What is new in UT3 editor?

[Nawrot]

Well I posted 2 topics with such questions so far. One in general got locked, probably because it would look bad there. Then another in demo feedback got just one reply asking same questions as mine. So I hope to get any feedback here.

Here is official web page with all eye candy promoting unreal engine 3.
www.unrealtechnology.com (http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/technology/ue30.shtml)

Most of that was in engine about 3 years ago, and I really got pumped up when there was new UT3 on horizon, hoping to get all those effects to play with. Sadly I could not spot almost anything like that in demo, and static pictures say nothing about dynamic effects.

So here are my questions:
1) are there dynamic shadows from players/vehicles on BSP, terrain, static meshes. Or only on some of them?
2) Dynamic lights, like they were in old UT99, are they implemented and working in game and editor?
3) Do dynamic/moving lights cast real time shadows, or they precalculated.
4) is there new way of making textures (like that picture from editor in Unreal tech)
5) did they implement that cool vehicle editor from unreal tech?
6) real bump, heightmaps, parallax mapping textures in full version, or it stays basically same as in demo?
7) real time shadows and dynamic light from skybox, does this work?
8) mirrors, reflections, that show BSP and static meshes, are they in engine?
9) portals, did they fix them?
10) empty, white viewports, do we need to copy paste old reply here, or it is fixed?


Game has good old feeling of UT99 and I ordered it just for that, but there needs to be that something that makes my comeback to level making for UT.

[DGUnreal]

1. Shadows can be cast on all geometry types.
2. Dynamic lights work in-game and in-editor. Don't confuse that with light effects though which work differently.
3. Moving lights have to cast real-time shadows, how can you precalculate that?
4. You still make textures the same way, ie. import a .bmp, .tga, etc., however, creating Materials is new.
5. Don't know what you are referring to...
6. What do you mean? Normal Maps etc. are working in both the demo and the retail.
7. There is no "Skybox" in UE3.
8. Are you referring to real-time or pre-done environment "cube-map" setups?
9. Which type of "portal"?
10. UnrealEd is totally new, it does not have the viewport bug that UnrealEd3 had.

[Nawrot]

Some clearings, but I undestand that most of those effects I asked about work in UT3.

2) Do those UT99 light effects work again? I mean flashing, pulsing etc lights, like they were in old unreal.
3) I mean shadows are precalculated and thus no shadows from dynamic lights, or do they cast them in realtime? I think you wrote they do work.

5) I mean that: Some Vehicle editor (http://www.unrealtechnology.com/screens/phat_raptor.jpg)

6) Really hard to see any working bump map texture in demo, because there are no dynamic lights that are slow moving. Only weapons and that can be hard to see for sure how light is working.

8) No I mean old UT99 style mirror calculated in real time. Not cube maps, but real reflections.
9) Mirrors and WarpZones/Portals were working somehow in UT99, in UT2004 there were big problems with occluding and static meshes. Sorry I forgot correct name after those years. I mean this : WarpZone (http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/WarpZoneInfo)

Anyway thank you for answer, I can sleep well now and await my UT3 copy.

[DGUnreal]

2. The lighting system is considerably more powerful than either UT99 or UT2k4. You don't have a fixed set of choices for light effects such as Disco and Flicker. You now have a powerful LightFunction effect that lets you assign any Emissive Material to a light. So basically anything you can do with emissive materials you can do with lights. It is like combining all of the power of LightEffect + Shaders + Projectors from the older engines.

3. Dynamic Lights create real-time shadows, but as always they are more expensive than static lighting. They use stencil shadows which usually don't look as good as static.

5. The PhAT system is working in UT3. In that shot they will be using it to set up a vehicle. The new Unreal Editor includes many powerful features for mapping/mod'ing such as Cascade, Kismet, PhAT.

6. The beta demo is also using only 1/4 final textures or lower, so all of the textures are much lower resolution which will detract from the quality of any bump effect.

8. The Licensee/Developer example game includes awesome real-time mirror demos, so the engine can do it. I haven't looked at the release version of UT3 yet.

9. WarpZones are fully working as far as I know.

[Nawrot]

That are really good news!

Game play of UT GOTY and all those new ways to make great looking maps.

Now if only that package with game was already here...

[DGUnreal]

Game play of UT GOTY and all those new ways to make great looking maps.


The capabilities of the engine for creating visually excellent maps is a massive leap ahead of anything UT2004 can do.

If you haven't seen this (http://planetunreal.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Articles.Detail&id=110) recent page at PlanetUnreal of UT3 level screenshots, it is really worth looking at. It gives you an idea of what is possible (assuming a person has the time and talent to create all of that).