Making lots of grass in UDK [update: demo added]

[online|offworld]

Hi Everyone,

Simon from showmethatagain.com here, I've done a bunch of free tutes in the past about creating landscapes in UDK, but I wanted to have a crack at doing a commercial tute. So I've been working on a series of video tutorials that show how to make high(er) density grass in a UDK level, and was planning to make it available on my site for $10. I wanted to keep it pretty cheap because this is my first attempt at selling tutes and I just wanted to test the waters gently.

Anyways, I'm nearly finished and I have a demo video of the end result. Do you think it looks ok or 'a bit crap', and does it seem reasonably priced?



*update*
I've created a demo level using the grass effect to give people a chance to see if it runs ok on their machine and whether or not they like the look of it. If you don't mind the hefty download size (270MB) you can download the demo level from my site at the following url:

http://www.showmethatagain.com/2011/...o-grass-level/

Cheers,
Simon O

[Mayan]

Hi Simon,

I've watched your terrain tutorials before and they helped me a lot, but recently (last couple of weeks) when I try to view any of your videos on your site, they get blocked by my antivirus as having a JS: Downloader-AZF trojan (apparently it's some kind of malware trojan).... this wasn't happening before so not sure why it's doing that now? Is it possible your website files somehow got infected or is it a false positive by my antivirus (Avast)?

The new grass video looks good. How long is the tutorial for it?

[online|offworld]

Aya carumba! I'll check the site tonight, thanks for the heads up Mayan.
Hopefully my site has not passed along anything nasty to anyone.

The tute is split up into the following sections and times:

Part 1 : Intro to Inkscape and creating a grass texture (26 minutes)
Part 2 : Intro to Blender 3D and creating a grass mesh (35 minutes)
Part 3 : Using the grass assets into UDK - Importing, Materials, Foliage tool & Matching ground materials. (doing tonight, probably 30-60 minutes)

[Mayan]

Yeah it could be just a false positive from my antivirus, but let me know once you have checked it because I like your tutorials and I want to go over a few of the vids again.

[hunharibo]

I think the quality is nice mate, awaiting your tut impatiently

[Leodido]

it looks nice but my only concern is performances. You are using quite a small scene with not a of stuff going on, how would this grass translate into a full blown game? Would it be usable or would it hinder too much the FPS?

[online|offworld]

Arrgh, poo bum fart, Mayan you were right my wordpress sites have been hacked.

I'm going to have to torch them all and reinstall everything from scratch.

I'll have to finish the tute once I've got this sorted sorry

[Mayan]

Ah that sucks...
Hope you can get it all sorted out again soon. Let us know when it's all working again.

[LucasWalter]

Hey man have you gotten your site back up yet?

[online|offworld]

Yeah I rebuilt all my sites from the ground up, and double quadruple locked them down this time, so they should be safe to visit again. Having said that, I don't have any content on showmethatagain.com at the moment.

I have finished the video tute for the grass but am pretty dissapointed with the performance in udk : it's running at 10fps @ 1920x1080 in my quadcore i7 with 8GB of ram and 2GB ov vram (Radeon 5770).

At that rate, I don't know if it's even worth offering... heck I'm even considering jumping engines again

[LucasWalter]

Oh,I'm sorry to hear that man, but I created some grass on my own and I don't know if this is the method you use, but I modeled about 5 blades of grass in 3ds max then put them in a patch. After that I unwrapped it and textured it all and put it in the foliage painting tool in udk and adjusted some of the painting options to add change. If you did the same method I would recommend keeping the polygons in the grass blade models as low as possible. Also, that is pretty high resolution to be running udk, may want to think about lowering it.


Edit: May I ask how you did the wind with the grass? I cannot for the life of me figure out how...

Thanks

[smallbit]

Lucas Maybe this will help you
http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UDK_Wor...on_Offset.html

there is also link to YT tutorial.

I'm affraid that you need some geometry there to simulate proper movement. What IMO you would need to do is to disable (paint black) the vertexes on the ground to make them still. Then only apply movement in Y and X. He explains also how make the movement dependend on the world position. Actually explaining that he talks about the grass ^^

Good luck let us know about the results ^^

[LucasWalter]

Alright, thank you very much, And ill post a video or something when I am finished.

[smallbit]

Small update i have checked it myself, it doesnt need to be complex, i am using simple plane (4 vertex), only thing is that if you want to use it in foliage editor you need to paint vertexes already in 3d max (i simply painted two bottom in black and two top in white). Other thing about this tutorial i posted before, you can skip any of the directions applying component mask (in this case masking R G) just before the world possition ofset (material block).


EDIT: foliage tool is still messing this up. Event if mesh is ok (the root of the grass is still) if you drag it to the scene works fine, but when use foliage tool it moves entire leaf even tthe root Any ideas?

[LucasWalter]

If I am understanding you correctly, your problem is that the whole mesh moves not just the leaves or parts you want?

[smallbit]

Yes, but i have found another topic where the says it's the common bug of Foliage mode and happens also for some UDK assets too like grass moving the mesh up and down when you ad the wind in your scene ^^ ...

[online|offworld]

I'm going to build a demo level this weekend and put it on my site, that way people can try the end result on their different computers. If I get positive feedback I'll post the tute on my site...

[smallbit]

I'm going to build a demo level this weekend and put it on my site, that way people can try the end result on their different computers. If I get positive feedback I'll post the tute on my site...

For 10$ ??

[jonny2027]

I for one cant wait to see your tutorial, sorry about your website, it was very useful.

[online|offworld]

For 10$ ??

Well it *is* a 3hr/600MB tute...

Part one is an intro to inkscape and how to create a grass clump texture
Part two is an intro to blender and how to create a grass clump mesh
Part three is about getting the grass clump into UDK, setting up mats, some basic wind and foliage settings

I for one cant wait to see your tutorial, sorry about your website, it was very useful.

I'll get it up and running again, don't miss my old tutes too much though they were over a year out of date...

[online|offworld]

*edit* oops double post sorry

[smallbit]

Well it *is* a 3hr/600MB tute...

I am not questioning it to be clear. However maybe you can give me a tip how to cover your ground with this foliage avoiding this foliage mode bug mentioned in the previous post. Maybe You use terrain instead??

[LucasWalter]

Looking forward to seeing some tutorials back up on your website

[online|offworld]

maybe you can give me a tip how to cover your ground with this foliage avoiding this foliage mode bug mentioned in the previous post. Maybe You use terrain instead??

If you mean making the top of your grass move around in the wind while the bottom doesn't, yeah I got that covered in the tute...

[smallbit]

I know you do but can you tell me how do you place the mesh on the map ? using landscape or terrain ? deco laye or foliage mode ¿¿

[online|offworld]

I use foliage, it works on nearly anything, even static meshes

[LucasWalter]

Just a quick question, the foliage is not possible with speed tree yet or interactive foliage actors is it?

[online|offworld]

Don't know about interactive foliage, but speedtrees don't work with the foliage editor.

[LucasWalter]

Alright thank you for all of your help, looking forward to seeing your grass tutorial when its back up.

[online|offworld]

sorry guys, I've just discovered that the weeks of work I've spent tweaking lighting and shadows on foliage look crap if you set the "sun" low in the sky. Because of this I'm suspending work on this tutorial series, I don't want to send people down a road that's just going to dead end on them before they get to the finish line.

And to be completely honest, I've sort of had a gutful (at least for now) of UDK kicking and screaming the whole way and throwing up road block after road block after road block. Seriously epic, the whole point of a game engine is to shorten the journey of making a game not obstruct it. I'll keep an eye on new releases when they come out, but until epic get their natural environment systems sorted I don't see the point in working till midnight every night trying to "trick" UDK into doing what it *should* already do easily.

[online|offworld]

Hey everyone,

Can't seem to walk away from this project

(doesn't seem right not finishing something I've put this much work into, and people keep asking me to release the tutorials).

The last remaining problem that I can't seem to solve is finding a way to make the light building completely ignore the grass. That means that at the moment the more grass you have in your scene, the longer the light building takes. So that's a bit of a nuisance, but apart from that it's pretty much working the way I want it to now (I've resolved the day/night lighting issues I mentioned in the previous post).

Anyways, it's at a point where I'm happy to release it so I'll do a bunch of last minute checks this weekend and see if I can't get it up on my site in time for the festive season (ho ho ho).

[SirCalalot]

That's great news!
I've been following your anguish in this thread for a while now and can't wait to see the results

[online|offworld]

Hi Everyone,

I've created a test level from my grass workflow and have uploaded it to my website because I have some concerns about how well the technique will run on some computers. If you don't mind the hefty download (270MB) I'd love it if some people could give it a whirl and let me (and everyone else here) know how it goes on your machine.

You can find the installer at:
http://www.showmethatagain.com/2011/...o-grass-level/

Also, if anyone can offer me any tips or links about how to reduce the gargantuan size of the installer with next to nothing in it, that would be awesome

[online|offworld]

lol, 3dmotive just released their grass tute... I think this project may be cursed
Still be interesting to get peoples feedback on the demo level I suppose...

[SirCalalot]

Thanks dude!
I'll be sure to check it out when I have a decent connection at home