Lightwave UV maps and UT2003

[hstewarth]

I work with Lightwave 3d and UnrealED and successuffly have made my own images and objects and importing them and I have some questions.

I was wondering UnrealED textures supports specular and disfused maps also in addition then the normal color maps. Reason doing so will give the textures a more real look appearence and that is what I am looking for.

I have also notice that the objects I make are really big, I am making only StaticMeshes that are included in custom map.

[GIdenJoe]

For the most effects on textures you just need the texture itself (diffuse) and then work with the "shaders" in the material properties of the textures once you imported it into ued3.

And if you want the light or some radiosity or whatever with the texture then you'll have to "bake" it in your modelling program and then use that tex in ued3.

[hstewarth]

Thanks, but do you know how to create your own shaders for UT? or is that necessary.

[GIdenJoe]

Try wading through this document to get a bit wiser of the stuff.

http://udn.epicgames.com/pub/Content/MaterialTutorial

[hstewarth]

I saw that document earlier today.. I wish they took one more step forward and allow translating of Lightwave settings into these settings..

It still good information, is there any maps with example of what I am looking do.. specfically specular shaders on static meshes that have UV maps created from Lightwave. I believe alot of the content in UT2003 was created with Lightwave.

[punkamatic]

Do you use UV maps w/ lwo's? I have had a great experience w/ modeling in lw, (kix the **** out of 3dsmax), but texturing is another problem. I dont have the damnest clue. Ive noticed that w/ a 1024x1024 image, high resolution, looks like ass when UVmapped onto a model of any size. Also, these UV mappings dont seem to export to LWO format or import to Static Mesh. You haveing similar problems?

[hstewarth]

I have been a little succesffull in using UV Maps and Lightwave.. The following link is very good.

http://www.lightwave3d.com/tutorials/modeling/UT2003/index.html

I recently got some of Desktop Images Instruction DVD's on Lightwave and I found them very usefull. I especially like the stuff on surface baking and other pixel textures..
It appears with surface baking that I can use Lightwave 's Render engine to add the effects to textures that I want. Once I get textures I than make them in format that UT2003 understands and mport it into the level editor..

I planned over the holiday extra days, experiement with Lightwave texture maps and objects to attempt to make a best photorealistic level that I can possible make. My initial planned is to work on stair case that is truely photorealistic and then designed walls additions and extras that ad to the scene. Initial designed is modular so that I can shared components and such.

I want to also experiment with HDRI and see if it work with Lightwave - I am not so sure about this but this should be very interesting.. it appears that HDRI is 128bit high percision rendering and I am not sure if the UT2003 can handle it. It is also interested that GeForce FX also supports 128bit rendering.

On the appearence of 1024x1024 images, it probably something related to wrong texture alignment. The Surface Baking technique seems by my research the best possible way to do this.

One more interesting things that I may attempt is my own shaders. I have NVidias SDK and technically minded but there appears to be an easlier way inside Unreal ED - have not try it yet.. Can see other shaders but don't know how to add my own.