best way to scale real world to ut3

[gtochad]

pretty soon im going to attempt to make a map based on a real world building
how would i go about scaling it so everything is realitivly the same as if you where to walk through it in real life

or do i just have to guesstimate

[MonkeyPeaches]

I'd say to draw out a rough blue-print on graphing paper. If you want to scale it to the player, there is an actor you can put in your map to reference from.

Open Generic Browser, select the Actor Classes Tab, and select PhysAnimTestActor.

Place that in our map by right clicking on a surface, and clicking Add PhysAnimTestActor Here. It will be near the bottom of the pop-up menu.

And ofcourse, you want to level the model with the ground so that his feet are laying on it.

[Ignotium]

My best advice would be to scale the maps for the Unreal Tournament 3 characters.
Cause after all, those are the ones you are going to use to go around and inside the building, if the whole thing is overs called for them, them it is simply over scaled. If for some reasons, you wouldn't play the map with UT, simply by making "things" in your map scaled between each other, then it'll be fine EVEN if they are overscaled/underscaled because they would looks proportionated among the environment.
So again, you best bet is to make everything scaled for UTPawns, wich are like 92/96 Unreal Units, so lets say that that is like 180cms (centimeters) wich is an "kinda of average" human height. Then take into consideration that the height of some roofs of some average rooms might be in a range of 220cms to 250cms. Leaving a separation of something like 60cms between each floor you can make up a pretty good building.
Another advices that i'd give you, is to use the materials and meshes for the packages that have te HU prefix (wich stands for Human Architecture)(wich you might already know, but who cares) to make things look less uncanny and more believable.
I'm also interested in making some real life buildings test with some BSP and meshes, so i you want you can further contact me to see if we can work something out together.

Cheers!

[Ikaros]

Based on the 96uu (unreal unit) height of a player, 1 foot ideally would be 16uu. But since players 32uu wide with an invisible bounding box around them they may have trouble fitting through openings at certain angles. Plus the view perspective makes things in the distance look farther away than in real life like a wide angle lens.

(Funny thing is in the game you are usually at 90 to 100 degrees field of vision. Your eyes sees wider but only has sharp focus towards the center region. If you compare something done to scale with a photograph, you can only make the perspective look right by going less than 90, maybe 60 or so to compress the distance perspective but its impossible to play like that!)

Anyway to give yourself breathing room you might want to deviate from the standard 16uu/foot and try 24uu per foot. I did a map once at 20uu/foot and it felt about right without looking too large, but you'll have to set the grid at 4 to line things up and stay on the grid if you can at that scale.

[gtochad]

thanks everyone for your responses i beleave this will help a ton and im sure i will have many more questions i cant wait to get started on this map i even wrote down some numbers about how tall and wide my halls should be using the people walking in them as units

[DGUnreal]

UE2.5 (UT2004) and UE3 (UT3) are 1 unreal unit = 2 cm.
Therefore 1 foot is actually 15.24 UUs. So attempting to use the 16=1 scale will usually cause some scale issues.
Keep in mind that the camera and perspective correction in rendering causes the map to look incorrect to what its real size is. And the fact that the in-game players can run and jump significantly more than a real human also means that you must scale things up or the players will be hitting walls, ceilings, etc.
UT2004 usually required a 1.5x to 1.75x scale (due to the extra dodge-jumping etc.). UT3 should be good with a 1.25x to 1.5x scale.
However, when translating from real-world you always want to keep any CSG Brushes on grid and always size up brushes and any custom staticmeshes on multiple-of-power-of-two, otherwise things won't fit unless you are on a grid of 1 (which is bad to work on). So walls etc. should usually be constructed with sizes such as 128, 256, 512, 1024, etc. With UT3 it is imperative to always keep your objects as clean as possible on sizing and where edges meet, otherwise any small gaps will reduce the occlusion culling capabilities and impact framerate.
Best to do a partial test of the map design to make sure that the scale is correct, prior to creating all of the content and having to re-scale to get it to play.

[Ikaros]

Very interesting DGUnreal. I wasn't expecting that Epic used the metric system scale unless thats just the way it is with 3D modeler software. So a 96uu character in UT3 in real life would be aproximately 6.3 feet tall or almost 6'4". Thanks for the insight!

Based on 15.24uu/foot, I guess your suggested upscale values at 1.25x = 19.05uu (could use 20uu/foot) and with 1.5x = 22.86uu and 1.75x = 26.67uu (for both could use 24uu/foot). Would that be sort of fair to say?

When I played with 16uu/foot mapping real world for Unreal it felt very tight. When Unreal Tournament came out I re-made the same map at 20uu/foot and it was a lot better. Even then I wondered how 24uu/foot would look. But my main concern working from blueprints is the vertical height scaled too large up causing problems to shoot over windows and railing height walls.

It looks very cool to see a real world place in an Unreal engine map, but thats really better suited for demonstration, walkthru purposes, or to show your friends. But if you really want 3D shooter playability you gotta end up just making something imaginary and wide open with lots of room to move, jump, and dodge effectively. I'm the first to admitt that I've always been conflicted with both worlds, real and unreal!

[ViV_iD]

I been doing a fair bit of real world modelling for UT in both RO (UT2.5) and now 3.0 on a mod. The problem is perception if you create a door width and height of the door frame to real world scale (door 990 wide and 2200 high) in game the translation makes things appear narrow. 1 metre wide in real life is not the same feeling that you get with one metre wide in game.

So be prepared to change your figures, I use a different scale for width compared to heights in UT, put in the measurements then get ingame get a feel for it then be prepared to adjust to the visual appeal your after. rather then sticking to the hard and fast real world standards.

[gtochad]

i guesstimated by using the character actor

in case anyone was interested (probably not) i'm making a map based on the layout of my high school

[DGUnreal]

I wasn't expecting that Epic used the metric system scale unless thats just the way it is with 3D modeler software.

Based on 15.24uu/foot, I guess your suggested upscale values at 1.25x = 19.05uu (could use 20uu/foot) and with 1.5x = 22.86uu and 1.75x = 26.67uu (for both could use 24uu/foot). Would that be sort of fair to say?

It goes way back to something Tim Sweeney and the others did with the early engines. Possibly had something to do with Canada and not 3D software, I'm not sure, he didn't 'fess up as to why.

20 to 24 uus per foot should look reasonably accurate. Player speed and jump height will still always make things look off when you play UT in a real-sized map.
So I tend to just stick with Unreal Units and general sizing when designing things and use Generic 1:1 in 3DS Max.

The problem is perception if you create a door width and height of the door frame to real world scale (door 990 wide and 2200 high) in game the translation makes things appear narrow. 1 metre wide in real life is not the same feeling that you get with one metre wide in game.

Part of the issue is that FOV, Camera/Eye-height etc. is different in-game than real world, so that throws things off.

in case anyone was interested (probably not) i'm making a map based on the layout of my high school

People running around shooting in a high school... that shouldn't cause any problems...

[gtochad]

People running around shooting in a high school... that shouldn't cause any problems...

donno if it will be recognizable as a school cause i dont think i have the skills to even make it look that good ive seen other peoples first maps .....they are hundreds of times better than mine

[DGUnreal]

Don't let that discourage you, we all have to start somewhere.
Some people who create their first UT3 map may also have previous experience with other games, other versions of UT, or even 3D software.

[Ikaros]

It goes way back to something Tim Sweeney and the others did with the early engines. Possibly had something to do with Canada and not 3D software, I'm not sure, he didn't 'fess up as to why.

Okay. Must have been before or after Epic relocated from Rockville, Maryland to the Carolina's or something as far as I can remember from the old school days.

20 to 24 uus per foot should look reasonably accurate. Player speed and jump height will still always make things look off when you play UT in a real-sized map. So I tend to just stick with Unreal Units and general sizing when designing things and use Generic 1:1 in 3DS Max. Part of the issue is that FOV, Camera/Eye-height etc. is different in-game than real world, so that throws things off.

Thanks, I totally agree with that assessment from tests I've made, even with other 3D shooters over the years.

[DGUnreal]

...possibly... I don't know for sure and his comment on UDN isn't specific.
For Unreal (1) they worked with DE which is a Canadian company.

[Ikaros]

I might be thinking of the pre-Unreal DOS days when as "Epic MegaGames", they made Epic Pinball, etc. which was a cool little game by the way! I loved their other DOS titles like Zone 66, here is a cool video intro cutscene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t13uJYwsC8A

Actually, I just found some history on Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games)

"Epic Games was initially founded under the name of Potomac Computer Systems in 1991 by Tim Sweeney in Rockville, Maryland."

[DGUnreal]

Yes. Digital Extremes (James Schmalz) who worked with him on the Unreal titles is located in Canada.

[Friendlyman]

What is a Canada?

[vicious007]

I'm making a floorplan for a architecture firm pre-vis project and I tried using 24uu per foot and still found it way too small. The avg. comercial wall is 5 inches thick, so at that scale it would be 10uu. Not only did everything look too small, it's a nightmare operating with a grid snap of 1, which is what you have to do if you're using weird numbers like that. I eventually decided to go with the standard 16uu wide walls and 256uu tall.

[DGUnreal]

If you are using the engine strictly for viz work then you are relatively free to do what you want for scale. I would tend to stick with multiples-of-power-of-two values so that things work easier with the grid. But if you are not putting UT3 characters into the map to play deathmatch in it, then whatever looks good visually is fine.

GoW uses 256uu wall height.

[T@F]

i guesstimated by using the character actor

in case anyone was interested (probably not) i'm making a map based on the layout of my high school

Hmm if i remember right someone got arrested for doing a map of there school in ut ed.
I remember reading it somewhere on the web.

So if i was you living in usa i would be very careful tbh.