Cave Systems

[vipar]

How would one create good cave systems in the UDK?

I am pretty new on the subject, so I would know very little about this.
It has to look like natural caves, of course.

Any tips/tricks or something you can recommend or show results of these?

[jlhill17]

You'll have to create them as static meshes since UDK's landscape can't do caves. Just use the visibility tool in the landscape toolbox to "hide" the portion of the landscape where you want your cave opening and put your mesh there. Cover up any leftover gaps with other static meshes.

[Ashkandi]

Or just simply make random half-rocks (so no backside of 'em) and build up the cave from those?

[vipar]

Hmm yeah, after I asked this question I tried to search more on the subject. I saw a lot of people that used 3DSMAX, Maya or even Blender, to simply make static meshes of tunnels and stuff.

But how about the dynamic parts of it?
If it's a static Mesh, how would I go about, for example, destroying a wall? Would I simply leave a hole in the wall, and cover it with a mesh that can be destroyed, or what?

[jlhill17]

That's how I would do it.

[daem0nz]

When making cave system 3ds max is used pretty much all the time, but another good tool that will help give you realistic effects would be autodesk mudbox, give it a shot!

[vipar]

When making cave system 3ds max is used pretty much all the time, but another good tool that will help give you realistic effects would be autodesk mudbox, give it a shot!

Thanks for the tip

[Max Power]

I put this together a while back. It's more for quickly blocking out, and would require proper optimization
[shot]http://chrisholden.net/tutor/tut_cave001.jpg[/shot]

[jlhill17]

Looking good.