« Posts tagged UE4

[Game] UE4 Speedtree Mesozoic Forest

Speedtree Fern

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cycad NULL.jpg)

Work has been interesting lately as you may or may not know Mortal Kombat X has been canceled on last gen and I had been working on that for the last 7 months, so that was a bit of a blow. I’m on to a new project though and a publisher I’ve never worked with before so things are new and interesting in that respect. In my spare time I’ve been reading about and really loving the updates to the Unreal Engine for instanced foliage. I’ve taken it upon myself to follow in Koola’s footsteps and create some amazing forest work. If you haven’t seen his work check out his Youtube channel (https://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/user/koooolalala) or WIP thead (https://forums NULL.unrealengine NULL.com/showthread NULL.php?58385-Koola-s-stuff) over at the Epic Games forums. If you’re not aware there have been some big changes to instanced foliage and you can now use Dynamic GI to light them. Coupled with DFAO (https://docs NULL.unrealengine NULL.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/DistanceFieldAmbientOcclusion/index NULL.html) (Distance Field Ambient Occlusion) and Ray Traced Shadows (https://docs NULL.unrealengine NULL.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/RayTracedDistanceFieldShadowing/index NULL.html#settings) it means no more waiting for crazy long lighting bakes. All this realtime lighting does come at a cost though and the performance hit isn’t small. To keep up I’ve had to upgrade my system, but it’s been due for a while.

My current rig (Intel Q9550 @ 2.9Ghz with 8GB RAM, Nvidia 560Ti and 10K RMP HDD) is 7 years old. I’ve decided to follow Epic’s suggestions (https://answers NULL.unrealengine NULL.com/questions/21631/im-building-my-own-pc-for-ue4-development-what-do NULL.html) and upgrade to a i7 5820k (6 core 3.3Ghz) with 32GB RAM and 2 SSDs. The only difference is I chose to go for an Nvidia 960 instead of a 770. With the new Nvidia line (http://wccftech NULL.com/nvidia-pascal-gpu-gtc-2015/) boasting a 10x performance increase coming out next year, I’m going to hold off on a major video card upgrade until then. If you’re interested in trying out the new GI system head over here (https://docs NULL.unrealengine NULL.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/LightingAndShadows/LightPropagationVolumes/index NULL.html) to learn about Light Propagation Volumes and how to enable them in the new engine, there’s some “.ini” tweaking involved.

To test this out I’m creating a small Mesozic forest and I’ve Pinned some reference (https://www NULL.pinterest NULL.com/terrymatthes/prehistoric-forests/) up for anyone who wants to follow along. The biggest difference between forests in the Mesozoic and now is the lack of grasses. Ferns largely took their place. As a species grass didn’t evolve until about 70 Million years ago, which means it missed most of the dinosaurs. Another big difference is the shear amount of Cycads (https://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Cycad) and Ginko Bilobas (https://en NULL.wikipedia NULL.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba). As you can imagine it would be nice to put a dinosaur in this forest, but I’m trying to concentrate on the forest itself and I’m looking locally for someone to collaborate with on the dinosaur(s). I’ve started to create speed tree templates I can work from for the plants while I wait for my new system to arrive. I’m not worrying about LOD too much right now as some early tests showed it’s handled automatically quite well by the Unreal Engine and Speedtree. One thing that’s not though is the lightmap UVs. They are OK, but do need tweaking. Your material also makes a HUGE difference. If you’re expecting to plop plants into your level with a directional light they are not going to look super. You need to put some work into a good material that will properly shade your plants. Here are three of the plant templates I’ve came up with so far. A couple of these are based on speed tree models that were tweaked for performance. I’m going to follow Koola’s suggestions and keep the lowest LOD’s at or below 7K polys. For now I’m using the default Speedtree textures, but will create high resolution custom ones for the final output. The elevation data for this project is based on GIS data from The National Map Viewer (http://nationalmap NULL.gov/viewer NULL.html). When that becomes a bigger part of the  project I’ll expand upon how that’s being used.

Speedtree Fern (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/FernHigh NULL.jpg)Speedtree Small Pine (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ConiferSmall NULL.jpg)Speetree Giant Conifer (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/CedarTall NULL.jpg)cycad (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/cycad NULL.jpg)

[Game] Unreal Engine 4 Architectural Rendering WIP 1

UE4 Architectural WIP 1

I took a look at the realistic rendering demo (https://www NULL.unrealengine NULL.com/blog/new-release-realistic-rendering-showcase) that Epic Games posted. It has fairly nice soft shadowing and pays close attention to how your eyes behave in light. I think the gap between pre-rendered and real time visuals is staring to get close enough that you could definitely use the Unreal 4 Engine for pre-visualizations and not have to visually take a gigantic hit. In fact you can probably produce more work at a faster pace using UE4. I’m building a small scene to create as realistic a render as I can using the new engine. No holds bared and no excuses. There’s going to be soft shadows, GI, ray traced light going through and off reflective and refractive surfaces plus caustic reflections! That is “literally all the things” when it comes to setting up great looking render. I’m going to be following the “PBR” rendering workflow so if you’ve never taken that challenge up this should be a good intro. There’s also a new PBR rendering contest going on now at Polycount (http://www NULL.polycount NULL.com/2014/06/14/petrolblood/). Here’s another great link to a Poly count forum thread (http://www NULL.polycount NULL.com/forum/showthread NULL.php?t=124683) that deals with PBR in games.

The shot you see here is a preliminary layout done in Maya with nearly all the rough models finished. The wall/ceiling moldings still have to be made. The next step is to take them into ZBrush. There I’m going to sculpt some more detail into some of the pieces and then use the retopology tools to lower the polygon count of each piece.
UE4 Architectural WIP 1 (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/restaurant NULL.jpg)

[Game] Unreal Tournament Blockout

As a lot of you may know Epic Games announced that they are working on a new Unreal Tournament title. They’ve been doing weekly updates through twitch to keep the development community involved. You can check them out here: http://www.twitch.tv/epicgames (http://www NULL.twitch NULL.tv/epicgames). Having been a big fan of the old Unreal titles I’ve decided to create a level to be released with the launch of the game. I signed up with Epic so I could download the new Unreal Engine and check it out. Wow is it great. I can’t believe how much the UDK evolved since its last release. It finally feels like a full-blown 3D app. Each week I’m going to post an update of the project through all it’s stages. First I have to finish blocking out the level. Then it’s onto simple meshes and lighting. I’m excited about this project because I think it’s a good chance to gain exposure in the development community.

The blockout is being done with the BSP volumes in the editor. They’re super fast and easy to work with. The “Geometry Mode” works the same as in the old UDK letting you edit the polygons that comprise the BSP volumes on the fly. I should mention that while the editor was stable most of the time it was very unstable while working in geometry mode. I crashed once for about every 3 edits I tried to make. In this particular stage my main concern is getting the spacing right between all the elements that will comprise the arena. I’m working with an early alpha so the only movement the player has is walking and dodging. While placing all the shapes around I’m trying to think of paths the player will take through the environment.
arenaBlock001 (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/arenaBlock001 NULL.jpg)
The flow of the map is the single most important factor so I don’t want to create any dead ends where the player feels cornered. There should always be at least one other path they can use to escape an engagement. After the general layout is in place I’ll start to adjust volumes along the Z-Axis (Y-Axis in Maya) a little more. The player moves largely on a Horizontal plane so creating platforms at different heights and depressions in large flat expanses can help break up the monotony of that very planar movement.

I’m super pumped and I think this is going to turn out great so stay tuned for updates :)