Multiple materials on a static mesh

[malc2304]

If I have an static mesh that will be using multiple textures will this need to be broken up into multiple parts based on the faces the textures are applied to or does Ued have a way of assigning multiple materials or telling if an object will use multiple materials.

[Denny]

uED can handle several UV sets. So yes, several materials are possible.

[SmokeRingHalo]

uED may handle it but I haven't found a way for the .ase static mesh to hold more than one material. This forces me to break meshes into their material groups to import them and then reassemble them within uED. I can't comment on .t3d as I don't have that capability, but my brief experience with the .ase format has been a technological step backwards. If anyone has had success with importing more than one material info in an .ase, please reply!

[nenad pazanin]

uED may handle it but I haven't found a way for the .ase static mesh to hold more than one material. This forces me to break meshes into their material groups to import them and then reassemble them within uED. I can't comment on .t3d as I don't have that capability, but my brief experience with the .ase format has been a technological step backwards. If anyone has had success with importing more than one material info in an .ase, please reply!


Solution is to choose Multi sub material instead of standard material (are we talking about 3dmax?):confused:
Or we are talking about material instances -instead materials in ued3

check this link
http://fordy.planetunreal.gamespy.com/gradientssmeshtutorials/contents.html

[SmokeRingHalo]

We're talking conversions here. After using several programs I've yet to find a single one that converts to .ase with more than one material. XSI > .ase uses Multi sub materials from Material 0 which simply don't work and Biturn uses standard materials with even less success. Somethings getting fudged along the way. If someone can give me a working importable .ase example , even a simple cube, with more than one material - so that I can look at the code to see whats fudged, it would be most appreciated.

[BIOS]

if you are talking about doing this in UT3......i don't recommend it. especially with just regular old environmental assets. in ut2004 this wasn't necessarily a problem because you weren't using multiple materials on a mesh, usually just multiple textures. in ut3, each material you add to a mesh could presumably contain at the very least diffuse, specular and normal maps. so even two materials on a mesh will be calling six unique textures. this adds up very quickly and can cause memory/performance issues down the line. i highly recommend sharing textures/materials as often as you can in UT3. if you look at how the meshes are made in either GoW or UT3 you'll see that they were very careful and clever in how they used materials.

good luck.

[SEBASTIEN-NOVA]

IMPORTING Static mesh With multiples materials from 3DS Max 8 to Ued 3.0 (for UT3) :

1- Create your object

2- Apply your materials on it (using first ID material to 1, second to 2 ...)

3- Add Mapping UVW modificator on it and set it as you want.

4-export your object in .ASE format with this setting (I'm not shure of the translation, I'm

using french version of 3dsmax8 :) :

-exit options :

Mesh definition to true
Materials to true

-object types :

Geometry to true
Shapes to true

-Mesh options :

mapping coordinate to true

-static exit :

image # : 0

Accuracy : decimales : 4

-Control of exit :

use key to true and set to 5.

leave other options

5- Open the Ued 3.0

go to the generic browser and make file-> import

select your object.ase

put a name of package you want and a name of mesh you want.

6-Now surch in the browser your package and right clic on your object.
Select static mesh editor

7-Goto the section LODInfo and clic on it. You will see below "elements" your differents

materials.

8- return on the broswer, select a material and return to the SM editor and clic at the line

"Material the arrow to put the first material.

9- Make the same for your differents material ID.

I hope it can help you ;)

And sorry angain with my english ...

[SmokeRingHalo]

if you are talking about doing this in UT3......i don't recommend it. especially with just regular old environmental assets. in ut2004 this wasn't necessarily a problem because you weren't using multiple materials on a mesh, usually just multiple textures. in ut3, each material you add to a mesh could presumably contain at the very least diffuse, specular and normal maps. so even two materials on a mesh will be calling six unique textures. this adds up very quickly and can cause memory/performance issues down the line. i highly recommend sharing textures/materials as often as you can in UT3. if you look at how the meshes are made in either GoW or UT3 you'll see that they were very careful and clever in how they used materials.

good luck.

I understand what you're saying but I'm not concerned with that at the moment because I'm just trying to get a simple unlit sky dome (skybox subdivided) into the game without all the extra material bells and whistles.
I haven't found any other way to properly map the skydome using the 6 textures from the skybox. I've searched for a converter for this and it seems that there were some but the links are all broken now so I'm stuck doing it this way.

[SmokeRingHalo]

IMPORTING Static mesh With multiples materials from 3DS Max 8 to Ued 3.0 (for UT3) :

Select static mesh editor
7-Goto the section LODInfo and clic on it. You will see below "elements" your differents materials.
8- return on the broswer, select a material and return to the SM editor and clic at the line
"Material the arrow to put the first material.
9- Make the same for your differents material ID.


I actually thought this might work but sadly it did not.
The entire mesh uses the first material entered and ignores the others completely.
.ase has become more troublesome than its worth so I'm trying to find a .t3d converter.

[DGUnreal]

UT3Ed and .ase support multiple materials on a single mesh.
In Max I do that all of the time using a Multi/Sub-Object Material. In UT2004, many of my meshes were multi-material. With UT2004 the breakover point was usually about 6 textures before the Sections vs Objects started to affect things, so meshes with 4 or less textures should almost always be individual pieces.

In UE3, multi-material meshes are actually handled as separate objects by the renderer, so the performance hit is high as the mesh has to be prep'ed into objects before rendering which eats processing time. So I recommend splitting by texture or creating a single skin in most cases. Splitting also usually results in better unwrapping for lightmaps anyway.

PM me if you want a few simple .ase files to look at.

I assume that you are attempting to create a cube skydome that uses the six textures from a UT2004 skybox?? This is a bad way to go about it as the aspect and perspective will be wrong. I would try either manipulating the textures in photoshop, or doing a render-to-texture projection from the cube to a properly mapped sphere.
The easiest is simply to use proper skydome/spherical mapped textures.

[SmokeRingHalo]

UT3Ed and .ase support multiple materials on a single mesh.
In Max I do that all of the time using a Multi/Sub-Object Material. In UT2004, many of my meshes were multi-material.

I assume that you are attempting to create a cube skydome that uses the six textures from a UT2004 skybox?? This is a bad way to go about it as the aspect and perspective will be wrong. I would try either manipulating the textures in photoshop, or doing a render-to-texture projection from the cube to a properly mapped sphere.
The easiest is simply to use proper skydome/spherical mapped textures.


Multi/sub-object hasn't been working for me. In UT2004 this wasn't a problem for me because I didn't use .ase to import.

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/2426/cubedspherejz4.jpg

As you can see, its not much of a cube anymore, it is in fact a sphere.
It just isn't spherically mapped as I have no way to convert the 6 skybox textures into a sphere map. Ditching the skybox textures entirely is out of the question.

[melmonkey]

Also remember in MAX to make sure you have an actual texture applied to each multi sub material, or else the ASE exporter will only write out the first material slot.

Small pain in the ass, took me an hour to figure that one out........:rolleyes:

[DGUnreal]

That skybox texture looks familiar... ;)

If you are using Max, set the Material to Multi/Sub-Object, set the number of sub-materials you are using, optionally set the name and color of each sub-material, then load a map into each sub-material's Diffuse. Drag the Material to the mesh. If the mesh is an Editable Mesh, or if you added an Edit Mesh to the stack, go into poly or face mode, select the face(s) you want, assign the desired Material ID to them. In Max they are 1 to n, UnrealEd they are 0 to n.
Don't use multiple Material slots in Max as that messes it up for a single multi-texture mesh, use only a single Material set to Multi/Sub-Object type.

[SmokeRingHalo]

That skybox texture looks familiar... ;)

If you are using Max, set the Material to Multi/Sub-Object, set the number of sub-materials you are using, optionally set the name and color of each sub-material, then load a map into each sub-material's Diffuse. Drag the Material to the mesh. If the mesh is an Editable Mesh, or if you added an Edit Mesh to the stack, go into poly or face mode, select the face(s) you want, assign the desired Material ID to them. In Max they are 1 to n, UnrealEd they are 0 to n.
Don't use multiple Material slots in Max as that messes it up for a single multi-texture mesh, use only a single Material set to Multi/Sub-Object type.

Since I don't have Max, this won't help me, but I appreciate the explanation as it may help someone else.

I've since come across a utility that generates sphere maps from sky cube textures. SphereMap Generator (http://www.geocities.com/lithunwrap/?200729) at the bottom of the page. While it does work, I haven't been able to apply it to a sphere successfully. Again, maybe someone else will have luck with it.
I will take you up on your offer to send me some simple importable .ase samples so that I can compare them to mine to see where its going wrong.