UDK Custom Character?!

[Afr0]

I've been looking through a variety of tutorials on this subject, and all of them seem to vary slightly in their descriptions.
First of all: Are you supposed to export your character as one single mesh, or several meshes (head, arms, boots, hands etc)?
Currently I've exported my mesh as several SkeletalMesh pieces.
However, this tutorial seems to suggest that I'm supposed to export it as one SkeletalMesh!
It has a custom PlayerController script that goes:

DefaultProperties
{
defaultMesh=SkeletalMesh'yourpackage.Meshes.yourcharacter'
defaultAnimTree=AnimTree'CH_AnimHuman_Tree.AT_CH_Human'
defaultAnimSet(0)=AnimSet'CH_AnimHuman.Anims.K_AnimHuman_BaseMale'
defaultPhysicsAsset=PhysicsAsset'CH_AnimCorrupt.Mesh.SK_CH_Corrupt_Male_Physics'
}

Am I missing a step here, or what? I've already imported the SkeletalMeshes into a UPK, but I don't have one 'YourCharacter' mesh, I have several.
Can someone please explain what I have to do to get things working?

[Hyper_Shado]

Just do it as one mesh. The people who make Unreal Tournament use characters with interchangeable parts, which is why they have the mesh broken up into different parts. But it's far simpler to just have one solid character.

[Afr0]

Thanks!
I've done that and am getting close to sorting out the bone weighting... now I'm wondering, how do I apply a material?



As you can see, there are 7 material slots for the mesh. It seems that each of these material slots apply to a certain part of the body. When I try to apply my texturemap that I exported from Max to any of these slots, it only gets applied to a part of the mesh.
Is there any option I need to select in ActorX to make sure that the texturemap is applied to the entire mesh?

[tegleg]

check out geodavs tutorials http://sites.google.com/site/ut40kmod/

[dondiego]

Assign all polys the same texture ID in Max.

[Hyper_Shado]

You can't exactly "put the material" on the mesh in UDK. Well, if you can it's certainly beyond me.

You need to do something called baking a Texture, that will create an image that "wraps" around your character to make all the nice colors show up. I'm not sure about the specifics for 3DS Max, but to bake a texture you will need to arrange your model's UV coordinates. These "UVs" mark what part of an image will be applied to a part of a model - to make it simple, if you placed all the UVs of your model in the center and then applied a UV texture that was just a blue Circle, the model would be blue. Get it?

[Winwarproductions]

I believe I've edited that same script your using. If so follow the steps below. There is a CustomPlayerController.uc file on my website as well you can download that shows how I set up my material. it's referencing to one solid mesh character. In 3ds Max, make your character one solid mesh and not in body parts. Well it doesn't matter if you attach the character just don't rig it in pieces. As for the texture in 3dsmax use Multi sub material feature. Selet the head polygons and apply channel one for the head, and select body and apply channel 2 for body texture. When you export to UDK with actor x you will be selecting one mesh which is the body you attached all together that has 2 texture channes on it. Now when you import to UDk you will set up 2 material slots for the one character. In my CustomPlayerController.uc file, I'm referenceing the script to those materials in my pakage. Well you will see what I'm talking about. just excuse my dory voice and thead audio in certain parts of the video, but hopefully it will help.
On my website there should also be more videosfor importing ustom character for cinematic or matinee. All the tutorials are for solid mesh charaters.

Just added

Reflective water(Simple reflection plane tutorial)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiUdUeqrKSA

I fixed the audio and got closer to the microphone. The video is shorter and more to the point than my other one with the six videos. 22minute video,had to break it up in 3 videos. The videos quality and resolution is still being processed in Youtube so give them a few hours or so.

UDK Tutorial Updated Edited Version Setting up Custom Player Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdmk7dJQeYk

UDK Tutorial Updated Edited Version Setting up Custom Player Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMaaatVoJd4

UDK Tutorial Updated Edited Version Setting up Custom Player Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQQbN0cBXOc

Older longer version.

UDK Tutorial Setting up Custom Player Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=undPZh48utw

UDK Tutorial Setting up Custom Player Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEwrX777AR0

UDK Tutorial Setting up Custom Player Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJGSGfe0FSA

UDK Tutorial Setting up Custom Player Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhjB-Sq9wT8

UDK Tutorial Setting up Custom Player Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFojZjxkQpg

UDK Tutorial Setting up Custom Player Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynMsE6Kq7nU

The files for video are at my website in the "Tutorials" section
http://michaeljcollinsdreamart.com


Overall I basically follow the guidelines of these tutorials, and then I added a little more script and referenced things to my content of course.

https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=...NzAzNThl&hl=en

http://www.theballthegame.com/tutorialudk.htm