Tileable Floor in Unreal Engine

Grimmstrom · Apr 2010

Hey guys

Its my first time posting here but I've been browsing the forums for a good few years now. I'm hoping to get into the community scene abit more as I feel like my artwork progression has become a little stale over the last year or so as I feel like been doing the same thing at work for the last 3 - 4 years so I need to get out of my comfort zone and playing around with some new things

Anyway enough introduction, Heres something I'm currently working on. Its basic paralax tiled floor in Unreal Engine. Obviously its untextured at the moment

I'll continue to post updates here. all C&C is welcome

Thanks in advance

MoP · Apr 2010

Nice first post, this is looking great already

A good diffuse and specular should make this look awesome. Got any plans to do a full map or texture set?

Grimmstrom · Apr 2010

This piece was originally for an old project of mine that was like a ruined city, kind of like fallout. However I think I'm just going to do this as a separate piece to build up my portfolio

The plan was to make this as a base floor then do a more damage variation which i could use vertex alpha to blend between the two. then build a couple of props to sit on top such as smashed bits of brick and old rubbish

Jeremy Lindstrom · Apr 2010

always wondered how do you know it will tile when you build your own brick patterns?

katzeimsack · Apr 2010

Jeremy Lindstrom wrote: »

always wondered how do you know it will tile when you build your own brick patterns?

oO

you build the patterns, that's why you can make it tile or not if you please..

e: instances of the tiles moved by the texture lenght help a lot when it comes to rubble and complex tiles

Krazy8 · Apr 2010

Your doing a great job. I am going to keep following this. I'm going to be building some stuff up in Unreal as well so keep at it!

Skiffy · Apr 2010

Indeed this is a nice start. Keep it up sire for we are watching.

Daniel Doerksen · Apr 2010

i think your height map needs some work, kinda a obvious bumpoffset blending issue going on. everythign else looks awesome

A.Kincade · Apr 2010

this is looking good. keep up the good work.

Neoncypher · Apr 2010

This sucks ass biscuits - NAH not really dude, looks very nice, like I told you about 1 minute ago sitting next to me...crank out a cool diffuse, spec and sort the bump offset issue out and this will be smokin

Envelope · Apr 2010

looks good, but spec is gonna make all the difference here. Looking forward to seeing more.

NAIMA · Apr 2010

Wow this is awesome any chance you could make a brief tutorial on how to procede to make something like that? Especially the normal map extraction ?

....

Ged · Apr 2010

did you arrange them into a tiling pattern inside zbrush?? I did that recently inside max but I would never dare do it inside zbrush. Really nice texture, you might want to add a little bit of grittyness to the bricks with crazybump or a filter or 3dcoat? it just seems to look a bit soft after the bake maybe it was the smoothing groups

teaandcigarettes · Apr 2010

Ged wrote: »

it just seems to look a bit soft after the bake maybe it was the smoothing groups

I think that's the case - Grimmstrom, make sure that after you bring the decimate mesh into Max you clear all the smoothing groups on the model. This way you will retain the sharpness of the original sculpt.

Other than that, it looks pretty awesome - it tiles very nicely and with a nice diffuse and spec, it will look even better.

I also wonder how did you arrange them so perfectly inside zbrush - I'm not a fan of bringing highpoly sculpts inside max, so this would really help me a lot.

Grimmstrom · Apr 2010

Thanks for all the great comments. I'm going to keep updating this piece but finding time is tough right now so bare with me

I'll try to answer all questions as best I can:

i think your height map needs some work, kinda a obvious bumpoffset blending issue going on. everythign else looks awesome

Totally agree with you on this one Daniel Doerksen but as its probably the first height map i've rendered I've only got a vague idea on how to fix the problem. Is it cause been the height map jumps from white to mid grey over the space of two pixels rather than it being a gradient?

Wow this is awesome any chance you could make a brief tutorial on how to procede to make something like that? Especially the normal map extraction ? ....

I'm sorry NAIMA but I'm not sure if I'm going to get time to do a tutorial as i'm finding it hard enough to fit time in for my artwork at the moment and also most of my job is about writing tutorials and feedback on outsource companies artwork so I'm not really into doing them in my own time.... I'm sure you understand

did you arrange them into a tiling pattern inside zbrush??

Thanks for great comment GED, really like that dominance war environment you did

. Nope I didn't arrange it in Zbrush. I bascially created two bricks, then arranged them in max, then brought them back into Zbrush inorder to vary them up abit before taking them into max for the bake.

I think that's the case - Grimmstrom, make sure that after you bring the decimate mesh into Max you clear all the smoothing groups on the model. This way you will retain the sharpness of the original sculpt.

Thanks again for the comments teaandcigarettes. I could be wrong about this but I'm almost certain decimate does a decent job of retaining the smoothing groups, either way my model only has one smoothing group so that rules out that problem

teaandcigarettes · Apr 2010

Grimmstrom wrote: »

Thanks again for the comments teaandcigarettes. I could be wrong about this but I'm almost certain decimate does a decent job of retaining the smoothing groups, either way my model only has one smoothing group so that rules out that problem

Hey Grimmstrom. I think you might have misunderstood me (or it's me misunderstanding you

); I was talking about the smoothing groups of your decimated bricks. When you import Zbrush models into max it automatically applies one smoothing group to them; hence the blobby look. Simply clear the smoothing groups and they will be sharp again.

Here's a comparison:

Your bake looks very similar to the example on the left - what led me into thinking that you might have all edges set to soft.

Ignore this post if I have misunderstood you

Grimmstrom · Apr 2010

teaandcigarettes wrote: »

Hey Grimmstrom. I think you might have misunderstood me (or it's me misunderstanding you ); I was talking about the smoothing groups of your decimated bricks. When you import Zbrush models into max it automatically applies one smoothing group to them; hence the blobby look. Simply clear the smoothing groups and they will be sharp again.

Here's a comparison:

Your bake looks very similar to the example on the left - what led me into thinking that you might have all edges set to soft.

Ignore this post if I have misunderstood you

I get what your getting at now

hehe, that actually might not be a bad idea. I might try re-rendering it tomorrow without the smoothing groups, thanks for clearing that up. Hopefully it won't turn out too noisy

teaandcigarettes · Apr 2010

Grimmstrom wrote: »

I get what your getting at now hehe, that actually might not be a bad idea. I might try re-rendering it tomorrow without the smoothing groups, thanks for clearing that up. Hopefully it won't turn out too noisy

Ah, glad to know I didn't misunderstood you after all.

It shouldn't turn out too noisy, but if it does then increase the sampling (if you bake in max) or increase the AA (if you use Xnormal).

Tileable Floor in Unreal Engine

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