Congrats on finishing this ... I want to keep it professional so cant curse you really for what u have done. Neways since im begining making my own set, I notice that when u scale ur UV set on small texture or large texture you get strectching, especially on areas that use patterns (honecomb). It will look odd haveing just 2 honeycomb pattern on a huge floor piece cause you shrink your UVs to fit on such a small texture. I dont know if you have though about it though .

thought*

Tor ur pretty amazing if you can work full time and pump out these levels every few months. Very inspiring work

A...

Wow.

TOR! I don't know if you've seen this, but since your scene is all about optimization technique, I figured it would benefit you GREATLY.

In the latest UDK version (January), you are able to combine static meshes, therefore reduce draw calls, therefore add to the purpose of your exercise here.

Especially because your meshes use the same texture, the new tool allows you to combine meshes, and it regenerates the UV's for that particular "combined" mesh. It is meant to be used only for meshes with like textures....and I'd say that is just what you have here ;]

Mesh Proxy Tool - http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MeshProxyTool.html

Originally Posted by tristamus

TOR! I don't know if you've seen this, but since your scene is all about optimization technique, I figured it would benefit you GREATLY.

In the latest UDK version (January), you are able to combine static meshes, therefore reduce draw calls, therefore add to the purpose of your exercise here.

Especially because your meshes use the same texture, the new tool allows you to combine meshes, and it regenerates the UV's for that particular "combined" mesh. It is meant to be used only for meshes with like textures....and I'd say that is just what you have here ;]

Mesh Proxy Tool - http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MeshProxyTool.html

this would actually create unique textures for every group at whatever resolution you specify. Every UV will have it's own space, no overlap. That would look much worse and take MORE space. it will make it possible for mobile UDK to render the scene with little trouble though.

tristamus: Actually, combining meshes that share the same material is already simple. For bulletstorm we could simply select identical meshes then combine them to a new one and repack the lightmap UVs, that is part of the reason why I insisted on keeping one material per prop etc. : )) So if I wanted to, I could easily make the scene into even fewer objects if needed, however, the object-count isnt that high anyway, so I didnt bother.

Also the combine wouldnt work that well for my scene anyway, I dont have a regular UV-layout, or a typical texture, so it would basically ruin all of it. : ))

GIVE ME YOUR BRAIN!
pls
Jesus half of this shit is over my head but damn fantastic work.

amazing work!

-> Snefer: style of this video, and method of creating remind me some sort of project demo-scene
This is fantastic work - very inspiring me

ps. And I think the limit could be pushed even further
some modular geometry can add a lot of variability (like your table) [like lego]
and many other stuff can strengthen life in scene
I wish good luck for you ¦ ]
.

Fantastic work, I have to say this is all very inspiring and you've done a really good job of answering most questions (which for somebody who's just come accross this thread is good because means that by the end of it I pretty much understand the whole process).
Really look forward to getting my hands on the scene [if you're still planning on releasing it that is] and have an even more in-depth look at it.

Again fantastic work, purely inspirational

Hello sir,

I just wanted to stop by and say that this thread has been so inspirational for me that I had to register to thank you (and everyone else for asking excellent questions, too).

This thread actually started around the time I needed to begin work on my thesis, so I ended up adopting/integrating a lot of the technique presented here (and reverse engineering a lot of the material, though I don't think it has all the same functionality yours probably does).

So, thanks again!

Incredible work! Thx for sharing this!

Hey Tor, do you export your models directly from Modo? What file format do you use? What grid units do you use in Modo and what are they equal to in UDK? Do you do smoothing groups in Modo as well? Do you have 2 UV maps per object 1 for texture 1 for light map? Everything exporting correctly for UDK? I'm just curious of your overall workflow from Modo to UDK (if there is one) and any problems you may have had that other Modo users like me would bump into. Thanks!!

That's simply amazing. I don't understand 1/10th of the stuff in this thread. Im currently making a sci-fi space station and i just cant understand how you've used such little texture space. Blowing my mind

Thanks for all the comments! And I havent forgotten, the scene will be released for download, I'm just waiting for some stuff to clear before releasing it.

coots7: yes I do. For this scene I was using the ASE-exporter that is floating around the net, but nowadays I just use the FBX, since that is much better (much better support for smoothing groups etc) For this scene I actually have 3 UVsets. : ) I actually havent had any problems at all working with modo and UDK, and every problem Ive had Ivefigured out in a few minutes or so.

This is absolutely amazing I cant believe what you have done! KEEP IT UP !!

Noob question here concerning merge the maps and the RGB channels. Does each map that goes into the R, G, B channels have to be a grey scale texture sheet? I only ask because somewhere along the lines someone brought up the idea of adding even more maps, 8 grey textures I believe. Color me impressed by the way. Inspirational is an understatement.

well yes. the three respective grayscale (0-255) values make up a color value when combined.

How do you determine the outcome of the Diffuse colors? The combined RGB is going to be washed out every time.

i don't fully understand your question?

for a regular color diffuse texture with 3 channels, each pixels' color is made up of 3 values, stored in the R,G,B channels respectively. 255 in R, 255 in G, 255 in B make a full white pixel, for instance.

in mix- or mergemaps, the final color output you get by using non-related grayscale maps in the various channels doesn't matter (and usually looks pretty funky). Basically you just use the color texture's channels as a container for 3 varying textures which you use separately. Say you only need a gray specular map, have a gloss map, and maybe an alpha for your asset. instead of importing each of these as a regular dxt diffuse texture, you cram 'em into the channels of a single texture and reduce you video memory footprint.

I was just confused when I read "gray scale" because I thought that meant every texture literally had to be gray. I didn't know how a Normal and Diffuse could be gray when it needed color haha.

I don't want to get off topic, but I feel like it's relevant to this texturing process. If not I'll delete and create a separate thread. I've been confused about combining multiple unwraps into one UV space as well as sharing texture space by combining textures sheets into one:

Let's say you have a few props and a building such as this



and everything unwrapped into one UV space like this



What happens if I wanted to export the ladder and drainage pipe to UDK? Does anything happen even though they are tied to the same UV space as the building and everything else? What happens when I apply the textures in UDK to just the ladder and drainage pipe since there are other model unwraps in the UV space?

The same goes for splitting up texture sheets to save memory. If there are separate meshes that I want to import yet they all share the same texture sheet, how do you separate the meshes when creating and importing into UDK?




Are you confined to the one UV space or can you quick planar map, pelt map, anywhere outside it and UDK will know you're doing this? I don't know how often you would want to use this workflow from the example below, but the texture was created first, then modeled off of allowing you put various pieces around and out the UV space:



I know that's a long winded question so thanks for taking the time to help. I really appreciate it!

this i crazy amazing, didn't know you could work with channels like that!
already learned a lot so a big thanks for that!
can't wait to explore it more when you realease it!

So, now its finally out:

The lab is showcased on UDK.com,along with an interview, couldnt be more flattered. : ))))

http://udk.com/showcase-amazing-one-texture

and you can download the scene from here:

Download:

http://www.torfrick.com/ScifiLab.rar

Plz dont look too closely! hehe

congratz on the interview! thanks for the scene! thank you a million times!