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UDK Thread: Unreal Development Kit
- Thread starter Mik2121
- Start date
OccamsBlender
Member
Any way to adjust the play rate of a matinee in Kismet?
Example: while a trigger is touched, a matinee moving a platform goes faster and faster.
Thanks!
Example: while a trigger is touched, a matinee moving a platform goes faster and faster.
Thanks!
PetriP-TNT
Member
Jesus fucking Christ, this stuff is infuriating. As anyone used Perforce with UDK before?
We got our own Perforce server and I am totally lost. Been working with this like 6 hours today and it's not nearly done. I think I have run into pretty much problem out there on the internet and loads more. I can get it to work on my local PC, but the firewall rules make it impossible to use (no other PC can connect).
._.'
We got our own Perforce server and I am totally lost. Been working with this like 6 hours today and it's not nearly done. I think I have run into pretty much problem out there on the internet and loads more. I can get it to work on my local PC, but the firewall rules make it impossible to use (no other PC can connect).
._.'
I seem to remember hating on Perforce when I interned somewhere that used it...but I've never used it with UDK specifically, sorry.
PetriP-TNT
Member
I seem to remember hating on Perforce when I interned somewhere that used it...but I've never used it with UDK specifically, sorry.
Holy poo on a biscuit, now the files show up on the server... I think! I have seriously no idea what I did differently, just tried every single location I can think of. I think the solution was adding /depot/ to the root so the path was /depot/UDK/UDK-2012-10.
Now UDK doesn't connect to the server anymore ._.'
Try this:
http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/715436-Affect-the-play-rate?p=27103285&viewfull=1#post27103285
Though that was before Scaleform was integrated, so I can't remember if Kismet setup for FrontEndMap looked different back then so you might need to grab some pre scaleform build.
OccamsBlender
Member
Thanks for the reply! I found the expose variable: PlayRate. I was tired and my eyes just glazed past ForceStartPosition.
Again, ty ty
PetriP-TNT
Member
Making some slow progress....
PetriP-TNT
Member
More WIP shots if anyone cares
PetriP-TNT
Member
Heh, yeah, actually I the idea I had in my head was in much lighter tone but somehow it turned out like that. Many it doesn't contrast that much after I have put some lights into the enviroment, or I'll just tone it down/lighten it up a bit if I have time. Thanks for input!
RastaGundam
Member
hi everyone
sorry if this is a bit shamelessly self-promotive, but Dawn Patrol's very first game - built using UDK - just hit the App Store today...
It's called Robotanika, it's a two-handed tactical tablet shooter, and it stars a plant-robot thing called Peaches. The game's got its share of rough edges, but for a small, all-new team made up mostly of non-videogame folk, I'd say it's a solid debut. Also - somewhat unexpectedly - it turned out to be pretty 'hardcore' - so if nothing else, pretty proud of that.
If anyone has a chance to check it out, would love to hear your thoughts...
sorry if this is a bit shamelessly self-promotive, but Dawn Patrol's very first game - built using UDK - just hit the App Store today...
It's called Robotanika, it's a two-handed tactical tablet shooter, and it stars a plant-robot thing called Peaches. The game's got its share of rough edges, but for a small, all-new team made up mostly of non-videogame folk, I'd say it's a solid debut. Also - somewhat unexpectedly - it turned out to be pretty 'hardcore' - so if nothing else, pretty proud of that.
If anyone has a chance to check it out, would love to hear your thoughts...
maniac-kun
Member
To what degree is destruction possible in UE3? Is it possible to have a 2.5D view where explosions substract from the mesh of the level?
What i found is this: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitGemsRealTimeDeformation.html
What i found is this: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitGemsRealTimeDeformation.html
PetriP-TNT
Member
You can use Fracture tool to achieve this
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/FractureTool.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpQu6G4cU7Q
Explosion with FracturedStaticMeshes
Some nice face rendering from a Bioware 3D challenge. More pics and vids here:
http://cghub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13958&page=3
http://cghub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=13958&page=3
I got linked to this article today:
http://geekswithblogs.net/CodeBlog/...tournament-3-vs-udk-what-should-i-choose.aspx
Is this still applicable today? Should I buy UT3 and try to import its props from its own editor to UDK? I kinda want as many free meshes as possible My friend said it might be copyright infringement though somehow?
http://geekswithblogs.net/CodeBlog/...tournament-3-vs-udk-what-should-i-choose.aspx
Is this still applicable today? Should I buy UT3 and try to import its props from its own editor to UDK? I kinda want as many free meshes as possible
My friend said it might be copyright infringement though somehow?Well you can always grab UT3 cheap during sales, however I don't think it's worth the hassle working with it's editor. Tech wise, now it's quite behind UDK, but again it all depends what you want to do with it really. If you want to make some DM maps go with UT3, everything else I'd say use UDK.
Importing UT3 or Gears assets to UDK is against eula and they've always been closing threads like that, however you'll regularly see people taking models from other games and using them in UDK. Also there are many sites where you can grab free models.
Again, you need to know what do you wish to do with the editor, is it just learning, showcasing your level design skills or something else.
Importing UT3 or Gears assets to UDK is against eula and they've always been closing threads like that, however you'll regularly see people taking models from other games and using them in UDK. Also there are many sites where you can grab free models.
Again, you need to know what do you wish to do with the editor, is it just learning, showcasing your level design skills or something else.
Free models as in characters or meshes in general? Got any suggestions? I'm into learning and potentially creating portfolio material for the future (non-monetary). At the moment I'm gonna do a small sci-fi horror game for a survey. Beyond that, anything really
Both really, I bump from time to time to some free stuff, however I never bookmark them since I'm making my own stuff. I'll ask one friend who knows those sites better so if I get some links I'll post them here.
When you mentioned that you want to do some small scifi scene here's one downloadable scene meant for learning by Tor Frick so it can be a good start.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89682
When you mentioned that you want to do some small scifi scene here's one downloadable scene meant for learning by Tor Frick so it can be a good start.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89682
Holy crap, after four months they released a new UDK version. Not much seems to have changed though. They added support for some Substance texture creation software integration, and some mobile improvements.
http://www.unrealengine.com/news/february_2013_udk_beta_upgrade_notes/
http://www.unrealengine.com/news/february_2013_udk_beta_upgrade_notes/
Thanks, that'd be great
I'll scan the thread too then I suppose!Yeah, I'm thinking of purchasing it for future work. Couldn't hurt and 50% off of 99$ isn't too bad if I understood it correctly. I don't intend to sell any of my stuff at this point anyway.
I'm trying to make a flashlight but I have the same problems as the rest of the internet, the flashlight won't move vertically. Google suggests that I make an unreal script instead of using Kismet since Kismet can't actually detect vertical player movement and the movable spotlight should be attached to the view movement instead. But I can't actually figure out where I go to actually create the script :lol I can find suitable code to copy, but I don't know where to paste it basically
There's a bit of a learning curve that goes with UnrealScript. You will want to create a .u file if I recall correctly, and there should be some tutorials which will tell you which directory they go in, but I don't have any links on hand at the moment.
Once you create the script source file, you will want to run the UDK launcher thing that gives you the option to compile scripts, and once they successfully compile, you can launch the UDK editor or your game itself.
Once you create the script source file, you will want to run the UDK launcher thing that gives you the option to compile scripts, and once they successfully compile, you can launch the UDK editor or your game itself.
Any normal programmer's text editor (Notepad++, Textpad, etc.) can edit UnrealScript. Visual Studio sounds like overkill to me, and I wouldn't expect it to have syntax highlighting for it, but maybe there's something I don't know about in that regard.
I might be able to google something in the next couple of days. If you want to learn UnrealScript, I would recommend picking something relatively simple that exists. For example, you could take a weapon, like the shock rifle. Then, if I'm remembering correctly, you should be able to create a subclass of that rifle with your own changes, OR copy it, rename it, and have a new weapon that you can change. Just don't change the shock rifle code file that comes with UDK -- you will be creating a new one somewhere else with either approach. Then you can use Kismet or something to give your pawn the new weapon instead of the shock rifle, or put one in your current inventory, or whatever. That should let you play with stuff like firing speed in the UnrealScript file.
I haven't done any of this in like a year or two so my memory is very vague, sorry.
I might be able to google something in the next couple of days. If you want to learn UnrealScript, I would recommend picking something relatively simple that exists. For example, you could take a weapon, like the shock rifle. Then, if I'm remembering correctly, you should be able to create a subclass of that rifle with your own changes, OR copy it, rename it, and have a new weapon that you can change. Just don't change the shock rifle code file that comes with UDK -- you will be creating a new one somewhere else with either approach. Then you can use Kismet or something to give your pawn the new weapon instead of the shock rifle, or put one in your current inventory, or whatever. That should let you play with stuff like firing speed in the UnrealScript file.
I haven't done any of this in like a year or two so my memory is very vague, sorry.
Sound suggestions, thanks. I don't know how much I'll need US for this school project and I know my way around visual studio and c++/c# well enough. I just need to points on how to even get started. I found this one though, seems alright: http://www.4r7w4re.com/
DeejayKnight
Member
I'd suggest the Visual Studio 2010 shell (which is free) with nFringe installed (which adds syntax highlighting and other goodies) or ConText with the UnrealScript highlighter.
I have the full version of 2010 installed, will those extensions work with that too? Thanks to a couple of programming classes, I have access to all Microsoft software for free basically.
DeejayKnight
Member
That's awesome! nFringe should install just fine with VS2010. Install, then download the Script Modifier and project file here: nFringe UdkProjects. It'll make your life easier by adding the majority of the Default Config files you'll likely change in UDK.
Sounds great, will do! I don't know how much scripting I actually need at this point but it sounds useful for the future nonetheless! Thanks.
DeejayKnight
Member
No problem!
This is so weird! I have this corridor with 8 spotlights and 8 pointlights. When the lighting needs to be baked, everything looks great both when using PIE and "play from here". They are all connected to a trigger with brightness animation for turning them on and off at different intervals. The white light in both pictures is my flashlight, I don't think it has anything to do with the problem.
Here what it's supposed to look like:
Here
And this is what it looks like when baked:
Here
Any ideas what's going on? Granted, my script is a complete mess with one trigger playing 8 animations (two lights per matinee) at the same time but it seems to work fine in the editor. I can't tell which light is coloring my weapon but neither of the 16 lights are visible in the actual level itself.
Other lights in the level, animated or not, work just fine, even with the same kind of animation (brightness set to 0 until the player enters a trigger which causes matinee to change the brightness value).
Edit: Well, never mind, I tried switching from toggleables to movables and that seemed to work. Not sure why, none of the lights are actually moving, but hey, it works.
Here what it's supposed to look like:
Here
And this is what it looks like when baked:
Here
Any ideas what's going on? Granted, my script is a complete mess with one trigger playing 8 animations (two lights per matinee) at the same time but it seems to work fine in the editor. I can't tell which light is coloring my weapon but neither of the 16 lights are visible in the actual level itself.
Other lights in the level, animated or not, work just fine, even with the same kind of animation (brightness set to 0 until the player enters a trigger which causes matinee to change the brightness value).
Edit: Well, never mind, I tried switching from toggleables to movables and that seemed to work. Not sure why, none of the lights are actually moving, but hey, it works.
OccamsBlender
Member
Wow, the UDK thread lives! Does Android support work? Is it only high end shiny as all hell devices?
Here's to hoping that UDK gets UE4's stuff soon.
Here's to hoping that UDK gets UE4's stuff soon.
Can anyone help me understand the difference between the two UV channels in UDK for a static mash -- texture map versus light map or whatever the proper names are? I was watching a tutorial and it appears that you can have different colors/textures show up on each one. How does this interact with the engine?
*edit* I think I've partially answered my own question. You need a UV channel set up in the model so UDK knows how to map faces to a lightmap it creates with shadow information, during light baking...but, you don't have to actually associate a material or texture with that second UV channel in the modeling program (e.g. Blender), right?
*edit* I think I've partially answered my own question. You need a UV channel set up in the model so UDK knows how to map faces to a lightmap it creates with shadow information, during light baking...but, you don't have to actually associate a material or texture with that second UV channel in the modeling program (e.g. Blender), right?
PetriP-TNT
Member
Yeah, you don't have to associate a material or texture with the channel. Also if you don't have a separate lightmap channel UDK will create (a less than optimal) for you. For me the hardest part of the 3d model to UDK process was the lightmapping part: at easiest you can just copy your first UV-channel to your second but getting rid of the seams between something like modular walls is near impossible*. You need X amount of pixels (2px?) between different parts to prevent bleeding and and so on:
Also lightmaps need to align with the UV grid, which is very very hard to do properly in 3dsMax (even in 2013, more so on 2011 ->). The process is much simpler with Maya (at least it seems so) (or Blender?) as you can easily divide the grid but 3dsMax seems to just be lagging behind on the UV-map editor.
Check out this tutorial for common problems:
http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/udk/udk-lightmaps-05-common-problems-solutions.php
It really boils down to the texture usage and convenience because you can overlap same UVs for example and use texture space much more efficiently. That way, depending on the specific model of course, instead of using some large res texture you could actually use a smaller one instead and have the same detail.
Take this ring for example. To push that amount of detail, if you'd have 10 of those emissive segments in your texture, you'd need to have some really large one. But this way you could overlap UV segments over one another and use the same smaller texture for them and get the same look.
However if you'd use this UV channel as a lightmap, you would get lighting information for one segment copy-pasted 9 times to all the others and essentially it would look broken.
http://www.abload.de/img/ringktc44.jpg
But that second UV channel doesn't have to be just for lightmaps. You can also use a new UV channel for a different texture. Imagine if you've had some building facade where you would overlap your UVs like here.
http://www.abload.de/img/1jgbe2.jpg
http://www.abload.de/img/wire2qzrs.jpg
But they you go, hey you know that, that looks kinda boring, lets add some variation while keeping the detail of that logo when seen up close without making unique large texture for the whole thing. So you could just select a couple of windows, make a new UV set for them and use the whole 0-1 space. Now just assign other UV set for that texture and instead of having one large texture you can use 2 much smaller ones.
http://www.abload.de/img/2n9dkk.jpg
Take this ring for example. To push that amount of detail, if you'd have 10 of those emissive segments in your texture, you'd need to have some really large one. But this way you could overlap UV segments over one another and use the same smaller texture for them and get the same look.
However if you'd use this UV channel as a lightmap, you would get lighting information for one segment copy-pasted 9 times to all the others and essentially it would look broken.
http://www.abload.de/img/ringktc44.jpg
But that second UV channel doesn't have to be just for lightmaps. You can also use a new UV channel for a different texture. Imagine if you've had some building facade where you would overlap your UVs like here.
http://www.abload.de/img/1jgbe2.jpg
http://www.abload.de/img/wire2qzrs.jpg
But they you go, hey you know that, that looks kinda boring, lets add some variation while keeping the detail of that logo when seen up close without making unique large texture for the whole thing. So you could just select a couple of windows, make a new UV set for them and use the whole 0-1 space. Now just assign other UV set for that texture and instead of having one large texture you can use 2 much smaller ones.
http://www.abload.de/img/2n9dkk.jpg
I'm using the March 2013 version of the UDK from the Oculus site. I don't know if Epic will put it up on their own site or not.
Thanks to some helpful advice from someone else who has used both Blender and UDK, I got skeleton animation working and imported into the UDK. Here are 100 robots uh, walking in place? Performance tanks with no physics asset assigned to the robots though, since they get nicer dynamic shadows and do not fade out so quickly. If I want to use that many units (I was curious if I could do thousands of robots), I'll very probably need to disable the shadows or use a physics asset for crappy shadows.
In motion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huYC1cQghNk
The really awesome thing is that Blender exports the skeleton, the mesh, the materials, the textures, and the animation (hopefully with support for more than one animation) all into one FBX file. UDK imports it automatically, and I don't have to edit anything besides setting up which animations play, how they are linked together etc., and doing a checkbox and recompress step to make animations with translations work.
Thanks to some helpful advice from someone else who has used both Blender and UDK, I got skeleton animation working and imported into the UDK. Here are 100 robots uh, walking in place?
Performance tanks with no physics asset assigned to the robots though, since they get nicer dynamic shadows and do not fade out so quickly. If I want to use that many units (I was curious if I could do thousands of robots), I'll very probably need to disable the shadows or use a physics asset for crappy shadows.
In motion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huYC1cQghNk
The really awesome thing is that Blender exports the skeleton, the mesh, the materials, the textures, and the animation (hopefully with support for more than one animation) all into one FBX file. UDK imports it automatically, and I don't have to edit anything besides setting up which animations play, how they are linked together etc., and doing a checkbox and recompress step to make animations with translations work.
I don't know if this is a stupid question since I'm not sure precisely how to phrase it. Does anyone know if it's possible to have a prebaked dynamic shadow, so to speak, in the UDK? In other words, to have some prebaked blob shape that is rendered onto the floor to follow a creature around? It seems like that would be cheaper than using some sort of default dynamic shadow system, but I really don't know how I would even go about trying it.
You mean a circle shadow? You can do it in many ways, like using a decal that's right above the main character and applies to everything except the character, of course. It would look really weird though, specially since it would either be some circle, or some weird shadow that wouldn't animate like the main character.
If that's not what you mean, sorry
That's exactly what I mean. What are some of the ways you could cast a circle/blob shape below a skeletal mesh? (I haven't used decals which are apparently one of the ways)You mean a circle shadow? You can do it in many ways, like using a decal that's right above the main character and applies to everything except the character, of course. It would look really weird though, specially since it would either be some circle, or some weird shadow that wouldn't animate like the main character.
If that's not what you mean, sorry
First get your decal ready and place it above the character. Then using kismet attach both actors together and then (well, you can do this part whenever you want) go to the character's properties and search for an option saying something about decals. Forgot the exact name, but basically there's a check you can turn on/off for said mesh to have decals applied to it or not.
And that will result in the decal going down to the floor instead of applying to the character?
Also, you mentioned there are many ways to do it. Are there any other ways that I might want to look into?
Thanks for the quick response, by the way. I hadn't seen you posting here in a while!
You can do other stuff like using spotlights and whatnot, and I haven't really needed to do this ever so I'm not sure, but probably the best way to get the shadow to not "float" and actually stick to the ground correctly is by using a decal. I will give it a try in a sec though, just to be sure...
But yeah, if you put a decal and do the checking off thing I told you, the decal will go through the character and just be applied to the floor below.
And yep, haven't been posting because I was kinda busy, but I will update the OT soon to get the latest version there. I hope Epic releases a new build soon because for the last year we've got like... 4 builds tops
Oh well, I guess they're too busy with Unreal Engine 4 (I got to play around with a QA build for UE4 and it was neat, but it was quite slow on the PC I tried it on).Yeah, on one hand I'd love UE4 features and good quality dynamic lighting and shadows...but on the other hand it sounds like they may have cut out some of those features (at least some global illumination stuff, not sure about dynamic lighting/shadows?). Plus the performance will probably be worse, so it wouldn't really gain me much.You can do other stuff like using spotlights and whatnot, and I haven't really needed to do this ever so I'm not sure, but probably the best way to get the shadow to not "float" and actually stick to the ground correctly is by using a decal. I will give it a try in a sec though, just to be sure...
But yeah, if you put a decal and do the checking off thing I told you, the decal will go through the character and just be applied to the floor below.
And yep, haven't been posting because I was kinda busy, but I will update the OT soon to get the latest version there. I hope Epic releases a new build soon because for the last year we've got like... 4 builds tops
There seems to be a March 2013 build for the Oculus Rift changes, and I seem to recall reading that Epic had made changes under the hood to support lower latency etc. But, I don't know if any of those changes apply when you're not using the Rift, and I also don't know if they will be releasing this version of the UDK on the official UDK site.
Man, when we talk about it this way, the future doesn't sound super bright for UDK. :S
Any optimization gurus have suggestions given the following stat information?
Someone suggested octrees of combined meshes. I haven't done anything fancy like that, but I have cheated and am using a bunch of combined 4-robots-in-a-line animated meshes, instead of all single meshes. This presumably helps performance a bit. I also found a edit I could make to a core .uc file that allowed me to turn off the depth-only rendering pass, which seemed to potentially save me 8 ms of depth rendering time for the units.
So, this image is 920 animated "robots", but actually only 220 4x meshes, and 40 1x meshes.
Someone suggested octrees of combined meshes. I haven't done anything fancy like that, but I have cheated and am using a bunch of combined 4-robots-in-a-line animated meshes, instead of all single meshes. This presumably helps performance a bit. I also found a edit I could make to a core .uc file that allowed me to turn off the depth-only rendering pass, which seemed to potentially save me 8 ms of depth rendering time for the units.
So, this image is 920 animated "robots", but actually only 220 4x meshes, and 40 1x meshes.
So the number of mesh draw calls is a telltale to watch in the UDK? I had guessed that was the case since I'm definitely seeing an improvement with the 4 combined compared to individual.
Unfortunately it's not super easy to make the group of 4 in Blender, since I couldn't get group instancing of armature and/or static mesh to work properly. Only one out of the 4 robots would animate correctly, and the others would have rotation issues.
However, using this approach where each group has a single static mesh that forms the 4 robots, and a single giant skeleton that includes the skeletons inside each robot, I just had a crazy though. Would it be possible to programmatically offset a specific bone group inside the skeletal mesh, without having to mess with the animation? Animation would be one way to do it, but I'm wondering if I could literally have a program move the robots around while they're animating even though they're in a single group.
*edit* Whoa. </Neo> I converted all of those 4-groups to SkeletalMeshActorMAT instances, which I thought would get terrible performance, and then I used a skeletal mesh controller on all of them. It actually seemed to affect everything without a significant performance hit. I guess the next big question is how some sort of programmatic UnrealScript interaction works with it all, performancewise.