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Urban Terror Blogs
Frankie V's blog
Making Casa episode 6
July 4,2014
For episode 6 I removed all of the reflective entities and post processing volumes.
In some ways I prefer the simplicity of UDK when it comes to the basics of texture work and rendering. Granted it's not as hi tech as UE4 but as far as moving from Radiant to the UE4 editor goes the connection between what you know and what you have to do to get the same results is a bit more complicated.
Urban Terror's art as far as look and feel goes is still very much relevant and is something that I would at least would like to preserve as to the idea of being able to replace an old engine, in much needed repair, with something that is fixed based on the needs of those who play our game.
With the release of UE 4.3 on the horizon it seems to me that Unreal 4 is not a completed engine and in much the same way we are trying to keep our community up to date as to the in progress UE4 Subscription, I'll call UE4S to give it a name, is is very much a work in progress intended for first adopters to begin the process of developing their own titles or to convert their current works over to the new platform. How you think something should work that does not is usually a case of it's not been implemented, or turned on as an accessible feature, so as they are made available in an up date what you have done already can be impacted by those additions.
To put it into simpler terms UE4 is not consumer ready and if you are interested in getting involved be prepared to have things go a bit sideways on you from time to time.
I would have to say the biggest change that is a blanket that covers it all is in the change from the basic diffused texture system to physics based materials. Physics based materials is very nice in that it can produce cutting edge results, as well suspect a performance boost with out quality loss, but keeping the almost color neutral look is a bit of a chore.
With a diffused texture what you see is what you get and to get the same result with a physics based material you have to add values to the materiel tree that tells the engine that it's just a simple texture with out properties else the result tends to behave in an unpredictable manner.
For example a reflectivity volume maybe required if you have an object made of metal and the material applied needs to have a value applied as to how the surface reacts with the volume. The result is surrounding materials that do not have this value, IE a single channel diffused texture, it can react to the addition in strange ways as to being something you think is broken. A surface that is suppose to be brick reflects like a polished floor for example.
The best I can figure at the moment is to get the results with out the side trips to fix things that goes bump in the night is to turn everything off and to work the design in passes as compared to the more fit to finish pathway most might be use to working with Radiant.
With Radiant one would work on a single element of their design, compile and test run it, and if it checks out as to intended result one would go onto the next addition.
With UE4 the pathway is more it has to look bad before it looks good other wise you can land up wasting a lot of time to get that fit to finish look. Following the old pathway you could work an element to the point that it looks good and consider to be done then add the next with the same approach and what you thought was done now looks bad due to the changing of what should be a set value.
Here is a video where Epic explains what I'm saying. Takes bit to get to the point as to why the fit to finish approach is not a good idea.
The over all impression that I'm getting is to get that AAA look it takes a lot of individual skills even working on a simple environment who understand how all the nuts and bolts interact with one another and if you are going it alone then the process outlined in this video is the best approach as you can land up constantly fighting with things you don't know that does not have the focus or your attention to that detail.
At this stage in the game the best option as to work in progress is to go back to pass one as describe in the Intro to Level Design and finish off the environment at the base level rather than attempting to continue with the fit to finish approach, familiar in Radiant.
I'm not going to rip the material work out but expect things to look worst as I figure out what needs to be done.
For episode 6 I removed all of the reflective entities and post processing volumes.
In some ways I prefer the simplicity of UDK when it comes to the basics of texture work and rendering. Granted it's not as hi tech as UE4 but as far as moving from Radiant to the UE4 editor goes the connection between what you know and what you have to do to get the same results is a bit more complicated.
Urban Terror's art as far as look and feel goes is still very much relevant and is something that I would at least would like to preserve as to the idea of being able to replace an old engine, in much needed repair, with something that is fixed based on the needs of those who play our game.
With the release of UE 4.3 on the horizon it seems to me that Unreal 4 is not a completed engine and in much the same way we are trying to keep our community up to date as to the in progress UE4 Subscription, I'll call UE4S to give it a name, is is very much a work in progress intended for first adopters to begin the process of developing their own titles or to convert their current works over to the new platform. How you think something should work that does not is usually a case of it's not been implemented, or turned on as an accessible feature, so as they are made available in an up date what you have done already can be impacted by those additions.
To put it into simpler terms UE4 is not consumer ready and if you are interested in getting involved be prepared to have things go a bit sideways on you from time to time.
I would have to say the biggest change that is a blanket that covers it all is in the change from the basic diffused texture system to physics based materials. Physics based materials is very nice in that it can produce cutting edge results, as well suspect a performance boost with out quality loss, but keeping the almost color neutral look is a bit of a chore.
With a diffused texture what you see is what you get and to get the same result with a physics based material you have to add values to the materiel tree that tells the engine that it's just a simple texture with out properties else the result tends to behave in an unpredictable manner.
For example a reflectivity volume maybe required if you have an object made of metal and the material applied needs to have a value applied as to how the surface reacts with the volume. The result is surrounding materials that do not have this value, IE a single channel diffused texture, it can react to the addition in strange ways as to being something you think is broken. A surface that is suppose to be brick reflects like a polished floor for example.
The best I can figure at the moment is to get the results with out the side trips to fix things that goes bump in the night is to turn everything off and to work the design in passes as compared to the more fit to finish pathway most might be use to working with Radiant.
With Radiant one would work on a single element of their design, compile and test run it, and if it checks out as to intended result one would go onto the next addition.
With UE4 the pathway is more it has to look bad before it looks good other wise you can land up wasting a lot of time to get that fit to finish look. Following the old pathway you could work an element to the point that it looks good and consider to be done then add the next with the same approach and what you thought was done now looks bad due to the changing of what should be a set value.
Here is a video where Epic explains what I'm saying. Takes bit to get to the point as to why the fit to finish approach is not a good idea.
The over all impression that I'm getting is to get that AAA look it takes a lot of individual skills even working on a simple environment who understand how all the nuts and bolts interact with one another and if you are going it alone then the process outlined in this video is the best approach as you can land up constantly fighting with things you don't know that does not have the focus or your attention to that detail.
At this stage in the game the best option as to work in progress is to go back to pass one as describe in the Intro to Level Design and finish off the environment at the base level rather than attempting to continue with the fit to finish approach, familiar in Radiant.
I'm not going to rip the material work out but expect things to look worst as I figure out what needs to be done.
Frankie V
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