UnrealEd questions

I'm using Unreal ED from UT3 now.

I'm trying to make a really huge outdoor place with a skybox, I added the skybox and I made a plane with a liquid material for the water, but this "mirrors" effect happens when I test it...



Any insight on how to properly make a big outdoor watery place?

[Parkar]

Only thing you can do is tweak the material to do less distortion. Seems like you can't really have distortion without grabbing stuff in front of the water. I would suggest just lowering the amount of distortion so it's less obvious. My brother ran into the same issue on a map he is working on for our mod and that's the only thing we found that helped.

I changed the type of material and it seems you can use some and some you can't...I didn't have time to figure that one out so I just used another type of water...

Thanks Parkar!

I'd like this thread to be renamed into "UnrealEd questions"

How do I flip a static mesh? I mean, I know you can rotate them, but the texture will be wrong and pipes won't fit eachother if the texture isn't flipped properly, how do I do this?.

[Parkar]

Set the scale along the axis you want to mirror along to a negative value.

Thanks man!

Thanks for any moderator that changed the title!

I have this strange problem that the walls seem to make a funny shadow, but it's not separated it's a single sheet with no split parts:

(And no, I don't have two platforms above )

[Mr.Fibbles]

Based on UT2K4. . . sky box with sun light. I have seen that type of thing before.

[Parkar]

My guess is that the editor put a cut there when you rebuilt the map. Try increasing the resolution of the light map. Not sure if that will do any good though since it doesn't look like a simple light bleed. A bit hard to tell waht is going on and what you expect the shadow to look like. The lighting looks broken over all to me, maybe you could give a few hints as to how it's supposed to be lit.


I don't think it's related to a sun light but if you have one try changing the angle and see what happens.

It's suppossed to look like one wall lit by sunlight I guess... Now it's happening inside of that building in one of the walls...I guess I'm missing something about building geometry...

I'd like to make a blast door for a bunker, but should I make it out of meshes or BSP? can bsp even have a mover?

[Parkar]

Only works with meshes. If you ever wonder if you should use a mesh or a brush, use a mesh. I don't think there is a single situation where bsp is better from a performance perspective.

Thanks for your response Parkar!

Right now I'm making a door that opens with a switch and turns on a light at the same time, the only problem is that the first time It's opened, it needs the user to press "E" twice, but after that it works flawlessly, why could that be?

[Parkar]

Sounds like some kind of state miss match. Like say the door is in the state it's going to go to when you press the button so the first press don't seem to do anything. Thats just a random guess though since I have yet to make more then a few test movers in ut3.

The Matinee sequence is "open" position , then "closed" position and then reverse. I made a mistake and told you that it opens, that's not true, I made it so that it closes when you press the switch. But I don't think it's wrongly placed...I mean in the editor it's in it's open position and the first keyframe of animation is in that same position as well.

Well I'll have to leave that for later.

Do you happen to know how to spawn a redeemer missile? I use Spawn Projectile, set up coordinates (nothing more) and it just won't spawn anything, not even other projectiles.
The missile is being activated by a trigger set to "used".

I finally managed to spawn using "Dummy fire". It works very well.

Now I only need to know how to make a movable mesh "touch" a triggervolume. I can only make it work by entering with the player, but when the moving staticmesh enters in it, it doesn't trigger anything.

[jimbob]

man, just started using UE3, and man do i have a hard time to get going. is there a way to set the build type to classic UE? or, how do i manipulate the build brush like in the old versions, i thought it was holding CTRL, and moving the mouse.

[Parkar]

Old controls works just like they did. You can disable the gizmos if you thing they are in the way. I just "do it" so couldn't tell you exactly what key does what. I think just using your left and right mouse button you are moving around and then ctrl allows you to move stuff instead of the camera. Anyway it works just like the older editors unless you fiddle with the settings.

[jimbob]

strange, for some reason i am completely unable to change the builder brush. i`ll mess around with it some more and see if i can get it to work

[Parkar]

Originally Posted by jimbob

strange, for some reason i am completely unable to change the builder brush. i`ll mess around with it some more and see if i can get it to work

Started up the editor to confirm the controls. mouse button plus moving the mouse moves the camera.

left click selects objects

ctrl + left mouse button moves the selected object.

ctrl + right mouse button rotates the object.

To edit vertices you have to hit the geometry mode button up on the left side by the camera. Then change the mode to vertex in the little tool window that shows up. manipulating vertices works just like moving the objects.

Another thing to check is that anti aliasing is off. selecting objects don't work when it's on in ued 2 and 3. Might be the same in in ued 4.

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by Parkar

Started up the editor to confirm the controls. mouse button plus moving the mouse moves the camera.

left click selects objects

ctrl + left mouse button moves the selected object.

ctrl + right mouse button rotates the object.

To edit vertices you have to hit the geometry mode button up on the left side by the camera. Then change the mode to vertex in the little tool window that shows up. manipulating vertices works just like moving the objects.

Another thing to check is that anti aliasing is off. selecting objects don't work when it's on in ued 2 and 3. Might be the same in in ued 4.

yeah, but with old UE, you could hold CTRL and move the mouse forward to change the brush along that axis, and sideways for that axis, you can set this in UE3, but it works just the other way around aparently and aint nearly as precise as in old UE, it does not snap to the grip properly.

but i gues just moving vertices works for now.

[peoplessi]

I have not had any problems with snapping, it works as intended. You can always tweak the gridsize to get the desired effect.

[Parkar]

Originally Posted by jimbob

yeah, but with old UE, you could hold CTRL and move the mouse forward to change the brush along that axis, and sideways for that axis, you can set this in UE3, but it works just the other way around aparently and aint nearly as precise as in old UE, it does not snap to the grip properly.

but i gues just moving vertices works for now.

Sounds like there is something wrong with your configuration. It works just fine here. ctrl + mouse button + move mouse forward when you have the brush selected moves the brush forward and snapping to the grid.

I would try to figure out what is going on rather then use the vertex tool for moving stuff since your pivot points will all be in the center of the map and that would be highly annoying. Besides if you can't move static meshes or actors the vertex tool won't help anyway.

Does moving the brush using the gizmo(the three arrows) work?

Have you tried placing a static mesh and see if moving that works the way it should?

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by Parkar

Sounds like there is something wrong with your configuration. It works just fine here. ctrl + mouse button + move mouse forward when you have the brush selected moves the brush forward and snapping to the grid.

thats the thing, it should not move, but change the size of the brush. along the axis wich i move the mouse. i can move it, rotate it and resize the brush by punching in numbers, but i dont want to build levels by punching numbers but by changing the size til it looks right to me.

[edit] ok so i placed a Static mesh in my environment, and i noticed that i am used to holding shift to move the object, now it just rotates, or moves it wich ever it feels like doing. and holding CTRL i used to change the size of it.

[Parkar]

Originally Posted by jimbob

thats the thing, it should not move, but change the size of the brush. along the axis wich i move the mouse. i can move it, rotate it and resize the brush by punching in numbers, but i dont want to build levels by punching numbers but by changing the size til it looks right to me.

[edit] ok so i placed a Static mesh in my environment, and i noticed that i am used to holding shift to move the object, now it just rotates, or moves it wich ever it feels like doing. and holding CTRL i used to change the size of it.

OK, I never used to do that. Was that even possible with the default config? Do you mean you used the scaling tool to shape brushes in older versions? I have always used number punching + vertex mode since the scaling always ****** up grid alignment.

[jimbob]

Originally Posted by Parkar

OK, I never used to do that. Was that even possible with the default config? Do you mean you used the scaling tool to shape brushes in older versions? I have always used number punching + vertex mode since the scaling always ****** up grid alignment.

yeah, i gues so. there used to be a set of tools on the left side of the screen with rotate and size tools etc, but it seems to be gone. and the scaling was good in the older versions. with the size tool selected the RMB was used to change the size allong the axis'

i`ll have to see if i can get that tool thing back

[jimbob]

ok, new question. how do i make a skybox, and/or a sun light that emits light all over the level at once. i made a huge cube around my level, and set the material to skybox, but my directional light does nothing.

[Parkar]

You don't make skyboxes any more. Just build the sky around the level and turn of shadow casting on anything you don't want to cast a shadow.

Did you start with an additive (start with a huge void) or subtractive level (start with a huge solid cube)? For an outside level it's easiest to start with an additive level.

Edit:In fact you may always want to start with an additive level since subtractive is the exact same thing but with an additive brush added that covers the whole world and tends to slow down light map rendering unless your turn it off for the brush manually. You may as well add your own additive brush.

[jimbob]

yeah, figured that out already the hard way. in any case, i`m getting more familiar with the editor again and i`m building a mockup map to get the feeling of how stuff works.

progress is slow but steady.

are there any more mesh and texture packs besides those in the cookedpc maps?

and the game and editor seem to stutter every so ofter, completely locking the system and stuttering sound. some kind of memory leak perhaps? because i havent really built anything that should heat up the video card that much.

[8IronBob]

Wow, I'm trying to find myself getting into UT3 mapping shortly, and after seeing this, it really makes me wish that UT3 and/or UT2004's UnrealEd would be as easy as Source/Q3A mapping when it came to this. I really do. I mean, WorldCraft/Hammer's nice for doing WYSIWYG mapping for CS:S and such, but moving to the Unreal scene, I guess I'll have to relearn everything now. Looks a lot tougher in this engine. Of course, the Source engine, with the new additions, could let you carve into a big block, too, it'll probably cut down on leaks.

[8IronBob]

I was trying to follow the VTM for terrain creation. However, even tho I felt I did the steps right, the terrain mesh texture and layer doesn't seem to appear on rebuild. Wonder which step didn't register correctly here.