Neox did.

almighty_gir

07-05-2009, 03:32 AM

yeah, but you can't use any HLSL or GLSL in the material editor, so i'm still confused how you did it xD

Harryscary276

07-05-2009, 02:40 PM

thanks Lamont and nfrrty, I had been messing with it but no luck, when it comes to programs I usually can mess with it for a few hours and figure things out, but as it is this is showing itself more and more to be something that I cant just do that anymore

I will give what you said a try, hope it works for me

Thanks again

Lamont

07-05-2009, 04:12 PM

yeah, but you can't use any HLSL or GLSL in the material editor, so i'm still confused how you did it xDI don't think this is available in the consumer version of UED. Unless it's in the latest version of UED3. I'm DL'ing the update now through Steam...

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MaterialsCompendium.html#Custom

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/rsrc/Three/MaterialsCompendium/Custom.jpg

mheyman

07-05-2009, 11:30 PM

Yeah I've referenced that same page here earlier in this thread. Unless an update came out in the last week or so with it, I don't think it will be in the public editor.

In fact I contacted Epic/UDN and they said the had no current plans to add it into the public editor either. So there you have it :(

Anyways, back to Gir.

You're going to have to translate the HLSL/GLSL into nodes. There are a lot of things you won't be able to copy exactly, but there are fixes to get around and achieve the next best thing. There's no other way to do this then looking at the code, deciphering what is happening and trying to recreate that in the material editor with nodes.

Neox

07-06-2009, 12:11 AM

yeah, but you can't use any HLSL or GLSL in the material editor, so i'm still confused how you did it xD

what you do in hlsl/glsl is math, you can do most of that just with nodes instead of translating the fomula into code you translate it into nodes

in case of this http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=481494
it's a perfect instruction on how to do it in unreal

1) A dot product between the inverse surface normal and the light, clamped from 0 to 1, and finally distance attenuated;
you create a dot product, a surface normal (either normalmap or a (0,0,1) vector) and a light vector plug those into the dot product, then create a constantclamp and plug in the result of the dot product and then you can multiply it with a distance dependent term.
In that case its really easy to copy, not like the formula from valves tf2 shader where ui had to reconstruct every part of the fomula without knowing what i am really doing there :D

almighty_gir

07-06-2009, 03:06 AM

1) A dot product between the inverse surface normal and the light, clamped from 0 to 1, and finally distance attenuated;
2) Another half-lambert term between the inverse normal and view, also distance attenuated;
3) Scaling of subsurface color by red, green and blue extinction coefficients.

http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/3238/sssy.jpg

ok, so i've done parts 1 + 2. the third i don't really understand, but i'm assuming a constant 3 vector, or a texture sample with whatever colour i want the scatter to be, would work?

i've copied your half lambert shader from the TF2 sample you made (thanks :D). but, how do i connect them together? and do they end up multiplied into the diffuse channel?

Neox

07-06-2009, 03:18 AM

oh sorry there is one mistake, you have to invert the surface normal as written in the text

i interpreted 3 as the multiply of the SSS Color, to colorize the SSS effekt

and then just add that result to the "SSS part 2"

if you have that plug it into custom lighting, not diffuse and turn the shader to use custom lighting insteadt of phong :)

about what you plug where and how to combine, best thing would be to plug the results first into custom lighting so you see what is happening, in case of the "SSS part 1" term, the result should be a white to black gradient from the shadowed part to the lighted part, and now you see it, plug in the shading part, you should have a very soft shading curve, now what do you want to do with the "SSS part 1"? Of course you want to brighten up the parts that are facing away from the lightsource, so add it on the "SSS part 2" (i'd call that "shading group" instead), mathmetically thats totally easy, your "SSS part 1" goes (thanks to the clamp) from 0-1 everything that is black won't add to the shading group the rest will brighten it up, so the effect of SSS appears.

almighty_gir

07-06-2009, 03:33 AM

awesome, i think i've got it.

finally, is there a way (do you think) to control the SSS? like, if there are metal surfaces, could i use a SSS texture to say "these parts have NO sss at all, and places like the ears and nose have more sss than normal"?

Neox

07-06-2009, 03:41 AM

just think simple :)
say you have a image rendered and overall SSS solution rendered and you compose both together what would you do in photoshop to control where the SSS appears and where not, think of it as a postprocess nothing you would handle inside your 3dapp, the solution is very simple.

almighty_gir

07-06-2009, 03:44 AM

either grayscale, or mask?

could you use an alpha layer in the inverse normal texture to control it?

Neox

07-06-2009, 03:48 AM

right direction, the result of "SSS part 1" is black and white and you add it to your "SSS part 2", so if you have a mask (be it an alpha in one of your texture, or a new texture) what would you need to do to change the effect of "SSS part 1" over "SSS part 2"?
I could just say the answer but i think its better for you if you come up the solution by yourself and really think simple its super easy math and i'm a loser with math...

almighty_gir

07-06-2009, 04:02 AM

just ran into another snag.

using the custom lighting node, stops me using the standard normal/diffuse/spec nodes for the "normal" material aspects.

i feel like i'm in a bit over my head, but i'll keep bashing on through.

Neox

07-06-2009, 04:12 AM

yes you'll have to create your own diffuse inside your custom shading, see the tut, i have specularmasks, diffuse, cubemaps etc right inside the custom lighting ;)

almighty_gir

07-06-2009, 04:35 AM

speaking of that tutorial, where can i find it with higher resolution images? the ones at Moddb are small enough that i can't read some of the node titles.

Neox

07-06-2009, 04:47 AM

http://polyphobia.de/public/index.php?dir=./tutorials/TF2shading

almighty_gir

07-06-2009, 05:17 AM

awesome :D thanks man!

got the rest of the shader working, now to just get the SSS nailed :o

Neox

07-06-2009, 05:33 AM

don't just grab the specular and rimlight part, both such and have been redone for airborn ;)

almighty_gir

07-06-2009, 09:57 AM

nah i just used them as a base.

biggest problem i'm having with it at the moment, is that it's coming out waaaay too bright. and i still haven't figured out that missing link...

Harryscary276

07-10-2009, 07:22 PM

I like to thank yall for all the help you have been giving me when it comes to my questions, both successful advice and non successful. But sadly I have another question (Annoying I know)

I am trying to rig it up where matinee sequences are dependent on each other IE one will not work unless another has been triggered. Like pulling a lever to open a door but the lever not working unless a button was pressed to turn on the power in a different part of the level

I think it has something to do with bool and I have been playing with it but getting no where really, had some really interesting results with my tinkering but getting no where, any help would be appreciated

Oh and I figured out the who missing geometry thing, not what was happening but just a quick fix, just make a single bone joint and smooth bind all the geometry to it, that seems to work on things I don't have to move lol

mheyman

07-10-2009, 10:01 PM

I dont know the extent of your programming knowledge but I'll start with the basics.

A boolean is a simple true or false object. A 1 or a 0.

Basically you want to check for a condition, a true of false.

Say you have a trigger, a button for instance. And a door opening which is a matinee sequence.

Then lets say the door will open when approached, but only if the button was pressed.

Create a boolean variable and set it to false. Next trigger your button push however you want. Say a touch trigger. Next you want to set the boolean variable to true when the trigger is touched.

Now have another touch trigger set up in front of the door. Then make a conditional statement checking whether or not the boolean is equal to true or false. If true play the matinee sequence, if false, do nothing.

You don't need to use a boolean you can also use integers or other conditions to check if something has happened. You could start with an int set to 0, and then set it to 1 when the button was pushed, then check if the int is 0 or 1 at the door. It's really the same concept.

Hopefully this helped.

Harryscary276

07-10-2009, 11:11 PM

Oh I am intermediate C++ and C#, did an internship where I programmed a UI for a simulator (In unreal script 2.5 oddly enough) That seems about right, I didn't think of using integers for the test

See what I have are these three door controls, but they should not work unless the power plant is turned on, and it is turned on by a button so I boiled it down to a test to see if that button has been activated, its count is only one so I guess I can have a parameter that checks to see if the switch is at 1 or 0 in the way of switch count

BlackulaDZ

07-12-2009, 02:38 PM

does anyone have links to post processing tutorials? google is failing me at the moment. i'm having trouble capturing a certain mood in my scenes with just lighting alone.

Harryscary276

07-12-2009, 10:21 PM

this is in reference to my earlier questions about rigging up one matinee to run depending on weather a different one has been activated, been trying to do what Skyane suggested but still getting no where, here is a shot of my layout

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v168/harryscary276/problem.jpg

The ones with the red rectangle are the two I am trying to get this to work on first before moving on to the others, rectangle one needs to happen first if rectangle 2 is to work at all

Well all I have succeed to do so far is keep rectangle 2 from working at all, I am sure I have the bool setting in rec 1 right if I followed the tutorial videos right (it was the door tutorial) but getting no where

you guys are great with the help, thanks for the help so far, wish I knew enough to help back

mheyman

07-13-2009, 01:02 AM

Neox

07-13-2009, 02:25 AM

does anyone have links to post processing tutorials? google is failing me at the moment. i'm having trouble capturing a certain mood in my scenes with just lighting alone.

what exactly do you want to do with the posteffects?

almighty_gir

07-13-2009, 05:08 AM

Neox, ever have any problems with textures all of a sudden looking lower rez in the editor?

for some reason, my textures all looked awesome, then a second later they all looked pixilated and low quality on the mesh, nothing i do seems to undo this issue =/

ImSlightlyBored

07-13-2009, 05:30 AM

engine has compressed them
set to compression none

Neox

07-13-2009, 05:45 AM

Neox, ever have any problems with textures all of a sudden looking lower rez in the editor?

hehe sure i had, and still have but well thats the compression, best thing i know to do i first of all import your textures with alpha (dxt5 instead of dxt1) and set the texturegroup to skybox

BlackulaDZ

07-13-2009, 07:32 AM

i wanted to change the overall color in my scene and play with the depth of field, i found a tutorial after some more searching
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOz5kT50w9E&feature=PlayList&p=98A8C5D356626C71&index=36

almighty_gir

07-13-2009, 09:48 AM

hehe sure i had, and still have but well thats the compression, best thing i know to do i first of all import your textures with alpha (dxt5 instead of dxt1) and set the texturegroup to skybox

done!

also, setting the LOD bias to -1 seemed to help too =]

Harryscary276

07-13-2009, 12:38 PM

This may be a stupid question but are you sure the boolean you are switching is switching from false to true? The best way to make sure is to print the boolean to the screen. You can do this with the Log action I believe.

I also see that you are changing the boolean with one instance and comparing the boolean in another instance. Maybe you should hook up the same variable into both the change and the compare just to make sure its looking for the same thing? Hopefully this helps.

Its not a stupid question, I am thinking the same thing, I did a quick test and switched it manually before I started up the test and it works just fine, so I am sure that is the problem, but I just don't see where I am doing it wrong everything seems to be right, this is the one thing I hate about programming but visual and text type, get something small wrong and nothing works, and just trying to figure out that small thing is a pain ass

Oh and the two variables, the one in 2 is the actual variable, the one in 1 is a remote variable tied to 2's variable, cant think of its name off the top of my head

mheyman

07-13-2009, 08:29 PM

Harryscary276

07-13-2009, 10:52 PM

Hmmm well, i would start by doing a Log of the variable before and after the change.

That will print whatever the variable is equal to on the screen in game. If you then see its not changing at all. Youve narrowed down the problem. It could be changing but not procedurally updating that second variable that is tied to the first variables value.

If that still doesnt work I guess you can recheck the change boolean node and make sure it's all hooked up and all the data fields are correct.

I dunno if I can solve the problem but if you want to PM the map to me or email it to me I'll take a look. Sometimes fresh eyes are the best thing when solving a problem. I would of course delete the map after I've sent it back to you.

Thanks for the advice man, I logged like you suggested (didn't know I could log Boolean values in Mantnee) and narrowed it down, the variable was not changing for some reason, so I switched it's start value to true and now everything works like I wanted it

Yea the curse of programming, its always something simple

Thanks for the help, hope I can return the favor someday