crimson's thread of questions

[crimson.cosmos]

Hey!

I thought I was over this, but it seems I may have spoken too soon.

Say you have a static mesh of a room without the floor and ceiling. The walls are 3d meshes themselves, not planes. Then you have another 3d mesh that fits perfectly between the walls for the top and bottom.

Say you place a point light outside of this construction. It it expected for it to shine inside? Even if the ceiling and the floor are larger than the walls, the light still gets in. Even if the above are intersecting the geometry of the walls, it still gets in.

Am I missing something here?

Cheers!

cc

[crimson.cosmos]

This sure feels like a monologue... :P

Any takers on the cloth Physical Asset question (post #15)?
Any takers on the static (blasted) light question (post #16)?

Thank you!

cc

[Jack Ryan]

In answer to your physical asset question, I could explain it to you but I'd probably mess it up, and there's no point even attempting it when there's a perfectly good video out there:

http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/sv_showvideo.php?v=3830

Hope that's what you were looking for. It works awesome:

Cloth Image 1

Cloth Image 2

[crimson.cosmos]

Thank you for getting back to me, Ryan!

I do know of the 3dBuzz tutorial. I did create the cloth and all that, but when I build the level I get a warning:

"SkeletalMeshActor casts shadow but has no PhysicalAsset assigned. The shadow will be low res and inefficient."

3dBuzz does cover creating a Physical Asset in the video just before the cloth one, but it is for a mesh with lots of bones. The cloth only has two.

And no where does it say if it should be exported from the 3d application with a collision model.

cc

[crimson.cosmos]

Hey!

A quick question for you. How does one go about setting up a "secret door" so the lighting doesn't give it away?

I've got a room - a static mesh - and a door - an interp actor. I've got a point light with the default settings, except for "Dynamic" under Lighting Channels under Light Component.

The interp actor is at default, with the exception of the collision type (block all), cast shadows ticked off (under collision -> lighting) and cast shadows ticked off under DynamicLightEnvironmentComponent.

Problem is that there seems to still be a difference in lighting (the door is darker), which kind of defeats the purpose.

Any ideas are appreciated!

cc

[crimson.cosmos]

Hello!

Question of the day:

I have a material, with a parameter for turning on a flicker effect. I also have a material instance constant that I have applied to my neon mesh.

Now, if I place two neons in the level, is there a way to trigger the flicker effect on one, but not the other? Of course, this is just an illustrative example - I couldn't go about making 30 material instance constants if I had 30 different neons that needed to be lit, say, a second apart.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated!

cc

[crimson.cosmos]

Hey!

This one is quite important and I hope I can get it to work; so, pretty please with sugar on top - any ideas?

Cheers!

cc

[crimson.cosmos]

Hey!

I'm sort of halfway there.

I managed to fix the static meshes by using three different material instance constants (on, off and flickering). Basically, they all start off, then I change the material on the first one to flickering, then change it to on, then I repeat for the next neon in sequence.

The problem is that I can't use SetMaterial to change the light function during the game. I tried with SetProperty "SourceMaterial", but that doesn't work. Also tried with GetProperty "Function", taking the "Object" output and putting it into a SetProperty "SourceMaterial", but that doesn't work either.

Is there any way to change the light function during the game? Barring that, is there any other way to take a large number of neons through: off -> flicker -> on with a few seconds delay between each one?

Thank you!

cc

[Max Power]

You should be able to Setup parameters inside the material to activate/deactivate flicker and control brightness of the light. Then use matinee to setup float parameter tracks to turn on the light, then turn off the flickering. I've done some experimenting with these, but have yet to use it extensively in practice.

[crimson.cosmos]

Thanks for getting back to me Chris!

The problem with that approach is that (as far as I know), when you change a material instance, all the meshes with that instance are updated. So, for example, if I have the mic_neonFlicker applied to two neons, with the "ON" parameter set to "0", then as soon as I put change it to "1", both neons will begin to flicker.

Any other ideas?

Much obliged!

cc

[Max Power]

You have plan for it. Hide things that shouldn't activate, switch mats on things already active, and/or make custom instances.

[crimson.cosmos]

You have plan for it. Hide things that shouldn't activate, switch mats on things already active, and/or make custom instances.

Uh... I'm not sure I follow entirely.

Actually, this does give me an idea. I could create two lights, one with the "flickering" function, the other with the "on" function. Start with both of them off, turn on the flicker one, then, after an interval, turn the flicker one off and turn the "on" one on.

This way I don't have to change the function at runtime.

I'm not sure this is what you meant, but thank you, nevertheless!

cc

[crimson.cosmos]

Hey!

Is there a way to create a random oscillation in the Material Editor?

I have seven cubical objects, between 144 and 256 units, adjacent to one another. They have an oscillating material applied, but I'd like to make it so they don't all do it at the same time.

I tried using "Object World Position", masked, combined with a Sine, but failed to obtain any sort of variation.

Any and all ideas are greatly appreciated!

cc

[crimson.cosmos]

Hey!

Can UDK do on-screen effects i.e. attach a material to the camera?

Here's a link to the Rage website. You can see what I'm talking about in both gameplay trailers. The first one has water running down the screen at some point and the second one has a gooey green thing.

I'm thinking PostProcess Materials, but I'm not sure if they could achieve the same effect?

Also, any ideas on my previous entry are greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

cc

[crimson.cosmos]

Hey folks!

Is there any way to get rid of these:



I mean the floating things that follow me around in first person.

Cheers!

cc