how to make custom static meshes look profesonal

[michael1003]

I need to figure out how to make my custom static meshes look like ones that shiped with unreal. The meshes look great but hoe did unreall make the skins for theres thanks for any help. working on a remake of the facility from goldeneye

[ffejnosliw]

Epic has talented artists who have been practicing fr a long time. It's not something anyone can just pop on a forum and enlighten you with. There's no magic secret. If you want to try to make assets that rival Epic's, you nee to spend time practicing and hope you are talented enough.

[Death Dream]

Epic has talented artists who have been practicing fr a long time. It's not something anyone can just pop on a forum and enlighten you with. There's no magic secret. If you want to try to make assets that rival Epic's, you nee to spend time practicing and hope you are talented enough.

Exactly. There is no wrong or right way when it really comes down to moddeling in my opinion. What matters is how you get there. Go to 3dbuzz.com or digital tutors for some good free tutorials for your modeling program of choice.

~Death Dream~

[michael1003]

ok let me ask this what i was wondering is i can do the modeling its when it comes to adding the texture in unreal that gets me all messed up. Are there meshes skined or how did they do it?

[ffejnosliw]

They have texture artists who paint the textures in programs like Photoshop. The a snapshot of the UV layout is exported from the modeling program and used as a basis to paint a texture (or set of textures). There are also programs like BodyPaint3D that allow you to do some painting directly on the model itself.

[Green_Day_584]

also, Zbrush (if you have the money ) can be a great investment. iv found it and the Zmapper plugin can bring a mesh to life... also, it also allows PolyPainting as ffej pointed out BodyPaint3D does

[michael1003]

Thank you so much i was wondering how they made the texture for them one more question. How do i export the uv layout from maya?

[ffejnosliw]

That's done from the UV Editor's menu I believe. I don't have Maya on this PC so I can't tell you the exact option. It's probably called snapshot or something similar.

Edit: I found one site that shows it being available from the UV Texture Editor -> Polygons Menu -> UV Snapshot. I don't know what version of Maya that is for, but somewhere in the UV Texture Editor you should find UV Snapshot.

[michael1003]

Great thanks now to get painting. been driving me nuts trying to use hyper shading then using unreals textures to get something half way decent.

[karmatized]

the secret to epics madness is really simple actually though it takes time. MAke your models at a extremly high resolution. Texture them then use the nvidia normal mapping programs to make the normal maps from the model rather then the texture..


Now its all about downscaling. Downscale the polys on the high res model till it falls to about 6k range. downscale normal maps and textures till there between 1024x1024 or 2048x2048.

The secret is there making things in a much higher resolution then used in game, well i shouldnt even say epic really since epic is outsourcing static meshs from china for cheap labor. Though the chinese influence is apparent.

[ffejnosliw]

the secret to epics madness is really simple actually though it takes time. MAke your models at a extremly high resolution. Texture them then use the nvidia normal mapping programs to make the normal maps from the model rather then the texture..


Now its all about downscaling. Downscale the polys on the high res model till it falls to about 6k range. downscale normal maps and textures till there between 1024x1024 or 2048x2048.

The secret is there making things in a much higher resolution then used in game, well i shouldnt even say epic really since epic is outsourcing static meshs from china for cheap labor. Though the chinese influence is apparent.

I think you're oversimplifying things just a tad there. Anyone can make super high poly meshes and super high res textures. The trick is making them look good. According to your theory, I could easily make meshes that compare to Epic's just by making everything really high res. The fact is it is just not that easy.

The secret is not making everything at a higher res than what is used in game. The secret is that Epic has amazing artists working for them.

[apophis3d]

You need to first unwrap the mesh in maya. I use a plugin for Maya which speeds up my unwrap time by oh light years. Meshes that use to take all day to unwrap now take a few hours or less. The plugin is called RoadKill Unwrapped just Google it and you will find it. After you use RoadKill to unwrap a mesh. You click on the window tab then UV Texture editor and then export the UV snap shot. Just be sure to export the snapshot at a high enough res UT3 meshes range for 1024x1024 for smaller meshes up to 2048x2048.

Wish I could layout every step but I would have to write a freaking novel. The RoadKill program comes with a manual that walks you though its process of unwrapping which is way simpler than doing it by hand in maya. For more on unwrapping check out Highend3d.com

[Green_Day_584]

ffej is right. i mean, anybody could just make a box and paint it grey, but Epic's artists go to a great length.

i mean, look @ how long it took to make the game. i understand a lot of that time would have been making / setting up the engine and other script, but the artists could have spent anything from 12 to 18 months, or even longer making that content .

really, spending time on your meshes and not worrying about when your map gets released, etc is teh best thing to do .

[michael1003]

thanks for all the replys. If any one has any more tips on how to do it let me know this gives me a great start. I had no idea how to add teh colors and texures after making my meshes.

[karmatized]

umm beyond modeling all we can say is photoshop and some imagination.