Udk Today (19/4/12)

Today In class I did many things. Firstly I created a to do list. Padraig wrote up all the things that were mandatory for our game. I took down all the things I had not got and made sure I would do them over the next few weeks. The first thing I had to do was create particle effects. I added a fire particle effect to my houses and duplicated it. I then resized the flame and rotated it to create a variety of fires. Next I had to create physics effects. First we watched a few tutorials and then we started to make them. I learned about K-Actors. These are meshes that can be shot and moved. I learned about cloth, I wanted to use this in my game. I created the cloth material an followed the steps in the game. A problem arose when UDK said it would have no shdow. I fixed this in the properties. Next I learned about soft bodies. This was a jelly like substance that can be used in my game. I did not add this in although I might use it for mud another day. Another thing I had to do was to create an intro scene. I watched the tutorials first and then started to make one. I wanted to make a scene that would show off the level and then zoom to the character. I first created a new matinee. Then I used the lock too tool to lock to the camera and postion it where I wanted it for the first frame. I created a new camera track in the matinee. I then created my sequence using key frames and moving the camera. Below is the code for the camera scene.

The last thing I done today was was create announcements. I was going to put my game in the exhibition so i created text announcements to tell the player what to do.

Logo

I finished my Logo for my 3d Game. I made it using vector graphics in photoshop. During the creation of this Logo I had to keep the design process in mind aswell as the 5 principles of logo design. They are: Simplicity, Versatility, Memorable, Timeless and Appropriate.

I created my logo using text and the line tool aswell as add, remove and convert anchor point tools. I created it in black and white and then made 4 colour variations. They are all pictured below.

UDK today

Today in UDK I learned how to create a number of enemies. The first step in this process was to create a number or world variables for 'origins' 'destinations' and 'bots'. I watched Many 3 tutorials showing me how to create numorous enemies. I created many pathnodes through out my level to use as origins and destinations for My bots to spawn and go to.

There Is a lot of code in this process and it is easier to expalain it with pictures.

Making Sounds in UDK

Thismorning in UDK I learned how to add sounds to my game. I started by using the sounds already in the content browser. I changed the sound cues to ambient and placed them where I wanted. I added a water sound near the river In my game. I added an engine sound to the generaters I am using to explain how the town has lights and electricity. Next i had to make wind. I first created a new sound cue in the content browser. I then selected an air sound to use. I added it to the editer. I went back to the content browser and searched for Murmur. I selected a few murmurs. I then went back to the soundcue editer I added them in with a random block too. Next I added a looping effect to both of the sounds. I added a delay block in between the murmurs and the looping. I set the delay to 2 - 7 seconds. Next I added a mixer and an attenuation block. I then conected up all the wires and this created the perfect spookywind sound I wanted for my game. I went back to the attenuation and set the max radius to 5000. The wind can now bea heard in nearly all of mny level.

below is an image of the code used for the created soundcue.

Udk Ui Scenes and 3rd person Camera

Today in UDK i learned hot to create a user interface scene using Scaleform GFX. The first part of this procedure was to install the gfx plugin to adobe flash. Next I set up 2 profiles one for scaleformgfx and one for scaleformgfxnodebug. Next i learned some rules about creating images for ui scenes. They must be png's, they must be a multiple of 2. I then learned that I must create the package and group first before Importing it to UDK. I then learned that the image used must be put into a folder of the same name as the .swf file. Next I learned that I had to change the properties to the image. I had to turn on allow smoothing, set compression to lossless then export for actionscript 2.0 and remove the extension from the identifyer.

I the n saved and published my scene and it was ready to be imported into udk. Here is an image of the code I used for the ui scene.

This code also shows how I set up my camera to 'behindview'

UDK Today (15/3/12)

Today in udk I Lerned many new things. Firstly I recapped on what i done last week and tried to fix some of the errors I had. Most of them were fixed by redoing the porcess. The first new thing Ilearned was how to make teleporters. I found it simple. All I needed was two locations to teleport between, two teleporters and put them in the correct position. I set the name in the first one teleport1 and the second one was c alled teleport2. I then set the target for each to the other one.

The next thing I learned today was to fracture static meshes so they cn be broken when shot.

This allows me to select how many chunks I wanted it to break into, support chunks and many more options.

The final thing I did today was fix my ladder I learned today that the arrow of the ladder volume must be pointing towards the wall of mesh i wanted to climb

Udk (8/3/12)

Today in udk I learned how to make a fade to black cut scene. This was done using Kismet and a simple Matinee. I made an end sequence using matinee. It makes the game fade to black. Here is an image of the code I used for this event.

Udk (8/3/12)

Today I learned how to give My player lives. I added some more code into the same piece I used for the camera.

This images shows the code I used. It shows that a player starts with 5 lives. When A < B the player wont spawn again. I will come back to this at a later stage and add in an end sequence.

Udk today (8/3/13)

Today in udk I learned how to attach a camera to my player. It was done in kismet. First I had to add a camera actor. Then I opened udk and configured some blocks like so.

I made it so when the player spawns the camera attaches to the player. I then moved the camera angle so it was behing and above the player. This made my game in 3rd person view. Here is a picture of the in game camera angle.

I also learned about UI scenes in Udk today. i then learned that they have been depicated from the newer versions. So scenes will be made using flash and .swf files

Today In UDK pt 3 (9/2/12)

Thes evening I learned how to create enemies. I started by making a path node. and opening kismet.

I created a new event (level loaded). I then created actor factory. I right clicked on spawn point and created new object var using pathnode. I connected level loaded to spawn actor. I went to actor factory properties. here is the steps I followed after
1. Tick force deathmatch ai
2. Set controller class to none.
3. set pawn class - UTpawn
4. Tick Give default Inventory.
5. Click green cross and select weapon to give the enemy.

To make the enemy respawn There was some more code to follow.
1. I created new action -> new event -> attach to event
2. New event -> pawn -> death
3. Right click on spawned and create new object variable.
and then i connected them as shown below.

the bot now respawns on death.

Doors in UDK

In UDK today I learned how to program a door to swing open (or move to the side or any other motion) It involoved using Kismet and a matinee.

First I had to add the door as an interp actor. and open kismet.

I added a matinee block, Double clicked it to open its sub editor. I added a new empty group.

In the new group I made a new movement track.

I pressed enter to add keyframes.

I moved the interp actor and created a trigger.

Select the trigger, go to kismet, rightclick and select new event using trigger_0 touch.

I connect touched to play and untouched to reverse and set max trigger count to 0

The door was ready to be opened and closed

Today in UDK (9/2/12)

This morning I learned how to create a light triggered with a light switch. First I created a static mesh to act as a light switch. Then i created a trigger (Right click -> add actor -> Trigger) I set the trigger in the same place as the mesh. Next I made a point light toggleable. This image below shows How they were positioned.

Next was to write the code for the lighting. I Opened kismet and created a new event using the trigger. I greated a toggle aswell. I connect the Used port to the toggle port and then added the pointlight to the target port.

Next I added an announcement. I wrote let there be light. I coonected that to the used port aswell.

UDK Today (08/02/12)

Today In UDK we learned what many of the Light properties do. We learned how to add colour to the light, Change its brightness and how to make bounce shadows. I also took the time to move around my geometry and terrain so that terrain wasnt sticking through buildings.

I learned how to make fractureable static meshes. This means that the player can shoot the mesh and it will break into pieces there are many properties for this that I plan on implementing into my game.

Today in UDK (2/2/12)

Today I learned how to make fog and particle systems in my game. I made a dense fog allover my game level but set it so its not around the player. This gives a misty atmosphere and fits in with the mountainous setting. I learned to make some waterfall particle systems aswell as some explosions, slime and splashes.

I also added more buildings to my level, I added water and its volumes too.

Here is an image of my level so far.

10 steps to creating Textures

Step 1
The first step was to find an image to use. I went to www.flickr.com (because it has tons of high resolution photographs.) needed to find an image that was positioned 90 degrees to the cameraman. I done a search for snow and found this image.

I know this image is not 90 degrees all over but some parts are and this image is quite plain. I needed a snow texture. This image is very large in size so it was easy for me to select a square area in the bottom left of the image.
Step 2
The next step was to open the image in Photoshop and resize it to a multiple of 2 (64, 128, 256 etc.) I used the crop tool to make a square section in the bottom left of the image. Then I went to Image ->Image Size and changed it to 512 X 512 (pixels).

Step 3
I was ready to make the image tileable now. To do this I must separate the image into 4 equal sections and put them to the opposite corner (upper left becomes lower right). Here is how to do this: go to filter -> Other -> Offset and set both offset values to half the image size. In my case this is 256 px

Step 4
You can clearly see in the image now that there are some dark parts and some light parts. I must now add an adjustment layer. To do this I select the layer button on top of my stack, press the adjustment layer button at the bottom and select hue/saturation. I then set the saturation to -100
Step 5
Next I used the dodge tool to lighten up my image. I set the target to shadows so it would have most affect the dark parts of the image. I set the exposure to a low number (30), this allows you to have much more control.

Alternatively I could use the burn tool. This affects the bright areas of the image and makes the darker. In this case I would set the range to highlights so it wouldn’t affect the darker parts.

Step 6
Next thing to do is to remove the horrible seams in the image. I used the Clone Stamp tool. First I alt-clicked to mark start point. Then I drag over the canvas to remove the seams. The clone tool can make the image blurry so it’s important to remove blur if one section seems more blurry than another. Next go to Filter -> Sharpen -> Sharpen, This will further remove some blur from the image.

Next I just had to save the image as a truevision targa image. Now I’m ready to make a normal for this texture.

Step 7
Next I opened the software crazybump, I opened the .tga image I just saved and created a normal. I done this by moving the sliders around and creating the texture I wanted to use. I then saved the Normal as a .tga image too.

Crazy Bump Creating Normal
Step 8
The next thing to do was to open UDK and create a new material. I right clicked in the content browser, selected new material. I called it Snow_material and saved it to my package.
Step 9
The next thing to do was to open UDK and import these too Images. I opened the content browser and opened my package. I right clicked and selected import then selected images I created. I saved them as Snow_Texture and Snow_Texture_NRM. It is important that there are no spaces in the names of materials and textures in UDK
Step 10
The final step was to open the material editor for ‘Snow_Material’ and add in the textures. I selected the texture in the content browser and opened the material editor, I held down T and right clicked this brought the texture into the material editor. I then repeated this for the normal. Next I made a connection from the texture to the diffuse port and from the normal to the normal port. I saved the material and it’s now ready to be used in the game.

UDK Today (26/01/12)

Today In udk i started finished off the terrain sturcture for my level, I blocked out the buildings that I want to add to one section of the map. I also learned how to add water to a game. It is not as simple as I would have thought. First you must add a plane where you want to add the water and apply the water material to the plane.

Next you must use the builder brush to create a UTwater volume and a post processing volume. The post processing volume allows you to add colour, blur and makes the water feel more realistic for the player.

Today i also created 7 materials in the udk material editor. I done this by adding the textures i made to the content browser and right clicking the blank area and selecting create new material. I then selected one of the textures, went to the material editor, held down t and left clicked this added the texture to the material editor. I repeated then with the normal and connected the images to their corrosponding ports in the editor.

UDK Terrain

Today I created Terrain in UDK. I done this by first creating a new terrain in the tools tab. I set it to 64x64. I feel this should be big enough to suffice. Next I added a skydome. I opened the content browser selected a skydome and added it to my game. Next I added a dominantdirectionallight and lightmass importance volume. Now I could start sculpting my Terrain. I used the paint terrain tools to make hills and mountains. I used the flatten tool to erase hills. I used the smooth tool to create flatter rolling hills or create random peaks and noize. I then added materials to my terrain. I selected the material and added a new layer to my terrain using add new layer using material. Here is a screen shot of my terrain so far.

Materials

Today I started making materials for my 3d game. First I downloaded Images From www.flickr.com like this picture of grass.

Next I opened this image in photoshop and inserted it to a canvas of the right size (512x512 for this one) I then used the offset option to split the image into 4 equal sections and flip them to their opposite side. Next I added a Hue/saturation layer. This allowed me to see the areas that were darker of lighter than others. Next I used the Doge tool to Lighten the areas that were too dark. I used the clone tool to make sure there were no parts standing out that would make the texture look tiled. I then saved the Image as a Targa file (.tga)

Next I opened the image in Crazybump. This gave me many options to create a normal for the Image. WHen I was satisfied with the texture I was making I saved that as a Targa file too.

I then Opened UDK. In udk I opened the content browser and created a new material. Icalled It Grass_Material. I then imported the two images I created. Then in the material editor I added them by holding T and left clicking. I then saved the material and save the package too.

UDK Terrains and Textures.

Today I learned how to make textures using Photoshop and how to make normals using Crazy bump. A normal has height volumes, when its used with a texture it creates a material.

I learned that textures should be made in multiples of 64px. In photoshop you use the filter tab, other and then offset. This allows you to cut the image into 4 parts. Then you swap the pieces with there diagonal opposite. If I reduce the Hue it makes it much easier for me to see the dark and light spots. Then i use the dodge tool to change the dark or light of the image. Next I use the clonestamp tool. This allows me to cover up Lines in the image so there is no visable seam.

I also watched a video of a terrain tutorial today. I learned that terrain is made using brush type tools and static meshes can be painted with a brush too.