UDK environment HELP!

[Iciban]

Hi, I'm new to this forum. This is an environment I've been working on, but I ran into something that I can't seem to fix.
For some reason, some of my mesh, especially the roof is darker than the other ones. I dont' know whats causing this. I made a new set of uvs in unreal using the "generate uvs" and i still get nothing. I reset my normals, inverse them in XSI and still got nothing. My mentor told me to just hard edge everything and its still giving me this werid problem.
I've been pulling my hair on this problem. I've spend endless hrs on a lot of forums and I tired everything and I still got nothing. All my friends never ran into this problem. So i'm the only one. I really need your help. I'm literally going to go insane.
Hope you guys can help me out.

pink to the pic is below
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/6871/environment.jpg
http://img413.imageshack.us/img413/8195/environment1.jpg
http://img8.imageshack.us/img8/8131/environment2.jpg

Big thanks

- Angus

[Kel Solaar]

Hi Angus,

I fixed your images links, I'm not a UDK user, so it's hard to guess, I think you checked for overlapping polygons ? Did you tried opening your level on another computer ?

KS

[Iciban]

Oh, thanks so much for fixing the link.
ya, i made a new set of uvs so its not overlapping anymore. And i double checked if i'm using it. I tired using other computers and still the same thing. =S

[Kel Solaar]

Would you mind sharing the object ? Maybe someone can have a look and find what's wrong ?

KS

[piek]

Just double checking, have you got 2 sets of UVs - one for the diffuse/normals and one for the light mapping?

[Iciban]

Here,s the obj. and UDK file for one of my roof set.
http://www.mediafire.com/?j9h7coj31irp1mh
http://www.mediafire.com/?7trojj2j5w7v595

@piek - ya, i made another set of uvs in unreal.

hope u guys can help me out.

[Kel Solaar]

Angus : Your link is not working :)

KS

[Iciban]

Thanks for letting me know. I just fixed the link. Let me know if there's any other problems

[Kel Solaar]

Hey Angus,

I took a look at your obj, I exploded the mesh checking for coplanar faces and stuff like that but it's clean. My Checking Tools and Maya cleanup tool says the same. However I noticed that the normals are set / locked very strangely, I don't know if it's that but it's weird anyway :)

Here is a screen capture to illustrate it and the obj unlocked and reexported.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8jkjkh3i22utq8b
http://www.mediafire.com/?3og2azndhxe3972

Cheers,

KS

[piek]

Hey, I imported your OBJ into Max and found, like Kel, that one of your meshes, "roof_B20", is flipped. Looks like a mirrored mesh that didn't have it's transform reset - not sure what it is in XSI, but in Max it's called "reset Xform". Anyhoo, I fixed that mesh and re-exported it, plonked it into UDK and compiled with a Skylight - works okay. I opened your ASE in UDK to double check, and B20 is flipped. Have a look at that mesh in XSI again, you might have missed something.

[Iciban]

Hey, thanks for the help guys, but it just got worse effect than before.
Am i missing something? I used the file Kel gave me. And I imported into XSI and back exported to UDK. I hardedged everything too before i export it out.
I also froze everything. Do you mean freezing the translations? I froze everything and still got that. any ideas? should I just use maya for exporting the mesh?

Do you mind showing me a vid of how you put it in?

http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/7290/roofx.jpg
http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/7455/roof1.jpg

Thanks so much for helping a fellow artist out.
Big thanks

- Angus

[Intervain]

Hmm...It looks like either a normals problem or a uv issue...
I downloaded Kel's obj and opened it in XSI and one of the pieces had the normals inverted, perhaps that's the problem..
If not it may also be that one of the channels on the normal map itself gets inverted - are there any compression settings when importing the map into UDK?

[piek]

It's a bit tricky for us to know which static meshes are being used in the map :D. I guess there are two issues. Can you specify the names of the two meshes?

In Max, 'freeze' means something else, so that threw me, but yes, I think it's the same thing. So this is the first ASE, that you provided, in the Static Mesh viewer. Are you still seeing anything like the highlighted mesh? Or are the meshes correct now like the ones on the left of the pic?

Also, normal maps do have their own compression settings when importing materials.

Can you send us the 2 problem static meshes as OBJs and their normal map/maps?

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o17/Piekske/Misc/Udk.jpg

[Iciban]

I'm using the same material for couple of the roofs. Some of them are fine and some of the aren't. It's just on some of them. How do you check for the compression settings? If i exported in XSI without unlocking normals in maya...everything looks fine, except that one piece.

Here's one of the texture maps I use for the roofs and also the mesh.

Roof_B1 - is the one thats just pitched dark
Roof_B2 - The one that looks fine, except the bottom, which is blk.

Textures
---------
http://www.mediafire.com/?9m5p3t6xb51650u
http://www.mediafire.com/?8vn3nsqobsh4hs4
http://www.mediafire.com/?s905wjctu55igzc

Mesh
------
Roof_B1 - http://www.mediafire.com/?56ewjwgkknc6do2
Roof_B2 - http://www.mediafire.com/?wbd9weheaxx0km6

[piek]

So, your meshes work for me. Here's a pic of what I did with corresponding notes below. You already know these steps but perhaps there's something that I've done that is slightly different. If not, then I think the problems are in the XSI part of the pipeline and I'm afraid I've never used that program:

[EDIT]

1. Imported your meshes, placed them near 0,0,0, snapped to the grid. Re-applied smoothing groups. Double checked mesh and pivot transforms. Made a second UV set for Lighmass. These UVs don't overlap and are contained within 0-1 UV space, so nothing outside and no tiling. Try doing this manually in XSI, instead of auto-generating them in UDK.

2. Export as an ASE, these are just the default settings.

3. Import the static mesh, note the 2 UV sets, your original UVs and the Lightmass ones.

4. Import textures. Compression for colour on left, and normals on right.

5. Super basic material.

6. Static meshes compiled with a skylight and a dominant light. The 2 on the left are B20 and on the right B21. You can see the colour bounce on the lower meshes, no black undersides.

[Iciban]

Hey, thanks Piek. I'm just wondering, did u hard-edge the mesh? Also what program are you using? You mind making a tutorial Video step by step? If its not much of a hassle. Working on new programs is such a pain. =S I'll probably use max or maya if your using those. XSI just hates me. For some reason, i'm the only person in my school that got this problem. All my other friends didn't come across this problem. talk about unlucky

[Iciban]

Also, where did you find the compression settings. Is it under the Material Editor? I can't seem to find it. What ver. are u using?

[piek]

Ha, I'm not really set up for making video tutorials! As I understand it hard edges are XSI's equivilent of Max's (what I'm using) smoothing groups? I only did this for cosmetic effects, it has no bearing on your problems, in fact the mesh would still work if it was completely faceted. The only major change I made, compared to your original ASE upload, was making a proper 2nd UV set...did you try this?

The compression settings are in the dialog box that appears when you import a texture into the content browser.

[Iciban]

I'm having trouble making 2 UV sets in XSI. What program did you make 2 uvs sets in? Is it like unreal where you generate uvs? or you have to manually move them.

[piek]

I work in Max, but there's nothing there that XSI or Maya doesn't have. It's all the same tools, just different names. In regard to the second UVs, that's just good practice, you need them for good Lightmass results. I don't think it had anything to do with your mesh errors, but you should get used to making them.

It's clear that some of your Static Meshes have worked, it was just 2 that were problematic and that was mainly due to the fact that transforms weren't reset and so one appeared inside out - as shown in my Static Mesh Editor screenshot. I don't think you're unlucky or doing anything necessarily wrong, it's just that when you export to a game engine you have to be very pedantic. Unfortunately I can't help you with 'XSI best practices', but if it's the tool you use at school then the tutors should be able to point you in the right direction. All I can say is that I took your meshes, went through the basic export preparations and they worked in-game.

[Iciban]

Piek, do you mind putting the tutorial pic again? I made another set of UVS and imported back in and i still got the same thing. I tried importing it in a new scene and everything is fine. =S maybe its the scene? well ima try making a new scene and reimport everything.

[piek]

Ha ha, that's typical! I'd just accept it and move on to the new scene. I hope you notice some improvement in the lighting calculations, now that you've got your lightmap UV sets. You can edit the amount of light and colour bounce in World Properties (I thinks it's there, I'm not at work). I've put the pic back, I'll leave it there for a bit so that you can save it off. All the best!

[Iciban]

I was wondering, for the compression settings. Did you apply to all 3 textures? diffuse, spec and normals? or u only applied that to normals?

[piek]

I used TC_Default for the diffuse and Spec (although I guess TC_Grayscale will also work) and TC_Normalmap for the normals. For my own stuff, I use TC_NormalmapAlpha because I use the alpha channel to store a map for parallax/height displacement.

I only use the UDK for fun, to learn another company's approach to engine design. Everything that I've learnt has been at the UDN and it's documentation section. Here's the compression info:

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TextureProperties.html

[Iciban]

hey, i came across the same problem. The only way I can fix this is export that part of the roof by itself.
Could you import it and let me know if you get the same problem? Even in a new scene it acts weird.

http://www.mediafire.com/?v08e9lssee98nay

[Iciban]

here's the obj. file.

http://www.mediafire.com/?l29se2ohhho5mfz

[piek]

So that second object file has 5/6 meshes, each look exactly the same but are in random positions and rotations. One of the meshes, on import, is still flipped/inside out.

I don't really understand your setup or what you're attempting to export. The meshes have suffixes like "_237", are these all for the game? Sorry if I've got the wrong idea, but it seems like you're exporting all of these? If that's the case then your workflow is not efficient, or modular, which is more of an issue than lighing/normal issues. Double check what you're doing with your tutor.

Also, Mediafire is a malware nightmare.

[Iciban]

Thanks Piek for the help. What sharing website do u recommend then? I already made my environment using the modular formula. Its just much faster if I export it all together since i already have it where i wanted it. Suddenly, yesturday when i export the stuff out. The blk shadows was gone. Sooo weird! when was getting all happy and stuff. I tried building my lights and something went wrong again sadly. Before I build my lights, my scene was perfect. You can't see the seams. All the shadows were fine, but whenever i press the "build lights" my scene would go crazy. Some of the mesh would go darker than the others. And some would have some triangles on them. When I build my lights, I pressed "colour error" and a lot of my stuff was orange. No idea how to fix it tho. checked on some threads, but no help.
Here's some pics of before and after.

Before:
http://img151.imageshack.us/f/nobuild.jpg/
http://img404.imageshack.us/f/nobuild2.jpg/

After with build:
http://img6.imageshack.us/f/buildlight1.jpg/
http://img338.imageshack.us/f/buildlight.jpg/
http://img837.imageshack.us/i/buildlight2.jpg/

Colour error:
http://img248.imageshack.us/f/colourerror.jpg/
http://img703.imageshack.us/f/colourerror2.jpg/

Thanks again guys for taking ur time to help me out

[Iciban]

Also when i press the "build" and check off "lightmass". I get something worse
http://img192.imageshack.us/f/buildi.jpg/
http://img842.imageshack.us/i/build2j.jpg/

[piek]

Other than sending me the actually project .pak file I'm not sure what else to suggest. Like you, I'm also learning this stuff but I've never had your issues. Have you posted on the UDK forums?

http://udk.com/ And click on 'Community'.

That would be my first port of call.

[Iciban]

ya, i just posted on UDK. I'll also post here again. For some reason...it was working perfectly whenver i press build, but after 2 hrs later. I get back the weird shadow problem. whenever I press build. I get this weird shadow problem. Whenever I "build Lighting" Some of my bricks are darker than the others. Also everything is much darker than before. When I pressed "build Lighting" I also checked off "Lightmass". I don't know what cases this. I looked around on the forums and i came out with nothing. could anyone help me out? The only thing that bother me the most is the bricks. Some are lighter than the others.
Also anyone know how to hook up a height map?
Feel free to critique my lighting/fog. Thanks.

No build
http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/6237/nobuild3.jpg
Build
http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/4521/build3.jpg

no build
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/8752/nobuild1.jpg
Build
http://img688.imageshack.us/img688/8666/build2.jpg

no build
http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/3756/nobuild2.jpg
build
http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/6034/build1eb.jpg

[Iciban]

i finally finished my demo reel and just wanted to drop by and say thanks so much for helping me along the way. It really means a lot from you guys.
Anyways here's a link to me demo reel. enjoy
Feel free to critique

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaqYoF_0rFY