Understanding Unreal and textures

[CoffeeCrazy]

Hey there!

I've always been fascinated with how great texture maps for Unreal Tournament look. The blending of diffuse/specular/bump mapping are just so... clean and detailed.

I understand how each of the texture types work, but I have some questions.

Does Unreal use Diffuse/Specular/Bump only, or more? Some surfaces appear glossy, yet I would assume that that is a Unreal Tournament feature, rather than a gloss-map.

I was curious, in Unreal Tournament 3 there's a VERY large vehicle, has six wheels and a lot of big guns on it. I was wondering if someone had this model exported along with its textures so I can overview them to understand the inner workings of texture making better.

I have used 3ds Max for 10+ years, back when it was still owned by Discreet and called 3d Studio Max. My modeling is very good, however my texture work could use some assistance, as my blending of diffuse/specular/bump could be cleaner and was looking for great examples.

Help is much appreciated, thanks!

[KalleW]

Well to start off I would tell you to just go into the Content Browser and open up some different materials and see how they work and what textures are used for what and so on.

There are plenty of materials and meshes in udk as it is to get a very firm grasp of the basics by just looking around at the examples provided.

And if you have any specific questions after that I am sure someone here can help you.

Just a tiny warning, don't pass out if you happen to open one of the more complex materials... There are a few in there that are about as easy to understand as a rubiks cube to the newcomer. So if there are 1 million tiny boxes when you open a material close that one and find some other example. ;)

Best of luck to you. :)