Modern House - WIP (Comments and help appriciated)

[JulienCoffin]

Hi everyone, comments are always welcome, and help even more!!!

So this is where I m after struggling for 2 weeks on UDK.
This first render you see is from 3DS Max, but I want to get something as close as possible from that but with UDK, I hope with your help I ll be able to.
http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/7259/housebeautyfinal.jpg

This are some screen grab of what it looks like at the moment, my plan is to get it on and Ipad 2, but first I ll try to get it looking good on the computer : )
http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/8971/23317271.jpg
http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/8569/11854919.jpg
http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/5120/34480161.jpg
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/2475/20514079ni.jpg
http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/4082/41965886.jpg

I have a couple questions, if anyone can help would really be awesome, so my first concern is why the brown color is boucing so much?
(The way my scene is setup at the moment is: 2 directional lights, one blue and one orange with a light mass Imp Volume)
(Most of the object have a 1024 light map res)
(Num Dyn Shadow Cascade are 4)
(Indirect light scale 6 - Indirect Light Saturation 0.8 - Shadow Exponent 2)
(Gamma correction is ticked (that will be for later on))
(Global Illum Ticked)
(Its built as production)

I ve split the object in different group to have bigger UV but for the wall of the house its hard to really get big UVs, as theirs so many walls and I didnt want to have 100 objects to brake and unwrap, so I m not sure if that would be a reason why the white color of my wall is soo weird inside the house.
Aswell I have this weird light bouncing in the upstairs room, shown on the last pictures : (

My next step is adding some basic furnitures inside, and start texturing.
Ow another question lol, when I move inside the house as a player is their anyway to make the player taller??? As some time in front of some windows he seems a bit to small, like being a dwarf ( I do not want to rescale the house) and if theirs no way to change his height I guess I could push the collisions object up but I would prefere another solution.

If you need more info on anything let me know, I ll try to answer as many questions as fast as possible, I ll be checking the post every day as I have a tight deadline on that one.
Thank you guys for any help you can give me!!! : )

[Tearl]

Play with the diffuse boost for the color bleed.
For lightmaps, tweak the DefaultLightmass.ini to allow for more samples, etc. Also disable light map compression.
Make sure all lightmap coords (per object) are the same size relative to each face. Also make sure your UV coords are snapped to the exact pixels. If you are using 1024 lightmaps, then tweak your UV's to exact pixels...use a 1024x1024 checker and make sure the edges are perfect.

changesize will size your character. So, changesize .8 will make you 80% of normal size.

[DevOptions.StaticLighting]
bAllowLightmapCompression=False

[DevOptions.StaticLightingProductionQuality]
NumShadowRaysScale=8
NumPenumbraShadowRaysScale=32
ApproximateHighResTexelsPerMaxTransitionDistanceSc ale=6
MinDistanceFieldUpsampleFactor=5
NumHemisphereSamplesScale=32
NumImportanceSearchPhotonsScale=12
NumDirectPhotonsScale=64
; Decrease direct photon search distance so that we will have more accurate shadow transitions. This requires a higher density of direct photons.
DirectPhotonSearchDistanceScale=.1
NumIndirectPhotonPathsScale=4
; Need a lot of indirect photons since we have increased the number of first bounce photons to use for final gathering with NumImportanceSearchPhotonsScale
NumIndirectPhotonsScale=16
NumIndirectIrradiancePhotonsScale=2
NumCausticPhotonsScale=1
; Decreasing the record radius results in more records, which increases quality
RecordRadiusScaleScale=.1
InterpolationMaxAngleScale=.5
; Decreasing the min record radius allows more records in corners for a higher quality result
MinRecordRadiusScale=.25

Try that.

[JulienCoffin]

Awesome, thanks Tearl for that!!


Make sure all lightmap coords (per object) are the same size relative to each face
Good call, my Uv s are relative but not per object, damn so much work to do on the UVs, OMG!!!


Also make sure your UV coords are snapped to the exact pixels
About that I see what you mean, But I have so many of them, that s going to take me so much time!! And if I have to change the mesh at some point damn : (, but thanks I ll defenetly try


Play with the diffuse boost for the color bleed.
Thanks for that I figured that one out late last night, as I was getting rid of the light mass, I ll try to do some render without global illum aswell, and more lights in the house and see how it looks like.

Thanks Tearl really appriciate it!!

[taz1004]

In production, I can't spend a lot of time tweaking UV's. 80% of the mesh, we just use Maya's automatic mapping. In the case of your light bleeding, you may be able to fix it by tweaking UV's but what we do... is just put another surface above the ceiling to block out the light because that's basically what's happening. The bleeding doesn't happen on your first level for example. Only on second level. Your fourth image with roofing removed actually explains why it happens. Obvious but important. Normal of that extra surface should point upwards.

Turn off lightmass compression as Tearl suggested for clean walls. This will triple your level size at least by the way.

Play with Lightmass section in WorldInfo. I always bump up the Production quality in BaseLightmass.ini as Tearl said but it works best when you lower Static Lighting Level Scale in WorldInfo as well(around 0.4~0.8) This has effect of decreasing the size of the photons. If light build time is not issue, really bumping up the Production quality and using very low Static Lighting Level Scale will yield a look closer to the Max rendering.

And I would tweak ambien occlusion. It seems too strong.

[JulienCoffin]

Thanks Taz for all this informations, i m going to try all this suggestions, and so hopefuly by the end of the week i should get something decent looking. :) thanks again for the help i ll post some updates really soon!!

[JulienCoffin]

changesize will size your character. So, changesize .8 will make you 80% of normal size.

For that I guess I need to do it in the kismet, in the console command??

Aswell I fixed the light bleeding of lev 2 with the technic you suggested taz, thanks fo that.

[JulienCoffin]

bAllowLightmapCompression=False

If I allow the lightmap compression, well the photon building takes for ever... after hours still not finished : (

"Calculate Irradiance Photons complete, 0.000 million irradiance calculations in 0.0"
I read some thread saying its some bug udk is working on, but not everyone has that problem : (, ow and I have a good machine so I doubt the problem is coming from there.

Any advices?

othervize i guess the only solution for me would be to make the map res for the walls 2048, and put the Static Lighting Level Scale to .1 or even lower : ( but its already taking a while and I still didnt put textures or the terain and trees : (, omg I m starting to think I might be wasting some precious time working on UDK, when I should just focus on Max.....hmmmmm

[JulienCoffin]

Started everything from scratch as I couldnt get the light working from a blank file, so I started it all again from the midday scene, worked a lot better, but the shadows inside the house are still making my wall too grey, might have to try to fake it, unless I get some advices.
Also I never managed to get the lightmass compression working : (, from the blank file it never finished, and from the midday scene well doesnt seem to do anything : (
Also I have a problem with my rocks I placed them using the foliage tool, so i cant really select them unless using that tool, and they have black stains on them, look like it could be some UV problem or Light map res problem, but I grabbed them from the UDK ressources so I doubt its a UV problem, and I put 256 for light map res on the static mesh in the content browser as I cant selct them one by one and change it for each as I used the them foliage tool, so not sure how I can fix this problem : (, any ideas???

Still need to model a fair bit of furnitures and create a landscape for the horison, or at least find a way to cover all that sky.
Soon I ll post a video.


Also less important but how can a fake some volume for the carpet upstairs?

Comments are always welcome, and help even more!! : )

http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/5678/moderhousewip2.jpg
http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/3470/moderhousewip4.jpg
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/1985/moderhousewip3.jpg
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3688/moderhousewip5.jpg
http://img194.imageshack.us/img194/3604/moderhousewip6.jpg
http://img819.imageshack.us/img819/5584/moderhousewip7.jpg
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/4931/moderhousewip8.jpg
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/2918/moderhousewip1.jpg

[CreateNPlay]

Looking sweet mate.

Now make it work on iOS haha, no i kid, i'm just jealous that you're working for PC not iOS :)

[JulienCoffin]

Well its the plan I will get it out on IOs but for now I m trying to get it out on PC first, still struggling a lot, and making it work on IOs will be 10 time harder I m sure : (

[Baructt]

I'm curious if you're working with Unreal brushes or importing the static meshes from 3DSMax. Using meshes might make some visual quality easier.

[JulienCoffin]

I dont work much with brushes, i import a lot from Max.
The rocks and trees I used the foliage brush tool, which is quick and easy to use but now its giving me a headacke, might have to start again : (