Darthwilson's Shader Project

[darthwilson]

2012 Update.

Here is the final video:



(Now for the beginning of the thread)

Hello folks!

I've finally had the time to get onto the Epic forums and customise my profile and join the growing Epic community! I'm hoping to share my creation skills among other people as well as learn new ones.

So I'm a learning "general" 3D artist that works on characters and environments, and I use a combination of 3Ds Max, Zbrush, photoshop and Game Engines (UDK and Cryengine2). My workflow and pipelines mainly follow industry standards (Or so I believe )

I'm embarking on a self taught project along with my University work in the UK and it will be a project based solely in UDK and it will be the creation of complex holographic shaders using the available tools and features of UDK.

What inspired me in this project? - Science fiction mainly got me hooked into this project, especially with the release of recent titles such as Mass Effect 2, Iron Man 2 and Avatar which all feature super awesome looking holograms.

I'm hoping to recreate some of these effects into a custom shader in the UDK material editor, which can then be used in conjunction with another material (or 3D mesh) and even feature some dynamic elements such as movement and activation with the help of kismet.

I'm currently working on a 3D environment to display these holograms as shown below. (Some fans may notice the similarities from this and the beginning of Mass Effect 2) - The environment is far from finished but the modelling is almost complete. I'm still learning much into the world of texturing which currently is my weakest skill. (Any help, critique and advice would be awesome)



Any help is always appreciated as well as critique on my work which always helps improve my skill levels. I'm mainly going to be keeping my eyes open on different shader techniques achievable through the material editor in UDK.

Scott

[Wyldhunt]

Here's a quick one.
See all of those really bad shadow lines that seem to follow the edges of the walls and objects?

You can get rid of them. Go to View/World Properties. Scroll down to the Lightmass settings. You'll see a setting for Ambient Occlusion. You can leave that enabled.

Keep scrolling down until you find a section for Post Process effects. You'll see another option for Ambient Occlusion there. It'll have a tick box on the left and right side of it.
Make sure that the box on the left side is checked. The box on the right side needs to be empty. That will get rid of your dark inky shadowy badness. Dynamic Ambient Occlusion.

[ambershee]

Someone has actually already done a solid hologram material, and publically released it. Shouldn't be too difficult to find, it's on these forums someplace.

[darthwilson]

hey there.. late reply :P I found that thread and been looking into how he created that... I most likely won't start any practical for another month or so until I have sufficient research but will have some nice updates asap.

[darthwilson]

Hey everyone.. Been a long time since the last update..

I've been working hard from January onwards building these shaders based upon some research from different artists and unreal techniques etc. Here is a short video of the holograms that I have so far...

http://youtu.be/KxIfH2rU5Z0

Now here are some closeups of three instances I have of them..







I was hoping that somebody could give me some critique on my work so far.. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[phobossion]

I like it! Very nice video...

[darthwilson]

Little bit more progress!! mucking about with Shader colours and with the help of user "Max Power" I now have a working scanner in the level too! As well as this I have got a character model created by me http://forums.epicgames.com/showthre...9#post28080829 with a fully working pulsing wire-frame

http://youtu.be/g2h-MoCC_X0?hd=1

[Blizzard_Edge]

Your hologram and panel designs are really cool. Thanks for sharing your work so far! I have been learning UDK things for fun as a hobby project, and I am currently working on some sort of simple "holographic" mid-air panel, so I may end up asking you a couple of questions (if you don't mind) since you seem to have solved most problems already. :P

For the hovering door panel circles at around 34 seconds into your video, did you use a dynamic static mesh actor with a plane mesh to display them (maybe using a scaleform movie rendered to a material)? Or was there a better way than that?

[darthwilson]

@blizzard_Edge - My doors are made from 3 meshes that was made in a modelling program.. They have been put in as 3 individual 'InterpActors' and animated using matinee... As for the hologram itself, it is a material made in the material editor and applied to another 2D plane which has been added as an interpactor so that I could have material instancing working with matinee as well... If that doesn't make too much sense send me a PM

Thanks for looking =)

[darthwilson]

For anyone thats still looking at this! here is the final video =)

[RaPtOr_v9600]

very nice shader, i like it very, and very nice environment

[Blizzard_Edge]

Thanks again for sharing. It looks awesome. I imagine you won't be offering files to download, but I might try to ask a couple of questions eventually.

[darthwilson]

keep an eye on my website... www.pixelmaniac.co.uk for I shall be posting tutorials very soon"

[darthwilson]

I done a tutorial on how to do the panner scanner effect. Its on my website here http://www.pixelmaniac.co.uk/tutorials.html

With thanks to Chris Holden who helped me get it working

[Kelt'ar]

I done a tutorial on how to do the panner scanner effect. Its on my website here http://www.pixelmaniac.co.uk/tutorials.html

With thanks to Chris Holden who helped me get it working

Huh... Li I is down. Any chance y

[Kelt'ar]

I done a tutorial on how to do the panner scanner effect. Its on my website here http://www.pixelmaniac.co.uk/tutorials.html

With thanks to Chris Holden who helped me get it working

Huh... Li I is down. Any chance you could help me out with the distortion effect?