Imported mesh destroyed and lightning problems

[DSG]

Hey FrostByteGER can you help me with the Lightmap ? maybe you could send me a Private Message then we can talk in german so its a lot easier for me ^^

[FrostByteGER]

Nope, wont work. But it works now, had a few issues but its really simple, copy the uv-channel in blender and delete the texture.

Works fine in UDK.

Thanks for all the help. Already got new issues but thats another chapter!

[Ambersand]

Can't you just create the lightmap inside UDK?

[FrostByteGER]

Sooo we had the time to work on the project again and we fixed every problem except the lightmap problem.

It seems that the lightmap causes the extreme vertexcount. My friend used in blender the lightmap pack option. That kills the vertexcount.

So we made a uv-map for the texture, copied it, deleted the texture and saved it. However, the asteroid is black when I run lightmass and the lightmass calculation takes about 3 minutes.

Any suggestions how to create a good lightmap in Blender?

[mAlkAv!An]

lol why the scale? Changed it to 500 and it worked instantly, no loading times during the import.

UE3 default scale is 1UU=2CM. Using a much larger scale than this introduces decimal inaccuracies which means vertex positions of a high density mesh won't be stored correctly and therefore the model gets destroyed.

It works (almost) perfectly without a uv-map(however, the model has strange glossy lines on it maybe because of the missing uv-map and a material in blender)

That's fine. Models without UV coordinates usually look like this in unreal.

But when we apply a uv-map this is the result:

Well, at least its not that ****ed up Note the vertex count, it raised about 16K.

That UV map is still in need of improvement. Why don't you just make it one large UV island with as few seams as necessary?

[FrostByteGER]

+ every UV seam will increase the total vert count, blender won't count these.

It's just 85k verts in UDK because the mesh is getting destroyed, which is caused by the small scale btw.

lol why the scale? Changed it to 500 and it worked instantly, no loading times during the import.

We tested a few meshes with and without uv-map.

It works (almost) perfectly without a uv-map(however, the model has strange glossy lines on it maybe because of the missing uv-map and a material in blender)


But when we apply a uv-map this is the result:

Well, at least its not that ****ed up Note the vertex count, it raised about 16K.

[mAlkAv!An]

+ every UV seam will increase the total vert count, blender won't count these.

It's just 85k verts in UDK because the mesh is getting destroyed, which is caused by the small scale btw.

[smokey13]

every hard edge will increase the vert count, as asteroids don't really need any hard edges you can smooth shade it completely it wont increase the vert count at all.

--EDIT--

also the vert count in blender is accurate.

[FrostByteGER]

Ah guys, one more question regarding the vert count. It seems that the exporting of the mesh raises the vertex count. The mesh in Blender has about 24K verts and in UDK it has 85K.
My friend doesn't know how far he can go with the details if the vertex counter in blender is false!?

[FrostByteGER]

hm okay, we'll take a look.

Thanks for the help!

[CharlestonN]

You could also use Parallax or Tessellation to achieve this effect while keeping the poly count low but everyone is correct, this mesh could probably be more like 7-10K polys with a normal map baked from the 3d model and achieve the same look

[darthviper107]

You can tile textures so that it has a much higher amount of detail, even what you have there isn't detailed enough if you want to get close.

[smokey13]

you don't need to go really low poly or anything, have a mix of geometry and normal map to get a good looking asteroid, most of the detail of your asteroid can be done with a normal map, just don't go over UDK's vert limit

[FrostByteGER]

Mhh really? I mean, just a normal map isn't the best way. I dont' want just a ball. The player in game is a small spaceship and he can fly near the surface of the asteroid. So it needs a rocky surface and not a fake surface.

Any ideas to accomplish this with a low polycount AND still a rocky surface? And no, I cant just use a flat surface from UDK and edit it with the landscape brushes. It needs to be a real 3D asteroid.

[smokey13]

ok so you have 2 problems.

first problem your mesh is being destroyed because it has 85234 verts and UDK's limit is 53535 (I think) or very close to that, although with a decent normal map you shouldn't need anywhere near that many verts.

your second problem (the shadows) is a lightmap problem (2nd UV), for quickness you can try the "generating unique UV's" option to add the lightmap, it doesn't give the best results but might work.

hope that helps