Creating Textures with nDo and making them moduler

As much as I like to have unique textures for my objects to give them a more lifelike feel, this is not practical for the scene, and modularity is something that needs to be practiced. At the moment after recalling an article I read on Vertex magazine I decided to try and replicate a process of creating strips to use in multiple objects. The result was a success but in use it does create a rather odd outcome with the normal maps when applied to some objects, mainly the bannister where the edges meet, so I had to make the UV’s thinner to avoid the edges having a strange outcome. However the end result is something that I am happy with and should work well, if not then it can still be applied to other scenes in the game.

I have also created another texture to be used for the lower floor of the apartment.

Edited the Floor texture

In the end I decided that the texture was way too dark and just did not look in place with the scene that I had in mind, as well as the scene that is in the concept art. At the moment I’m working on one of the stair bannisters, but I think it would be wise to start getting models into the game even though they have not been light mapped. Just to get a scene of scale and where I’m at. It will also help with the placing of object as all I would need to do would be to export over the top of a FBX model and reimport/update it in the content viewer in Unreal.

So anyway hers the updated Floor texture which is looked pretty much exactly how I want it to be, unless at some point I want to change it again, but that shouldn’t be happening for a while yet.

Just got UE4

Well, in the end I decided it was worth the effort to just head straight into Unreal Engine 4. Everyone is using it for AAA games and the PBR is worth learning. So far the UI is a little hard to navigate, its easier but a little bit complicated to an extent but also easier to use, probably just need to get used to using it. PBR looks pretty impressive, and it looks like the general features that I’m used to in UDK are still there. So it’s time to move my entire scene from UDK to UE4.

I am also in the process of updating the metal floor texture with PBR and updated details. I'll have to replace the Normal Map some other time for the moment as I do want to get the scene finished and then work onto the scene to update anything that needs updating.

Stair Compleat

I have been working more and more into the project and moving things into UDK. Going to France tomorrow to see the War graves and the aria where the Battle of the Somme took place so should start up some inspiration.

This was pretty challenging to UV unwrap as I tried to avoid over lapping UV’s. When I decided that some had to be overlapped to increase resolution it caused some problems when it came to putting them into dDo and normal mapping from Maya especially. In the end I relied on nDo to help out. I couldn’t create an object space normal map because of the overlapping UV’s however since there are stairs dDo worked with them despite the disadvantage I was giving myself.

I managed to give the new dDo extra time to work on and experiment, managed to fiddle around more with the program to give me multiple detail masks which I wanted, so it seems pretty good. I think I’ll need to play around more with the setting though in order to give me more fluent details, ill need to find a way of changing the angle of the scratches so that they do not look so repetitive in the scene. Until next time I’ll experiment more with dDo in the future.

both are real time PBR.

Moving into UDK

Managed to get the cupboard into UDK from Maya without having to change the scaling much as I was trying to work in centimetres but export it into meters with the FBX, turns out that was not necessary as it would make the model 100% bigger than necessary, which is confusing since the last time I tried I had to change the entire scene to a larger scene. But anyhow, it seems to be working smoothly for the moment so I’m not going to complain.

The cupboard seems to look ok in UDK, although it doesn’t look too good with PBR maps with an unsupported PBR system, and even when I try to edit the material with all the textures it turns out little results. However it works and when the time comes I can move it into UE4. So its easier to get everything prepped in UDK first and then when I’m happy that everything is working together with light-mapping and so on I’ll make the leap into UE4.

Here’s the preview so far, going to move more and more objects into the UDK scene, I’ll be testing out the look of the flooring too, however since there is a Normal Map problem I’ll have to re-make that part again which shouldn’t take long, but it’s something that is low down on the priority list.