Sneak Preview

[DieHard SCWS]

This texture will not be used, but a part from it will be used in the package i am working on. You may recognise it, but i aint gonna tell yet


[img]http://www.celticwarriors.net/website/S3TCMedia/Sneak_Preview2.jpg[/img]


Its just an example what can be made now

[StalwartUK]

...

[Turboman.]

nice shot DieHard!

i might as well show off some other things that were impossible to do before but are possible with s3tc textures.

[url]http://intranet.connectics.nl/Turbo/Shared%20Documents/Unreal/s3tcground.jpg[/url]

this shot demonstrates smooth high poly terrain (900 in view, entire terrain geometry about 1500+ poly's) running at a smooth 100fps on my crappy 600mhz pentium2.

it might not look like anything to do with s3tc textures but it is, the entire ground texture is actually one huge pre-baked 4096x4096 texture that serves also as light/shadow map, resulting in smooth shadows impossible to do with lightmaps and it still preserves decent ground detail from up close (which can be improved more by using multiple s3tc textures for the entire ground).

this could mean we can have terrain with (almost) unreal2 quality detail with much less fps loss

[StalwartUK]

http://intranet.connectics.nl/Turbo/Shared%20Documents/Unreal/s3tcground.jpg

How the heck did you do that? How bout an editor shot or two so we can see how you did it.

Anyway does this have something to do with Firestorm?

[DieHard SCWS]

The answer i asume is plain and simple, its a wall with that rendered picture added to a map.
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[Turboman.]

nope Stalwart, this is not related to firestorm in any way, i'm aiming at retro unreal1 graphics in firestorm, not next gen
its not a picture either, its pure rendered landscape

editor shot http://intranet.connectics.nl/Turbo/Shared%20Documents/Unreal/s3tcgroundeditor.jpg

sample map http://intranet.connectics.nl/Turbo/Shared%20Documents/Unreal/files/Maps/desertedtest.zip

its just a quick example of the advantages of using pre-baked s3tc textures instead of lightmaps generated by the editor, mainly visually and performance wise its lightyears ahead, though this doesnt show the full potential since everything was just randomly generated and quickly exported, and to keep rendering time under 15 minutes the resolution of the texture map is quite low (using multiple 4096x4096 images would create even more sharper results).

[Xavious]

But wouldnt it take months to make the image with the shadows and all, and then have to sit there moving all the vertices into place so that they match up with the shadows?

[Turboman.]

no the entire terrain was generated in 3dsmax, and the texture was baked in there (stores the shadow data as a texture)

then i imported the scene into unrealed including the shadow texture, entire process takes less then 5 minutes (not including 30 minutes of rendering)

[DieHard SCWS]

Once you have setup a scene in a 3D programm it goes pretty fast.

That also aplied to the SkyCities i made earlyer, they were done in Bryce 3D.


The textures i am working on now are drawn for a big part by hand, that consumes alotta time, not sure but prob some 6 to 8 hours a texture.


But the textures i am working now are about 95% accurate, i am getting better and better at it, but still eats tons of work and time.
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[Xavious]

Coolness...

Too much effort for me though...I'll just wait till the Unreal 3 Ed comes...

Hello 3 billion shader operations per second!

[TCP_Wolf]

Coolness...

Too much effort for me though...I'll just wait till the Unreal 3 Ed comes...

Hello 3 billion shader operations per second!

Also on a cheap-ass P-II?

[Xavious]

Well, no...I hope to be able to use the playstation 3 itself in those ways...It would only seem right that the PS3 should be linkable with the PC, and that the editor would come along with the PS3 version of the game. With 60 GB of space on each of the PS3 Blu-Ray disks, what else are they gonna fill it up with heh...

[Turboman.]

unreal on ps3? hopefully not

besides its gonna be alot harder then what i demonstrated, mapping (or even worse, coding) with a gamepad is going to be horrible i tell ya (considering i already spend like 5 minutes creating a 5 character name on a console)

[TCP_Wolf]

unreal on ps3? hopefully not

besides its gonna be alot harder then what i demonstrated, mapping (or even worse, coding) with a gamepad is going to be horrible i tell ya (considering i already spend like 5 minutes creating a 5 character name on a console)

LOL... hmm now how am I to type my 200000 lines of code there hahaha

[Buster]

Coolness...

Too much effort for me though...I'll just wait till the Unreal 3 Ed comes...

Hello 3 billion shader operations per second!

The Unreal 3 Editor ?? ... Unreal 225 etc is UEd 1 - UT is the "Unreal Warfare" UEd 2 - UT2003 and UT2004 is UEd 3 ... and coming soon !! UT2007 should be UEd 4.0 ... or something like that  :P It's all SOOO confusing.

[StalwartUK]

The Unreal 3 Editor ?? ... Unreal 225 etc is UEd 1 - UT is the "Unreal Warfare" UEd 2 - UT2003 and UT2004 is UEd 3 ... and coming soon !! UT2007 should be UEd 4.0 ... or something like that It's all SOOO confusing.

You don't have a clue.

UnrealEd 0 = Early pre-release version.
UnrealEd 1 = U & UT up to v420.
UnrealEd 2 = UT v420 and up.
UnrealEd 3 = U2, UT2003, UT2004.
UnrealEd 4 = GoW & UT2007?

Anyway the term "Unreal Warfare" was commonly used to refer to Unreal Engine 2, it was also used to refer to a specific game using that engine.

Also the term "Unreal 3 Engine" is used to refer to Unreal Engine 3, this is due to confusion and probably not helped by Epic's april fools "Unreal III" this year.

There are no plans for an Unreal 3 at present.

[Buster]

Hey, thanks for the info !! I don't have a clue, you're right about that - LoL. Like I said ... it's all SOOO confusing !! But I'm willing to learn as much as I can.
If I was digging a ditch - I'd want to learn about every type of shovel that was made. It's how one grows and betters themselves. Again, thanks !!

[Smirftsch]

i was pointed to this topic and i saw something i didnt before. The testmap for the desert. I never thought it would be possible to create a map like that for Unreal - well ok i thought i might be possible but no idea how to create them. Turboman, could u make some kind of howto how you did it exactly ? I mean a detailed explanantion so that other mappers could use this technique too ? I once did the mistake not to write something down, now its lost and i'm still sad i didnt. If i would have written down and put it up here (lazy b*i*t*c*h i am sometimes it seems)...could u do that ?

[DieHard SCWS]

Besides telling Smirftsch about that map I also told him i did not have had the time to give a reply on the desertmap.


And yes, it is actually an awsome testmap you made there, having a virtual seemless desert I knew that people do make meshes for Unreal or UT in programms like 3D Studio and Maya, but i didn't know it was possible to hide the polygones at a quality you did.


I do have 3D studio myself, and i def want to give that a shot also


A while back Pitbull showed me one of his maps with a seemsless pipe(great work btw:) ), i think he def will be interested too in how that desert is made
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[Evil_Smoker_187]

HELLO PEOPLE !!!!!!!!
I LOVE S3TC TEXTURES !!!!!
THEY LOOK VERY VERY NICE ON MY
RADEON 9800 XT 256 MB

[Turboman.]

turn off the caps lock dude.

anyway you're right smirftsch, i should probably write a tutorial about how to do it, i'll probably try to do that in the next two weeks.

any good place to upload it to though? since i dont think everyone actually reads the high res thread for that

[Buster]

Could a simpler way to do it (for a dumb asp like me without a fancy prog and know how to use one) do it with TerraEdit?

Build a slightly hilly terrain, smooth it out lots ... scale it out some more ... add some "sand" textures - and collision hull the area out ... set up the skybox the same way with "zone" lower to the ground to give effect of "off in the horizon."

Hmm ... i love these forums !! Helps the creativity lots.

[Xavious]

Um, well, that still makes many visible edges in the 'sand,' where the shadow and light lines are visible... Using a pre-rendered texture, set to 'unlit' there are no such 'light lines'

[Buster]

Or maybe setting up the light sources over top the crests to mask the lines ... or if ya smoothed it enough. I've got MilkShape3d - I think it's got a plug-in for "red brushes." I know it's got a great gray-scale height map generator !!

[DieHard SCWS]

HELLO PEOPLE !!!!!!!!
I LOVE S3TC TEXTURES  :D !!!!!  
THEY LOOK VERY VERY NICE ON MY  
RADEON 9800 XT 256 MB  8)  

Hey Evil you found the S3TC stuff i see


Buster it indeed is about the fact it can be done seemless, so for the moment stick to 3D Studio. With some hickups (it wanted explorer 6 and SP 3 for win2000) i reinstalled my 3D Studio 6 finally, together with a few other 3D programms.


The tutorial itself, don't worry, ill make a page on my website for sure, if possible add some high quality step by step pictures to the story.
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