UT3 Mapping For Dummies PART II Q's 21-30

[{RA}SKYFURNACE]

UT3 Mapping For Dummies PART II Q's 21-30


21) How do I hide all non-game objects/actors in the editor for Screenshots?
A) Press "G" *Thank You DGUnreal @ Epic Forums



22) Static Meshes & Lighting

A) Make sure that you set the lightmap properties for StaticMeshes that you insert, they always default to an override of size 0 (per-vertex lighting like UT2004). But first make sure the StaticMesh is actually supporting a lightmap channel (you can usually tell by the number of UV Channels and/or LightMapCoordinateIndex and LightMapResolution settings of non-0). *Thank You DGUnreal @ Epic Forums.

A) For Static Meshes with NO Detail: There is a setting for static meshes which seems to be off by default and you need to turn it on for each static mesh. Simply right click the static mesh in question and goto its properties, then look for bforcemipstreaming and click the check box. Note you can multiple select several static meshes and apply this setting to all of them at once if need be. *Thank You eXo @ Epic Forums.

NOTE: Regarding the Above
The StaticMesh property bForceMipStreaming is OFF by default because it is supposed to be off except in those specific cases where it is required, such as visual delays in mip streaming, a CutScene, or where a SkeletalMesh may share a same material as a distant StaticMesh and display the lower mip.
You should NOT turn it on for all StaticMeshes in a map since that forces the engine to load ALL mip levels for those textures at level load. On video cards that have smaller texture memory pools you may run out of pool space and cause other game play problems.
The issue with blurred textures is something that Epic will have to fix in a future patch. Releasing maps with this enabled will result in some hardware configurations running into issues.
People who are experiencing blurry textures should just turn up the texture level in the settings.
In either case, re-cooking all community maps after we get a patch that fixes this will be inevitable *Thank You DGUnreal @ Epic Forums.

A) This is to fix the issue that some of us are having when playing a custom made map and don't have our details completely maxed out it.. The textures are blurred out on static meshes unless you're extremely close to them. For the love of all that is holy, please apply this to your maps static meshes!
Select all StaticMesh.
Open their properties.
Under "StaticMeshActor" go to "StaticMeshActorComponent" -> "Rendering" and check "bForceMipStreaming".
I did it for the movers too as they are besed on Static Meshes. *Thank You Apathy & Fuegerstef @ Epic Forums



23) How do i duplicate things in a map?

A) It's still Ctrl + W from what I've seen. Or Edit >> Duplicate *Thank You Drakon @ BU

A) You can also hold the alt key and drag your object and it will make a duplicate automatically. This option works faster for me, ctrl + W is fine too but it seems to make my computer lag for 1-2 sec.... *Thanks BBukart @ BU

A) I would recommend ALT+Drag when in perspective, and CTRL+W when in top view *Thank You Kantham @ BU



24) What about Ground Fog?

A) Actor Classes browser: Info/HeightFog - add that actor to your level

A) Actor browser - Info - Heightfog or some similar name *Thank You Nathillien @ Epic Forums

A) Add it anywhere in the level. Change density and color in its properties. You're done. That is the simple way.
Also, you could make a large mesh plane with an advanced material using a depthbiasedalpha on, and place that in your level as a type of ground fog. This allows you to add a structure and motion to the fog. You can go even further by using Pixeldepth or whatever it was called.
You could also just use both at the same time. *Thank You Hourences @ BU

A) You can also do it similar to how we did the sky fog in WAR-Downtown. You can now use a closed mesh as a volume that you fill with fog. Those meshes can even be interp actors.
We have a regular height fog to give the level its basic fog look, then we have two counter-rotating blobby fog meshes over the whole level that break up the flat generic fog shape. So you can see it intersecting the buildings at higher and lower levels.
This can be applied to the ground level as well to have pockets of fog where you want them.
Actually, I just checked and it seems we nixed that fog from Downtown before we shipped. You CAN do that though. *Thank You Willhaven @ BU



25) How do I do Post Processing Effects?

A) If you want to make a postprocess to make your level look cool, just place a postprocess volume over the level and start tweaking settings.

Keep in mind that you can have multiple postprocess volumes that give slightly different feels to different parts of the level. Water is a good example of this. Also DM-Deimos has extensive postprocess volume tweaking for interior sections, exterior sections, modified gravity sections and the transition planes that tie them all together.
If you're looking to change postprocess on a specific player's vision, open CTF-Strident and look at the ring effect that passes over the level. You can sort of "play" a postprocess change over a player's camera. *Thank You Willhaven @ Epic Forums

A) open the World Properties for the map you are using, and open it's properties. It would help to open the World Properties for an existing map and see the settings it used, then set the ones for your map. *thank You UnwheelModeller @ Epic Forums

You are not suppose to use pp volumes for changing the look of the entire level. PP volumes are specific areas such as underwater and all. If you wish to change the entire level, use World Properties - Default PP.
It is normal for every UE3 level to have PP settings applied to modify its color as it does HUGELY improve its look and consistentency. Think about why GOW looks the way it looks.
Next to the color PP settings also alter contrast and brightness, good to do some fixing up if your level is a little washed out. *Thank You Hourences @ BU

A) If you want to make a postprocess to make your level look cool, just place a postprocess volume over the level and start tweaking settings.
Keep in mind that you can have multiple postprocess volumes that give slightly different feels to different parts of the level. Water is a good example of this. Also DM-Deimos has extensive postprocess volume tweaking for interior sections, exterior sections, modified gravity sections and the transition planes that tie them all together.
If you're looking to change postprocess on a specific player's vision, open CTF-Strident and look at the ring effect that passes over the level. You can sort of "play" a postprocess change over a player's camera. *Thank You Willhaven @ Epic



26) My Red Builder Brush is gone, how do i get it back?
the B key hides the Builder Brush Flag... and it stays like that by default when you restart the editor. *Thank You {MFD}Morderd @ Epic Forums.



27) Best way to optimize?

A) http://evilmrfrank.com/Optimizing.html

A) http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=589900

A) A few caveats.
Remove Surface Material is only useful in instances where you absolutely do not want that BSP to help occlusion. So, using it on the undersides and edges of additive BSP used for floors is probably OK, taking out the whole side of an additive BSP building which contains more meshes, probably not a good idea.
I generally find BSP that I can optimize or make black and set it to default texture so I can easily select them all at once and re-do the 65536 lightmap and uncheck all the lighting options.
In regards to BSP lightmaps, you're pretty much spot on, except sometimes we go as high as 256 or 1024 even in areas where you can get close to the surface. Sometimes they're lit so flatly that you can make the lightmap really blobby and you won't notice the difference.
I generally start by setting all of the BSP in the map to 8 and rebuild to see what shadows I feel are important, then I save them to the selection, set the others low and just pump up the detail on the important surfaces.

On Cull Distance. Now we have Cull Distance volumes to specify what sizes of meshes in that particular area get culled at what distance. You don't have to do it manually mesh-by-mesh anymore.

On Terrain. Be weary of large lightmaps on terrain. Unlike BSP, a higher number = better terrain lightmap resolution. So, a setting of 16 on a large terrain would be ridiculous.

On Blocking Volumes, I've never found them to be much of a drain (either in terms of performance or memory) in comparison to things like greedy lightmap usage or leaving unnecessary meshes with ragdoll collision enabled, etc.

One addition I think would be helpful...
You can lightmap static mesh actors that have a proper 2nd UV channel. Many of the meshes in the game have usable 2nd UV channels for lightmapping, but some do not. You can get HUGE overall memory savings by swapping away from vertex lit meshes to using small lightmaps (16x16 or 32x32). This is located in the StaticMeshComponent dropdown under OverriddenLightMapResolution.
The tradeoff is that the lightmaps generated get added to the texture pool. So, doing this too much on a console system would add unnecessary overhead and limit your ability to stream in textures to their full detail level. If your level has some excess texture space and you want to hack the file size down considerably, doing a lightmapping pass on static meshes in the level will do wonders.
If you open the generic browser and go to the Primitive Stats tab, you can sort by Lightmap (KByte) to get a feel for how much vertex memory is taking up in your levels. It's not uncommon for a mesh to be used 100 times or more in a level, and if the mesh has a lot of verts, if often ends up taking more than 1mb worth of vertex lighting data to light that mesh across the entire level. I generally start by getting all lightmap usage under 1mb then I re-cook and see if it fits in memory. If not, I'll to go 500k, then 100K. Sometimes getting a mesh that low isn't possible, but you do it where you can.
If you double click on the worst offenders, you can select them all and set an appropriate lightmap size. A 32x32 lightmap starts to become an attractive option on meshes of 1000 verts or more.
You can check the mesh to see if it will take well to lightmapping by selecting it, right clicking and doing a "sync in generic browser," opening the mesh viewer, and clicking to show the 2nd UV channel. You can usually tell by looking at it whether or not it's set up for lightmaps or not.
It's usually a good idea to apply the lightmaps to all the meshes and rebuild lighting to make sure it still looks ok afterward.

WAR-Powersurge is a good example of a map that's been lightmapped into oblivion.
*Thank You Willhaven @ Epic


28) Lift / Movers?

A)


29) Teleporters?

A)



30) Putting in the level Preview Shot
A) Adding the Screenshot Texture

1. Start UT3. Choose your map from the game menu. If it does not show up, make sure you Published the map before doing this.

2. Take a screenshot:
- Set the game settings to World and Texture of 5 for best visual quality, select a resolution of at least 1024x768 or 1280x1024.
- Set the Weapon Hand to Hidden in the Advanced options.
- Type "showhud 0" at the console to hide the hud.
- Type "ghost" at the console so you can go anywhere in the map.
- Press F9 to take the screenshot. The file will be saved in "My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3\UTGame\Screenshots".
- Load the screenshot in your paint software.
- Adjust the brightness, contrast and intensity as desired.
- Resample the screenshot to 512x256.
- Save the screenshot to a .bmp or .tga file named as "map-pic-<mapname>.bmp" or "map-pic-<mapname>.tga" eg. "map-pic-dm-mymap.tga".

3. Import the screenshot into your map package. Do not use a separate package for this.
- Start UnrealEd.
- Import the screenshot texture into your map, specify Package = <mapname> eg. "DM-Mymap", and Group = "MapPic", and Name = "map-pic-<mapname>" eg. "map-pic-dm-mymap".
- Set "CompressionNoAlpha" to True, set "CreateMaterial?" to True, set "Lighting Model" = MLM_Unlit, set "LODGroup" to TEXTUREGROUP_UI and set "RGB To Diffuse" to True.
- A new Material should be created in your map package's MapPic group. It will look like the default checkerboard texture in the Generic Browser.
- Rename the material to "MAT_map-pic-<mapname>" (ie. put the MAT_ in front of the name) and right-click and edit the material, move the Texture Sample device so that the material has changed and click on the left green check button to Apply Changes. The material should now look totally black in the Generic Browser, this is because it is unlit.
- Select a hidden CSG Surface somewhere in your map and apply the material. Alternately, add a simple unused StaticMesh and apply the Material to the StaticMesh Material override property. This retains a copy of the material and your screenshot texture in your map package, which would otherwise be flushed out on the next Save if it wasn't actually in use on some geometry.
- Save your map.

4. Set up the ini file for the screenshot.
- Edit the <mapname>.ini file that was created when you published the map.
- Change the line "PreviewImageMarkup=<Images: UI_FrontEnd_Art.GameTypes.DeathMatch>" to read "PreviewImageMarkup=<Images: <mapname>.MapPic.map-pic-<mapname>>" eg. "PreviewImageMarkup=<Images: DM-Mymap.MapPic.map-pic-dm-mymap>".

Basically, just replace the package.group.name of the default screenshot (UI_FrontEnd_Art.GameTypes.DeathMatch) with your package.group.name (DM-Mymap.MapPic.map-pic-dm-mymap) of your screenshot.

Note: the "<" and ">" must be in the text.
Note: I had to add a single space character after the "<Images:" above otherwise we would get smileys, so there should be no space there between <Images: and DM-.

5. If you have simply applied the screenshot Material to an already hidden CSG surface, then you can proceed to the next step. If you have modified the map to insert a StaticMesh or some other means of adding the screenshot Material, you may have to do a Build All and then a Publish again.



A) Make a new package (might work - or not - if you just add it to the map itself, didn't try yet).
Create a previewimage 512x256 and export it as DXT (DirectX Texture) - there's an exporter to DXT for PhotoShop on the nVidia homepage for download IIRC.
Import the DXT image into your package, and enter the path like "Images:<PackageName>.<GroupName>.<ImageName>" into the .INI.
Replace the stuff in "<>" with the appropriate value.
[EDIT]
First off: You don't need the DDS/DXT export, just save as .TGA, that'll do it just perfectely.
It'll import as DXT1, in UED2 there was an option to recompress.... like to DXT5 or so.... didn't spot that option yet....
As I didn't get the editor to save the map propperly, including additional stuff I imported in, I made a seperate package....
But if you get the editor to save your imported image along with (inside) your mapfile, that's supposed to work.... *Thank You Hellcat @ epic Forums

A) To get a preview, you save your screenshot as a .tga file, load it into a package, copy the reference, save the package, cook the map, and paste the reference in your .ini file. *Thanks Rocknificent @ Epic Forums



31) Slopes & Angles Surfaces
A) UT3 No Longer supports jumping up or dodging up angles surfaces to gain momentum.


32) Weather: Rain / Snow / etc.
A) Rain is in CTF-Coret and uses static mesh sheets. Open this map in the editor to look how it is done.

A) DAY & NIGHT Cycle: If you want to do a day night cycle, I'd look into blending post process settings with Kismet. Look at the ring pass FX from CTF-Strident to find the camera animations and their respective matinees. Then you could link that with a custom sky dome material that fades from day to night. That would accomplish a majority of the look and feel there. *Thank you Willhaven @ Epic



33) Random Tips

A) when you have a mesh selected, you can simply S+Click on a surface to add that static mesh there. If you have an actor selected in the actor browser A+Click should add the actor. Period+Click for path nodes as well. *Thank You Willhaven @ Epic

!) Next time, if you need to track down a pesky mesh, especially if you know where it's located in the packages, you can turn on the In Use filter in the Generic Browser (yellow hand with the wrench). Then you can sift through the packages, click on the asset you're trying to find, and double click through each instance until you find the one you want. With a sky dome, it's likely only used once or twice, so finding it that way would have been a snap. *Thank You Willhaven @ Epic


33) Floating Pickup Bases

A) It probably has to do with the simplified collision on the static mesh they're placed on. In WAR-Serenity, I had to build a bit of a pancake mound of smaller meshes around the Udamage pickups to keep them from floating on the larger mesh they were based on. *Thank You Willhaven @ Epic

34) Changing Light Colors With Kismet

A)
1. Insert a new PointLightToggleable where it needs to go. this is important. a regular point light wont do it.
2. open up kismet. make sure your PointLightToggleable is selected, and open the Matinee sequence for your lift or whatever.
3. right click on the left column wth all the groups, and add a new empty group. name it whatever you want.
4. right click on your new track and select "New Colour Property Track".
5. Make sure you light in question is selected in teh dialog box that appears, and press ok. dont expect all ur lights to be shown in this box: we will get to fixing this later.
6. Adjust the overall length of your sequence by moving the red triangles on the timeline. ignore the green ones for now.
7. add a new key at the beginning of the timeline by pressing enter with the Colour track selected.
8. right click on te key and click "set colour"..... pick your colour and press ok
9. add another key at the end of your timeline, and do the same: right click, set colour, (pick a colour).....
10. now.... we need to connect ALL your lights that are involved up.
11. close Matinee, and open kismet again. select all the lights that need to change colour (ALL of them MUST be PointLightToggleables!).
12. right click on the purple square under whatever you named your group for the light animation on the matinee actor in kismet, and press "new obj var using PointLightToggleable **,**,**...." (ignore the **'s, they just mean a number)
13. all your lights should now be connected by a purple line (inside kismet) to the plug under the name of your new Group for the light animation.
14. I suggest you set the colour in the properties of your lights (in the editor: not in matinee or kismet!) to the colour in the first key in matinee *Thank You Greenday 584 @ Epic

[outpt.co.uk]

These threads are excellent by the way - thanks a lot for your time posting them.

[King Mango]

Where's the editor exe under Steam???

[WW_Nihil]

Make a shortcut to the UT3.exe binary and add editor to the shortcut.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Unreal Tournament 3\Binaries\UT3.exe" editor

[King Mango]

whoa... It's a whole new world...

Thanks Nihil :cheers:

[SuperApe]

These threads are beyond compare!
Thank you for the shortcut, {RA}SKYFURNACE!

[King Mango]

Good god. Finally got the vids. Thanks to a friend. Man was I pissed about them being timed out at Buzz...

[ranq]

Hi...
this site is really cool man....

[Nova Silisko]

Originally Posted by ranq

Hi...
this site is really cool man....

Worst bump ever

[share_the_pain]

Originally Posted by Nova Silisko

Worst bump ever

No way, he's completely right.

[JohnnySix]

@ # 31 - Nooooooooooooooooo!

[share_the_pain]

Originally Posted by JohnnySix

@ # 31 - Nooooooooooooooooo!

I made a little mutator that fixes that, unfortunately there is no way to tell bots to slope dodge, but at least people can do it.

The mutator also adjusts jump height, dodge height/distance, running speed I think, and removes x-loc and forces instagib, all of which you can edit around. I designed it to give the game a more 'w00t' feeling.

Never released it though, it was more of a personal thing and the UT3 community hasn't really taken on w00t style maps yet.

[Fuzz]

How about edible maps? Just like the ones in real life...

Guides like these are great for beginners at the mapping scene.

[tony12]

not at all he is not completely right he is partially right

[xbox360]

I could only play for a little bit, but I can say that from what I saw, the performance is good, the graphics definitely above average in terms of custom maps, and I liked the layout/flow a lot.

If you could somehow remove the greenish tinge from the textures that have it and make it more of a simple gray it'd look better with the blue and red outlays, imho. UT3 is making me sick of the color puke green =P

I'll playtest much more tomorrow and offer better feedback. Lovin the map =)