dubladude on 6/2/2018 at 11:10

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Turned to completely madness, and learning the process of "turning3d scan to game ready model".
No I didn't buy a scanner, just took the random model from internet. It happened to be this (https://www.artec3d.com/3d-models/power-drill) drill. You can see yourself how "strange" the model mesh is. It looks like I'm building completely new model just over downloaded one.

Judith on 7/2/2018 at 10:38

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I know that game studios use photogrammetry for organic stuff, but for man-made stuff it's probably not that useful? When I see so many polygons on a hard-surface modelling candidate like this one, I'm almost having a stroke.

qolelis on 12/2/2018 at 19:05

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I'm sculpting lots of landscapes and have around 10 now (more will be needed later, but I have more than enough for the demo now); some pretty small and some a little bigger. The bigger ones are the result of merging various combinations of the smaller ones. Unreal doesn't have any dedicated methods for merging landscapes, so I had to experiment a bit before finding the method I liked best:

* The first thing I tried was exporting the heightmaps and merge them in GIMP using "lighten only" blend mode, which is the same as taking the brightest pixel from each heightmap (in the areas where they overlap) (other blend modes could possibly create interesting effects), and then import the merged heightmap back into Unreal. One problem with using GIMP is that it cannot handle 16-bit grayscale (8-bit works for testing, but is not recommended), so for that part I would have to use something else, for example Krita (if we're talking free software). There might be a GIMP extension solving this, but I never got that far, because the next method I tried turned out to be better. Another problem with the heightmap method is that it doesn't preserve texturing.
* The next, and last, method I tried was adding all landscapes as sublevels, move them around until I was satisfied, and then use the "copy/paste gizmo" to merge the landscapes. With the gizmo set to only raise, this gives the same result as the heightmap-merge method, but now the texturing is also preserved, and it's easier to get the exact result you want, because you can easily preview the final landscape before doing the actual merging. One problem I faced was that not all my landscapes use the same scale, so I had to compensate for that. Another problem was that some landscapes looked better together when rotated, which can mess things up when using the gizmo, so I had to rotate the gizmo copy before pasting, which was a little hard to get right. So, same scale and no (or same) rotation works best. When the merging was done, I moved the resulting landscape to the top level and removed all sublevels. I also worked on a copy of the content/maps folder, so as not to mess up the location/rotation of the original landscapes, and finally copied the merged landscape back into the original maps folder before removing the temp copy.


I haven't yet found a way to move a spline from one landscape to another, so I have to redo the ones I want to keep. According to what I've read, there is no such function. There is a "move to current level" button, but I suppose that is for moving the spline into another level, but not necessarily the landscape you want it in, although I haven't yet gotten it to do anything useful (so far I've only been able to move it into the same level it's already in, which seems wrong (whenever I make current the landscape I really want, the button is greyed out)).

A cool thing with merging landscapes is that it has so far created many interesting areas (exploration-wise) I might not have thought of sculpting on my own.

Edit:
I still haven't added any real objects to make the landscapes come alive, but I'm slowly getting there (I want to be satisfied enough with the basic shapes I have so far before moving on).

Edit 2:
30 hours work, 20 hours sleep, 24 hours work, and soon dinner and then back into hibernation again: how's that for a healthy day/night cycle!? Whole days just disappear, but I want these landscapes tweaked and done, so I can move on. I'm almost there; just 1½ (-ish) landscapes left now (I'm pretty sure I will have to tweak them more later, but for now they are (almost) ready for the next step). Tomorrow I'm going to take the day off, though, and bake me some delicious pastry (as dictated by the date).

Judith on 13/2/2018 at 11:22

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Also, if it makes you feel better, I've already spent more than half a year on my project, where learning the basics and getting around a new old engine easily took 3 months out of that. I've learnt a lot, and made tons of assets and textures, but I still don't have anything more meaningful than this simple corridor WIP screenshot:

https://s13.postimg.org/n2wjbp4rr/obraz.png

I'm slowly making progress with my "hero location" for a proof of concept / art pass. There will be a flyby video and some kind of art dump, but that's still like a month away.

Yakoob on 14/2/2018 at 07:46

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oh yeaaah, I went through some massive burnout during my first two games.... after I released Postmortem, I literally spent the day walking to a cafe, trying to read for like 10 minutes, be unable to focus or relax, then go to next cafe and repeat....

But yes, the screenie looks lovely Judith!