ue4-general

[exotic cave]

Yes

Please

Please

Look at some of the lessons I've been giving you 🙂

Read a basic materials tutorial

It will be an afternoon so well spent

I promise

[dim kelp]

and mouse unplugged

what setting could cause that?

[exotic cave]

For now I'ma help you cheat, @rough knoll

See your "A" output there?

[rough knoll]

yeah thats opacity

[exotic cave]

You got to go into your materials settings, change from "Opaque" to "Opacity Mask"

Then ram your A into the Opacity Mask output

Do NOT use partial transparency (non-masked transparent) materials on your grass by the way

You will explore FPS values so low that you will need to invent new kinds of fractions to deal with them

[rough knoll]

oop that worked tyvm

does fps get below 1 lmao

0.80 fps

[exotic cave]

Sure

How low would you like your FPS to get? 😄

My first programming mentor: "You can code badly in any language."

Applies to art too, bless his heart and his memory

Put fifteen kinds of Megascans stuff in your scene and use only the default Mixer export materials. You can render a frame every minute or two.

[rough knoll]

lmao

[exotic cave]

How's it look now? Reassure me that I actually helped with something before I bail for the afternoon. 🙂

[rough knoll]

it looks good, currently trying to turn off shadows myself

[exotic cave]

Double click your grass mesh

Haha I just noticed I should really not have collision enabled on that grass of mine, so maybe you helped me out too

[sterile stream]

anyone using goodsky? i cant seem to get it to illuminate my level only change the skybox

[rough knoll]

well the shadow is still there but it moved alot further back so its not really going to be seen often anyways

thank ya

[exotic cave]

Turn it off on all your LODs

If it's only appearing at distance, that means it's probably still shadowcasting at LOD1, LOD2, etc.

Do you know what level of distance meshes are?

[dim kelp]

not sure what caused it, unplugging everything, then reopening stuff fixed it. Thanks for point me to the lod controls

[exotic cave]

*FOV

LOD = level of detail = lower-poly meshes that are substituted at far draw distances

FOV = field of view = the angle subtended by your camera

[rough knoll]

there is a single lod

lod 0

that has it off

[exotic cave]

Hmmmm, that's odd then

You may have to journey on alone, I feel the Odinsleep coming on, been breaking my brain lately 🙂

I will likely be back at hours that would shame a vampire, so you can add me if you want

[rough knoll]

thats ok, you've helped me alot lmao

it only casts the shadows when im not there

like when i move over to the shadowy areas it goes normal

i have no idea

[exotic cave]

Who is "I"?

[rough knoll]

the camera

[exotic cave]

Show me

[rough knoll]

ok this is what it looks like when im far left

[untold hollow]

okay everyone. if anyone can help. this is really weird and frustrating and discouraging. This is my first time trying to do anything in unreal. If I use gamepad to control the editor it works totally fine. To control the first or third person examples, it ignores all input (maybe there's a setting to enable it). but most baffling of all is the car examples. it's not just moving by itself, the axises are all wrong. forward and back change the steering, and side to side changes the speed. where can I even start to try to troubleshoot?

[rough knoll]

this is it when i go to the far corner shown in the first screenshot

[exotic cave]

I don't actually see ground there between that grass

Usually a shadow needs something to cast on 😄

Looks like an issue with your landscape material possibly

[rough knoll]

the ground is there but the grass texture hangs off

[exotic cave]

It would, because you're using low-poly giant rectangles of grass

[rough knoll]

100 fps tho

might just have to deal w/ it

[exotic cave]

Your lighting will possibly get weird around the edges of your map anyway

UE uses semi-raytraced built lighting even for non-RTX projects

So when it builds lighting around a corner of a world surrounded by the nothings

It's not going to be physically accurate

[rough knoll]

can i change "the nothings"

[exotic cave]

For now I suggest just concentrating on your main scene and defining some boundaries

[rough knoll]

oh also this kek

[exotic cave]

So bright though

I thought you were doing nighttime scene

[rough knoll]

i am

[exotic cave]

You're gonna have to mess with it man 😄 I feel the slumber of ages upon me

[rough knoll]

ye thats ok

[exotic cave]

I can set up a macro to respond with "ZZZ" for the next several hours

[rough knoll]

im probably just gonna move the bridge down and flatten that little hill

[exotic cave]

Unsure if that will result in good things though 😄

I would not move your scene around to fix the lighting.

When your lighting model, materials, etc., are in a good place, they will light any scene you come up with.

[rough knoll]

no not the lighting

the rectangles of grass that stick up into the air

[exotic cave]

Try turning on contact shadows on your light 🙂

Little trick I learned for good grassiness

Sec I show

Then I slumber

@untold hollow : I really wish I could help man, I'm just only an environment art/materials guy at present

Zero good experience with inputs yet

[untold hollow]

np

any other good support discords?

[exotic cave]

Not that I know of.

@rough knoll : That is hidden in your d-light somewhere.

Contact shadow length is zero by default.

I actually find turning it on helps grass rendering a lot.

However, it is a screenspace rendering technique and values too high/low can result in artifacting around screen edges.

With that I am off.

[rough knoll]

i turned it on and i see little difference but the grass looks a little more colorful idk

but gn

ty for helping

[glacial wyvern]

Has something changed with fbx importing since 4.21?

I've got this modular character, so the head and legs are split off

It worked fine in 4.21 with no seams

but in 4,25 theres seams between bparts

whats changed?

4.21:

4.25:

[rough knoll]

here's a really simple question

how can i import a dae into ue

[thorn scarab]

you can open anywhere dae

here's a really simple question
@rough knoll and convert it into fbx

[rough knoll]

will blender work

[thorn scarab]

the only way to know - try

[rough knoll]

welp it did not

[exotic cave]

@glacial wyvern : Probably something changed with the lightmapping. Seams like that are almost always related to lightmap settings...

[rough knoll]

nvm

random online converter worked

[exotic cave]

I do not have an answer for that, by the way 😄

Possibly check the lightmap resolution for each mesh in each version, see if it changed anything by default

It would be in your mesh settings somewhere

[rough knoll]

couldn't sleep? 🤔

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave I'm pretty sure skeletal meshes dont have lighmaps

[exotic cave]

How sure? 🙂

[glacial wyvern]

at least I dont see any options for lightmaps on import if you choose skeletal mesh

[exotic cave]

You may be right, lightmaps do seem to be for non-movable objects

Hmmm

I will ponder

[glacial wyvern]

i see these new options that werent in 4.21

im guessing its a vertex normal thing

[thorn scarab]

all the materials on same UV?

[exotic cave]

Yeah, it's def related to vertex normals

[thorn scarab]

textures

[glacial wyvern]

but i cant find anything on these options in the documentation

[exotic cave]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/development-discussion/content-creation/38088-smooth-surface-transition-between-separated-character-parts-how-to

Threads like that might help

Those options have been around for a few versions

Just try each of the three versions

I'm not sure what 4.21 default behavior was

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Resources/ContentExamples/ImportOptions/1_3/index.html

There's the official documentation on it

[rough knoll]

why does this do this

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave Thanks, doesnt seem to be much help though, pretty sure i've tried all the combinations already. I was searching the update documentation but i didnt see it there.

[thorn scarab]

@glacial wyvern it is definitely not related to the engine I just checked on my modular character.

4.25.2

[glacial wyvern]

@thorn scarab It has to be at least to some extent, since its fine in the older version. I do admit that the mesh is kinda wonky. The seams are visible in maya, but werent in 4.21. I assumed it was just mayas viewport being weird. Something must have changed and unreal wont deal with my wonky file the same way anymore.

[thorn scarab]

@glacial wyvern it's hard to say without seeing it because I upgraded recently from 4.22 recently without any consequences. if you have more than one UV for the character we could check materials but if it is, probably it's something outside

did you try to re-import

or just upgraded

[glacial wyvern]

I was using 4.21 to test, and I never bothered to ask what my client was using since i didnt think that would affect a mesh

I'm guessing the fact that it worked in 4.21 was a fluke.

[thorn scarab]

you can send head and chest meshes without textures (if it's not materials/textures related we will see) i can check if you want

basically any two meshes where you see the line

[rough knoll]

wwhy does the ground start fading out at a distance

[glacial wyvern]

The file here has separate elements, so there are borders between geometry, it just imports as one in unreal. I didnt know how they were handling modularity so i just let them figure that part out themselves

actually on second thought that might be the problem

they could be exporting the parts and not exporting the normals correctly

[thorn scarab]

one of the old meshes where i split ears from the head

no line

ok let me open your file

mesh and uv are okay, normals are okay. let me try to import

[exotic cave]

@glacial wyvern : Can you check the normals by hand in any way near the seam?

@rough knoll : It isn't really fading out, it's just UE's default antialiasing/texture interpolation behavior at distance. I quite often find that I have to add a distance-modifier term in my materials to get them to act the way I want to when far away.

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave Hmm yeah theyre bad apparently

[exotic cave]

I think you just got lucky in 4.21, I agree that it's frustrating though

[thorn scarab]

on both normal rays look same way

[exotic cave]

FWIW the model looks fantastic 😄

[glacial wyvern]

@thorn scarab sorry i sent you the wrong one, that was one i was just testing and trying to figure out

They are actually wrong on the other one, I just have no idea how it worked in 4.21

[thorn scarab]

gotcha

[glacial wyvern]

I was really hoping i could get it to work the same way in 2.25, so i dont have to redo the whole skin transfer part

which is a pain in itself

[thorn scarab]

how about just to fix a few normals

if this is the problem you just could pick them around the neck and near them

and reimport the mesh

update it

[glacial wyvern]

I had gone around and manually avereged each pair of vertexes on the mesh but that didnt seem to export properly

The way i managed to fix it in the file you saw was by getting the whole unsplit mesh and deleting parts i didnt want, and doing that for every iece

which is the way the forum post you sent me recommends it

only issue with that is it breaks the skinning

And I was hoping to avoid doing the skin transfer again

but it seems thats the only way to go

and how it miraculously worked in 4.21 is gonna stay a mystery haha

[exotic cave]

I can barely see the seams even when they're there. You sure this is worth spending extra weeks on?

[glacial wyvern]

Thanks for putting up with me and helping out haha

[thorn scarab]

so if you will copy/past orientation in xyz of each normal around the neck and chest it won't work?

[exotic cave]

Are you sure you tried all the vertex import options btw?

You have to actually hit the Re-import button after you change the type

It won't actually just do it for you

[glacial wyvern]

yeah I know

[exotic cave]

Fasho

I fail

[glacial wyvern]

its quite apparent dependiing on the angle

[exotic cave]

Your characters are clearly Replicants

Make a Blade Runner game 😄

[glacial wyvern]

and the guy i did it for wants it fixed understandably

[exotic cave]

Bug -> Feature

Ahhhh yeah

If it's for a client, you probably have to fix it

[thorn scarab]

you tell him this is Frankenstein and this is how it suppose to be

[glacial wyvern]

i wish i could haha

I spent days trying to figure out what was up because originally I was testing in my 4.21 scene and i couldnt see the seams at all, only their screenshots had them

[thorn scarab]

there's 100% way to work around

[glacial wyvern]

so i thought they had some perfect storm of a lighting setup that highlighted them

[thorn scarab]

without all that back and forward

if it worked in 4.21 you should be able to update it the way

you need it

[glacial wyvern]

It was weird how it worked in 4.21, I didnt even expect it too, I thought splitting the mesh would end with seams unless i did something to edit the normals, but i teseted it without and it just worked, so i just figured it was fine.

[thorn scarab]

if this is related to normals (the one you sent me appears fine in 4.25) you can modify them in the max or whatever. but i think it's not even a problem if it was appearing fine in 4.21

[glacial wyvern]

Forum posts have this same probelm, and the way they say to fix it works, Its just super weird how it worked in 421 to me

[thorn scarab]

you need to try to re-import your model into clear-test project 4.25

[glacial wyvern]

this is the actual one that doesnt work

[thorn scarab]

if it will pop bad way then discover import srttings

k let me check

[glacial wyvern]

Dont bother yourselves too much, i know how to fix it I'm just left with this mystery of how it wokred once lol

[jolly jungle]

Are savegame files readable by a person, ie could someone go in and easily change values

[thorn scarab]

yes, normals

let me see how you imported it without any issue in 4.21

curious already

[exotic cave]

Can you import it as a 4.21 asset, then upgrade the project manually to 4.25 and check it?

Then if it works you can just send them the .uasset via Migrate

[thorn scarab]

yes i'm trying to see how it didn't show up in 4.21

[exotic cave]

Or to rephrase, if you import it in a 4.21 project then manually upgrade that project to 4.25 is it okay?

[glacial wyvern]

how do you upgrade a project?

nvm ill google it

Yeah the mesh stays fine if I upgrade the project

but as soon as I reimported the asset it broke lol

so its gotta be something to do with the importer update theyve done

[exotic cave]

But should save you time right?

Just import into 4.21, upgrade, Migrate the .uasset to them?

Or do they require having the FBX in a format that can import to 4.25?

I can see it if the contract requires the latter

Just trying to save you your version of the week of hell I'm going through on my own pack 😄

I mean, you could always ask 😉

[glacial wyvern]

yeah they want the fbx so they can edit stuff if needed, and I guess its better to have good practices with these things

[exotic cave]

'Tis

Well, publish an 80.lv article on it all when you figure it out 😄

[glacial wyvern]

gotta figure out how to setup modular characters consitently either way

[thorn scarab]

okay

it works in max

but by hands idk how to

script it

to make automatic

[exotic cave]

That's what I'm gonna do when I finally figure out how to get my Marketplace pack in a format Epic likes it in, I'll be writing a guide on how NOT to remake all one's foliage assets fifteen times until they're finally Marketplace proper

[thorn scarab]

if you will do it with hands idk you'll spend about 30 min

this is how it works in max, idk what you use

you choose all meshes, drop on them Edit Normals modificator, then open sub and choose Normal. In parameters you choose Select By Normals. Then, you pick two normals (they look in different ways 15-20degrees or so and pull them in the same - uni direction

then everything works

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave what are Epics demands with Marketplace assets?

[thorn scarab]

i'll do a few on the chest

you can continue same way if 30 min will worth doing it

[exotic cave]

@glacial wyvern : Well, there are many, but the particular one that wrecked me is that I started saving small copies of static meshes with material configurations I liked, and Epic requires that all meshes that use the same basic mesh structure point at the same root mesh and use Blueprints (for game actors) or Material Overrides (for landscape actors) to change the materials 🙂

[thorn scarab]

as u see green ones already okay

[glacial wyvern]

@ pete how do you pick specific normals?

[exotic cave]

Basically, there's a one-base-mesh-per-set-of-unique-geometry requirement. Not so bad for characters, but very frustrating when I got in the habit of saving a lot of copies of little mushrooms and grass meshes that I liked, since they're barely even there in modern filesize terms (250kbish)

But, I get it, it's a good rule, I just wish it had been made clearer in the Marketplace guidelines.

[thorn scarab]

not sure which version, dropped to 2017

yes, as I said it will take max 30 mins to do. I left modificators so it should be easy

basically you pick 2 normal rays sitting on same spot (only they look like horns looking in different directions)

[glacial wyvern]

@thorn scarab I figured it out just s you sent that

thanks its gonna save me a lotta time

[thorn scarab]

when you pick two of them you start to pull them in same direction a few time so they'll look into same direction and viola everything is nice and smooth, i just checked, 4.25 eats it

[sterile stream]

anyone help me with goodsky? it wont illuminate my last lvl but the skybox/sun is there

[exotic cave]

I don't use it, sorry @sterile stream

[thorn scarab]

no worries all of us learn

[glacial wyvern]

you can click average selected under parameters to get them to point in the same direction

[exotic cave]

@thorn scarab : You seem like someone I ought to start listening to now, a year or so before I start doing my own character stuffs 😄

[sterile stream]

its ok, i posted a msg on forums too to see if i can get any help but thats slow sometimes. it rly interrupted the flow i had going too xD

worked fine on my other 2 lvls tho

[thorn scarab]

yes

totally forgot

[exotic cave]

The prob with asking about specific plugins is that user base penetration on any given plugin is pretty small

[thorn scarab]

it will take 5 mins of yours

[exotic cave]

It's almost always better to go to the dev's Discord if they have one

[thorn scarab]

not even 30

[exotic cave]

And ask for one if they don't :>

[glacial wyvern]

Thanks pete, didnt think to try using edit normals in max. I dont know how poeple use maya since it doesnt have modifiers. I've been trying to switch to it but its so much worse at modeling.

[exotic cave]

I don't know how people even manage to use most 3d modelers. 😄 People swear by Zbrush and it makes me want to gnaw off my own fingers.

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave i'm not an expect but whatever I know I'll share

[exotic cave]

@thorn scarab : I will be stuck in environment art land for likely another year, doing all the plugins I want to do.

How about you two get together and make a character creator plugin for UE? 😄

I'll help!

[glacial wyvern]

I havent found zbrush useable for hard surface modeling since its cant handle open shapes, so you cant extrude edges and such. Thats coming in the next update so It'll be alot more useable

[exotic cave]

Yeah I can't even really stand to do sculpts in it. It's just a workflow thing, I guess.

[glacial wyvern]

what do you use for sculpts? blender?

[thorn scarab]

@glacial wyvern np. you're right, there's no all-inclusive software yet

[exotic cave]

3dCoat. (Mostly I don't sculpt...)

I am doing mostly foliages and landscapes. So, lotta tree tools, lotta Substance and Filter Forge.

[glacial wyvern]

I've heard good things about 3d coat

[exotic cave]

I do like 3dCoat a lot more than most software, which is to say I can actually stand it and it's a super good price ($400 I think and you actually own the version forever, at least when I bought it.)

[glacial wyvern]

I'd be open to working on some sort of character creator asset if someone can handle the in engine techincal stuff

[exotic cave]

I mean, yeah, that's a lot, but not as far as modelers go. 🙂

@glacial wyvern : Check this out, it's a procedural tree modeler an Epic tech artist did completely in a Blueprint

https://80.lv/articles/building-procedural-art-tools-in-unreal-engine-4

I think some of these techniques could easily be adapted to modular character meshes, would be thrilled to help you explore a project like this when you're done with your current contract or find the time.

This is next on my list of things to explore when I'm out of mesh hell. Alternately I could just code this, redo all my foliage in it and do it right this time around I guess. 😉

Arran Langmead is one of the stars of my world right now (hint hint Epic, this is cool tech)

A character creator might have to go deeper and use the actual C++, but I'm C++ trained, worked in it for many years...

[glacial wyvern]

I've liked messing around with blueprints, but I'm not particularly good at it and I dont have the fundamentals.

[exotic cave]

There are ways. UE has mesh manipulation routines. But fancy stuff would have to include blendshape support and/or morph targets and I know zero about all that.

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave I really liked growfx for trees there's a lot of advantages comparing to anything else.

[rough knoll]

what are the walk backwards/left bindings

i cannot find them

[exotic cave]

Did you just suggest actually good tree modeling software that I wouldn't have to wrestle with for days and days per tree???

[rough knoll]

not in my old project not even in my character blueprint

[thorn scarab]

the only problem with ultra realistic trees, there's choice or a realistic tree or ~okay trees and ~okay leaves

i went for late fall winter

[exotic thicket]

@rough knoll backwards/left use forward and right, but they just get a negative value

[rough knoll]

oh

thanks

[exotic cave]

Them's some spicy branches. That looka high poly.

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave well if youre interesting in working on something at some point you can add me on discord and once youre out of your mesh hell we can figure something out

[thorn scarab]

nah it's lowpoly but the point is, you can't afford such trees with leaves on it

[exotic cave]

Sent!

[thorn scarab]

it will be too expensive so i decided to get rid of leaves in order to keep trees as detailed as possible

[rough knoll]

welp

[exotic cave]

Ah yeah, I looked at this, $325 for a dedicated tree modeler is more than I want to spend right now

[rough knoll]

guess its time for a new drive

[thorn scarab]

nah

[exotic cave]

Seems good tho 🙂

[thorn scarab]

i meant - expensive for a video card

[exotic cave]

@rough knoll : GET THE MAGNET 😄

[thorn scarab]

not money wise

[exotic cave]

(Disclaimer: Don't actually put any magnets near your hard drives, kids. You will destroy your drives.)

[rough knoll]

big brain

[exotic cave]

I wonder if magnets work on SSDs come to think of it?

[rough knoll]

magnet move space to the top so it free more space in the enclosure

make sense

[exotic cave]

This conversation is starting to remind me of the Penny Arcade strip where Gabe built a computer without a heat sink on the processor 😄

Please don't put a magnet near your hard drive, @rough knoll, just so we're all clear, magnets destroy all data on magnetic state hard drives 🙂

[glacial wyvern]

@thorn scarab Isnt speedtree the standard for making trees? Its $20 a moth for a subscription. I dont really do evniroment assests so i wouldnt know if its any good.

[rough knoll]

yes i know lmao

[exotic cave]

It is a standard. However it is also a standard that disallows the use of the trees in third party packs.

[thorn scarab]

@glacial wyvern depends what you want to do. if you want to do real life like trees speed tree isn't good

i mean you can do realistic trees in zbrush or 3dcoat but growfx just saves time

[exotic cave]

SpeedTree's whole deal is that you can only use the trees for end-user products. No intermediate assets or third-party packs (eg no Marketplace). At least this is what it was last I checked.

I have been using TreeIt, which has some problems but is actually pretty good for a free tool 😄

[thorn scarab]

I just stack with ultra realism

[exotic cave]

However I plan to upgrade to my own tree modeler based on Langmead's, once I get out of pack hell

[thorn scarab]

and i brought me to another level of challenge

[exotic cave]

@thorn scarab : Any screenshots in-engine?

[thorn scarab]

sure

[glacial wyvern]

Oh right that kinda sucks about speedtree

[exotic cave]

It does

SpeedTree is an important Epic partner, as they are a partner to many companies in the game space. 🙂 I wish them well.

[glacial wyvern]

I've seen really good tees made with houdini, and you can use it for making all sorts of procedural models. Probably longer to setup since it not a tree oriented too but I'd guess it gives more freedom in general.

[exotic cave]

Houdini can do literally everything and aaaargh because I don't know how to use it and buying a year license would be a big risk at my level 😄

If I find some success with my packs, it's on the agenda

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave they're good for 90% of situations for sure.

[exotic cave]

I see the building packs people are making in Houd and uuuuuugh

I wannnnnt

Eventually it will all be Houdini's world and the rest of us will be pawing at the hem of the robes of the people who mastered it early, that's my fear

[thorn scarab]

for example

[exotic cave]

That's Houdini?

[thorn scarab]

nah

it's my game assets

in unreal

[exotic cave]

How'd you make that?

That's fantaaaaaaaaaaastic

[glacial wyvern]

yeah real nice

[thorn scarab]

i wanted to make an ultra realistic game. it's about time travel and parallel universes

so i digged into how to create realistic buildings first

[exotic cave]

I meant of your trees but holy goodness

If you release that as a pack, let me know

[glacial wyvern]

I've seen a guy use houndini for character faces https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KaQ9Ay (scroll to the bottom)

[exotic cave]

What are you using for materials? Are those your own?

[thorn scarab]

i stack there for 8 months studying, then engineering, then how to design and sew clothes, to create ultra realistic stuff. then etc... it was bad decision lol

[glacial wyvern]

no idea why hed do that instead of just sculpting like he sculpted the rest of the face. Maybe hes just flexing his houndini skills lol.

[exotic cave]

I mean if Houdini can literally do everything, why not do everything in it?

I wish I had and knew how to use a modeler that would take the place of my 5 other modelers, none of which talk to each other and each of which has to be wrestled out of its own peculiar quirks

[regal hawk]

Why PostEditChangeProperty dont update the value of properties in details panel?

[exotic cave]

@thorn scarab : Seems like great decision to me 😄

[thorn scarab]

@glacial wyvern there's a reason why. for example, this funicular to be real has to make engineering sense otherwise it will be just some graphic designer creation. so i studied engineering and this particular model had 3840 elements in max before i baked it

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave well he sculpted the rest of the face in zbrush, all he did was that one eye crease

[exotic cave]

Ahhhh 🙂

Zbrush, still the king of characters

I got daisies to wrestle with all weekend, I'll cross those bridges when I come to them I guess

[thorn scarab]

unfortunately, you can't be mathematically presided in zbrush, painter and etc. so you just "punch it" but subconsciously we can notice that sloppiness

[exotic cave]

Eh actually genuinely mathematically symmetric people are super uncanny valley

[glacial wyvern]

@thorn scarab I think you misunderstood, I was taliking about the guy in the link i posted. Your thing is awsome and whatever youve done to achieve that is clearly working

[exotic cave]

Usually features are a few microns diff on real people at least

[glacial wyvern]

well any competent character artist will usually disable symetry on faces and work in some aysymetry

[thorn scarab]

same way with buildings and etc. like probably not a lot of people know that first floor is about 20 inches higher then 2nd and in 3 floors building for example, it's about 10-20 inches less. for the optical illusion to make buildings visually bigger then they are. and bunch of other rules. so when people design buildings for games they don't know about many of those. then they build but for some reason it looks unnatural because we got used to live around those. so.

most of the time i had to learn base stuff not related to the computer lol 🙂

[exotic cave]

I bet 80.lv would let you do a professional article based on those screenies alone

I've talked a bit with the site author in LinkedIn, he loves stuff like that

[thorn scarab]

I meant of your trees but holy goodness
@exotic cave not sure i would do it cuz i do it for my video game but you can jump on the wagon and I will teach you 😆

[exotic cave]

tries to disentangle himself from many mushroom and flower and grass meshes

Soon

I will add you

I bet if we all could actually conquer our various challenges and put heads together we could create the singularity 😂

Or at the very least, a very cool demo

Actually, who needs the singularity when your demo is cool enough?

@hearty rose : Hey, that's next month 😄

[thorn scarab]

@glacial wyvern gotcha. looks great. there's another link, he punched skin like really hard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahNfCGrqZqE&feature=emb_title

[glacial wyvern]

@hearty rose Heres a full shot of the character.

[exotic cave]

Don't sell that skill short, I need to hook up with a network guy to learn how to sync characters for my MOBA framework

[exotic thicket]

he looks like super buff Uwe Boll

[exotic cave]

Man, that is photorealistic, @thorn scarab

Insane

I was so happy with my pack, but the more I see the next gen of UE the more I wonder if I'll even be relevant

My stuff's not bad, but it's def a level below true photorealism. But I stay grinding, I hope to get there.

[glacial wyvern]

@thorn scarab what do you mean by punched the skin exactly?

[exotic cave]

@hearty rose : You can't have a hit multiplayer game without it, keep it up, you will never not be in demand with that skill!

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave technically you can easily do something like that on certain level. some xyz multimaterials zwrap, bake, and viola. but that one in particular took some time for sure.

[exotic cave]

What's your advice on the leaves?

Nope, all original assets

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave if you will look what is popular today you'll forget about realism. roblox and simular. i think for all-in-one developer lowpoly / acrade / simple games are must. no AAA stuff.

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave yeah those are texturing xyz displacement maps, pretty much the only way to go for full photorealism

[exotic cave]

You are probably noticing three things: 1 . The leaf mesh is a bit warped off-center, 2. I can't seem to get a good roughness mapping, and 3. on real trees there's more shadowing near the center of the tree

All these things are on my list of upgrades, if I don't die in the next few weeks just trying to get this version out 👻

There are some spherical-distance-check rendering techniques that can allow a lovely shadow near the center of a tree, and I can't wait until I have a spare week to actually research that.

The mesh warping is just me needing to buckle down and really fix the mapping, it's annoying because TreeIt's export to UE is not the best. I am indeed seeking a tool upgrade.

[exotic thicket]

I'm probably going to have to do a game with MS Paint tier 3D models and hope that people like it despite that so I can then pay someone to do better models lol

[exotic cave]

And actually I'm more unhappy with the ground in some ways than the trees, because it is low-poly grass and it doesn't look great from directly overhead 🙂

@exotic thicket : Look at something like Binding of Isaac, execution is everything, all styles are amazing if done properly

[exotic thicket]

Yeah the problem is that my project is kind of complicated for assets that aren't custom made for it :)

[thorn scarab]

@exotic thicket makes sense

[exotic cave]

I am drawn to seeking AAAish graphics, or somewhat thereabouts, it speaks to me, but I won't finish a game until I'm in my fifties probably

[exotic thicket]

so you're 49?

lol

[exotic cave]

You kidding? I won't even be out of environment art pack land until next year or the year after on my current plan

[glacial wyvern]

nothing wrong with using quixel or other assets, especially if youre indie

[exotic cave]

@hearty rose, @glacial wyvern : My problem with using pure Megascans right now is the filesizes

[thorn scarab]

I am drawn to seeking AAAish graphics, or somewhat thereabouts, it speaks to me, but I won't finish a game until I'm in my fifties probably
@exotic cave
make it lowpoly and you will finish within a year if it's not too long game

[exotic cave]

They do, they can also afford to distribute on DVDs or whatnot and have 100-250GB project sizes 😄

[exotic thicket]

yeah sometimes I'm debating working on one of my other slightly less ambitious ideas which would be doable with more "stock" 3D models and stuff

[exotic cave]

I just don't want to be building 100GB of project every day on my single lone machine, even if it is a nice machine

I am currently planning to use Megascans as an accent to my own packs

It looks GREAT

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave people play in games because they're interesting or not. not because of graphics. ppl can say wow but players won't buy it if it's sucks. so no harm to do it in lowpoly (where you spend too little time for assets)

[exotic cave]

I wish I had time to do more fab demos with Megascans integrated with my stuff, and less time to spend reorganizing my project for a week, but them's the breaks

[glacial wyvern]

what was that game made by one guy that got pretty big? pretty sure most of the assets were outsourced, but it stil looks pretty cool and got the guy and his game on the radar

[exotic cave]

I will probably sprinkle in like 10-20GB of Megascans on my current projects. (That's not a lot of Megascans, if anyone's worked heavily with the assets. 😄 )

[glacial wyvern]

This one i think https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWgOHjAyiyk

[exotic cave]

I can do a set of biomes in 10GB that would take Megascans 100GB and it will look nearly as good, and players will hopefully thank me. 🙂

[exotic thicket]

@hearty rose is that why the framerate was so bad lol

[exotic cave]

Was it PUBG? (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds)? Sounds right

[exotic thicket]

Yeah I mean the assets probably hadn't been really optimized for their use

[glacial wyvern]

@hearty rose I'm less forgiving of pubg since they raked in money, so they should have been at least able to outsource and not just buy from a public marketplace

[exotic cave]

That does look good @glacial wyvern !

[exotic thicket]

I remember in the cities half of the buildings had more parts to them that were just hidden under the terrain and probably were still being rendered

[thorn scarab]

@hearty rose yes, they're all assets. they even keep them in original folders like fps pack and etc

[exotic thicket]

I don't think there's wrong with AAA titles using marketplace assets.. I mean there's only so many ways you can make an M4 or an UAZ :P

[exotic cave]

I feel the same, as long as enough uniqueness is put into the final product who cares?

There's a Sonic Infinity project out there using the old Infinity Blade assets and the way he uses them, you can't even tell it's the same asset set

It's all about execution

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic thicket Hey if youre a AAA stufdio then dont be a scrooge and actually let folks like us make some money making assets

[exotic cave]

By far my favorite thing I'm not allowed to love in UE and love anyway ❤️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA3tPwjXk4E

[thorn scarab]

@hearty rose same

[exotic cave]

Sonic Team srsly should just pick up the Infinity guys and go full on UE, can you imagine a real Sonic game in Unreal Engine????

[exotic thicket]

@glacial wyvern well it would make sense to buy assets which are already good quality enough (eg. let's assume some weapon model) but they could then of course pay the author of the asset to do some work on other things for them if they liked it

[thorn scarab]

@hearty rose that probably make sense to blend the spaghetti in something unified

[exotic cave]

Make the next great character creator, @glacial wyvern , and you will be rich beyond imaginings.

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic thicket i dunno i kinda find it to be beneath a AAA or AA developer to use an asset that 10's of indie games are trying to use.

[exotic cave]

Everything in indie game space right now is amazing EXCEPT the character creators.

[thorn scarab]

@hearty rose how about substance painter? they support multilayers

[exotic thicket]

@glacial wyvern well if you have for example a high quality gun model, why would it need to be redone? How is it going to look any different if you redo it?

[exotic cave]

Adobe is taking Fuse/Mixamo behind the woodshed in a month or two, iClone is (while promising and just the recipient of a Megagrant) somewhat unstable and disallows third-party work, and there's nearly NOTHING else except custom sculpts

People are literally paying more than two grand a year for Marvelous Designer licenses just to make CLOTHING for AAA models

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave why

@hearty rose makes sense

[exotic cave]

There's seriously such a lack of good character modeling software compared to how good environments are getting, that's how I feel at least.

Mixamo is staying up, nominally, but eesh I don't trust anything about the situation.

Fuse is being put down.

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave mmmm... what do you mean lack of good? zbrush?

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave Marvelous designers only $490 for a perpetual licence. pretty good compared to other software

[exotic cave]

I mean software to do characters quickly, without the need for custom sculpts.

Oh really? Maybe I misread that then.

I swear it was more last I looked? Maybe I'm thinking of Houdini

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave for sure, and marvelous can punch clothes to another level then polish in zbrush

[exotic cave]

It could have. Adobe really just hurt the indie game space with that acquisition.

All they wanted to do is poach the team.

[exotic thicket]

man.. 500 is a lot of money if you're not seeing a single dollar from these things lol

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave I think thats pretty much impossible, so much variation and detail you need for characters

[exotic cave]

I swear, at least find the project a home before you poach the team. >_>

Oh I don't think one size can fit all, @glacial wyvern , but at minimum there's a need for something Fuse-like that can pump out stock characters and prototyping characters without weeks per sculpt.

Right now - as far as I can tell - really sculpting, painting, and rigging a AAA character is about a month's work. Right?

Ballpark, give or take a week or two perhaps depending on the project.

I can not spend a month per character right now, even if I had the skills.

[distant totem]

so strange, I just imported the FPS character into an existing 4.25 project using the "add feature or content pack", it gave me what looks like a in progress version of the template, https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/4gp_0jp1/

[exotic thicket]

tbh it seems characters shouldn't need so much modeling work since assuming it's a human there's really only so much that a human changes

as in, it should be possible to make tools for that to significantly speed it up

same with adding clothing and accessories

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave depends on the character, could even be several months if its really high end, like god of war. But in genral yeah a month if you need the full outfit too

[exotic cave]

Yeah, that's about the feedback I've gotten from the character guys I know on LinkedIn, thanks for confirming

[glacial wyvern]

if its realistic clothes and faces you can use scans and thats faster. AANd once theres a set workflow you could optimise it

but for scans you need thousands of dollars of equipemnt so

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cavethen you can create a pipeline for characters. get something like daz/iclone skinned character, through GOZ drop it to zbrush, add details with zwrap (check Jetani on 80lvl). bake it to your skinned daz character and viola. 1 character per day. naked 🙂

[exotic cave]

Big studios can afford to pay a dozen modelers for a year or two to get a real game cast, indies can't...there's a need for a base character creator that has a few universal styles that people could then modify themselves in other modelers, certainly.

[glacial wyvern]

Isnt that what Iclone and fuse is though?

[exotic cave]

Exactly, @thorn scarab . 😄 Except I don't think my brain can handle learning five new pieces of software this year.

Sure, but iClone is another no-third-party-packs vendor.

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave i guess I need to create a tutorial lol. techically it's 10-30 min operation

[exotic cave]

I've heard from other friends that have used it that technically you don't even own the models you create in your end-user game; you theoretically are on an extended lease of some kind from iClone, though I haven't confirmed this.

[glacial wyvern]

@exotic cave theres daz3d, but thats pretty much been taken over by people making weird fetish stuff and im not sure how well it works with real time

[exotic cave]

Maybe that will change with iClone being a Megagrants recipient, or maybe Epic will buy them, but even then it would be like Megascans - I am hoping to do a lot of third-party packs over the next decade to help finance my studio.

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave if you will rebuild them through the pipeline there's no way they'd chase you

[exotic cave]

I personally have a need for software that lets me create models I own. I sleep a lot better at night. Others' needs may vary.

[exotic thicket]

@glacial wyvern we were actually testing out Daz for our retro FPS project for generating human sprites lol

[exotic cave]

Megascans got bought, outright.

Epic owns Quixel now.

[exotic thicket]

the sprites are so low resolution that you can't really tell it's a Daz model so it actually is sort of doable in our case

[exotic cave]

Could certainly be

I think whatever they got pales in comparison to the acquisition. Most Megagrants are not actually that big, Quixel was a thousand-person studio at the time of acquisition AFAIK

[thorn scarab]

@exotic thicket you can easily say if it's daz model the way how it moves because it moves incorrect 😆

[exotic cave]

I think it's a good thing for everyone that Epic bought Quixel

I mean I might not be here if they hadn't 🙂 It was the tipping point for me certainly

[exotic thicket]

@thorn scarab well the sprite animations mostly consist of 3-6 frames anyway :D

[thorn scarab]

@exotic thicket you're right

[exotic cave]

I certainly hope that so far it has benefitted them, it's been great for the Epic ecosystem

I have to imagine there are some AAA teams ready to blow minds on the PS5

I was amazed enough by Tekken/FFVII Remake over the last few years, two of my favorite franchises and they both look better than I ever thought they could

[thorn scarab]

@hearty rose I think for the most they created a problem. Look, Quixel assets are on AA+ AAA level. So the rest of your stuff should be equal - means time per asset increases drastically

@hearty rose so it's very tempting but

it's like computer 🙂 can be used for good, can be waste of time

[exotic cave]

I don't think it's a problem at all

I love dropping a Megascans model or two into a scene

Esp for closeup shots

And then I don't have to have everything be Megascans brilliant, and the closeup looks great, and the rest of the level can be my ordinary old assets and can actually run properly on the potatoes I need it to run them on.

It's certainly not to where I'd recommend small studios do entire projects in Megascans, the file sizes and build times get prohibitive

But it's still great for the ecosystem, particularly the Mixer and Bridge integrations, those are sooooo fantastic

[thorn scarab]

my point is, the wider your toolset is, the more time you spend on it the less time you spend on question - why should i play in this game. candy crash is an addictive game 🙂 my father in law plays all the time 🙂 no megascans there

[exotic cave]

Yeah I'm not even sure I would recommend Megascans at all on mobile

My experience with mobile is that vast great amounts of production phones are subpotato all the time

If there's a word that means "less than a potato"

A bean sprout. That's what a lot of phones are.

[glacial wyvern]

Megascans stuff is more intended for archvis and film. Having it available for games is nice, but you need to edit it to be useable.

[exotic cave]

The cellphone world runs on absolutely crappy mobile hardware all the time. 😄 A few people have nice phones but you can't really count on it.

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave cellphone game has the lowest bar of acceptance by players when it comes to low quality graphics, means - more assets per hour, more time for "is my game is engaging, interesting", the easiest to distribute, especially with "free to play" with in-app-purchases.

[exotic cave]

You know I find that in some ways your game is going to take a fair amount of time and your life force if it's any good anyway 😄

So I just don't shoot for lowest common denominators

About five or six years back I decided I really wanted to finish a game, so I decided, hey, let's make something low graphical quality but high production value in RPG Maker

Found a wonderful mod

It let people make serious late-16-bit action RPGs with a robust drop system, amazing, brilliant boss AI, really fun games

And then I found out how many sprites I was going to have to make for the enemies

I was like "This is going to take six months to a year, even in this antiquated technology set."

So now I just chase what my real dreams are, though I admit to a pang of loss at never getting to play the game I would have made in that kit, it was an awesome kit

[exotic thicket]

That is literally all my projects. And I don't even know how to do art

If I can make a game where all the art is boxes and circles and triangles

Maybe a few different colors

I can do that

lol

[exotic cave]

Always remember that Geometry Wars made a bunch of money and got picked up by Microsoft 😄

[exotic thicket]

lol yeah

[exotic cave]

Execution is everything

I'm gonna try to get back to sleep though, or maybe I'll just have insomnia and lurk. Either way though, good luck to one and all. 🙂

[jolly jungle]

Are savegame files readable by a person, ie could someone go in and easily change values

[exotic cave]

I almost wish Minecraft hadn't done as well as it did, by some accounts Notch is nearly insufferable now and I can go make a million-dollar game and Notch can be like "So? I sold my game for two billion dollars."

And I'll go "Yeah, but your iconic creeper was actually a pig you completely botched. 😄 "

I won't hate, well wishes to Notch and every other dev who made it, we should all do so well.

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave nah. not 2. 2,5 bln lol

[exotic cave]

Then I am one gorgeous dev.

[exotic thicket]

@jolly jungle they can be modified but it's not like "oh I'll just open notepad and change it"

[jolly jungle]

Oh

[exotic cave]

Notch made the new Legos

[open gorge]

they aren't safe from cheaters if that's what you're on about.

[jolly jungle]

What would u have to do to change it

Cuz I want to make an Easter egg where u have to hack in a value

[exotic cave]

Nah, there's plenty of room to innovate in the voxel game space

Make something amazing, don't let what people think stop you.

[open gorge]

^

[exotic thicket]

@jolly jungle a hex editor probably would be what you could use

[jolly jungle]

I think hytale was way overhyped

That trailer gave many people the wrong idea

They thought that’s what the game would actually look like

[open gorge]

@jolly jungle https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/dio5lt/editing_sav_files_outside_of_the_game/

[jolly jungle]

But it’s just a cinematic I think

[open gorge]

several great games have been born from others

Dota is one example

[thorn scarab]

@hearty rose I have an idea for you that will be 200% popular in revenue due to you're involved in VR., you can share 1% from profit after first 100 000 in revenue 🙂

very simple gamew

[open gorge]

they made a smart decision at the time

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[exotic cave]

I disagree, I think Blizz did indeed miss out on a goldmine

[thorn scarab]

@hearty rose nah i thought about that, just didn't have time to execute

[exotic cave]

Blizzard hasn't really been the same since they became Blactivision, but you have to respect their reach and power no matter what

When you can "accidentally" fall into a billion-dollar title like Hearthstone (it was supposed to be a small side project and never was expected to be a ten-figure-game), I'd say you're still doing pretty well.

[thorn scarab]

i have 3 games in development, 2 coming out this fall and the big one for next year kickstarter so i drowned but yeah someone will make the game i think about very for sure

the point is vr

so if you feel adventurous i can share

simple nda + contract if you develop it, 1% after first 100k 🙂

well it's money making idea, for sure

[exotic cave]

@thorn scarab : Link me your trailers/teasers! I'm very interested in your titles based on what I've seen today

[open gorge]

Pete that belongs in #looking-for-talent

don't plug here

[thorn scarab]

nah wrong link lol

[exotic cave]

Holy crap, you worked on Solo???

And Fury Road

[thorn scarab]

okay deleting it 🙂

i'm just saying, that with that super realism i ended up with, was total mess. my biggest mistake 🙂

i could launch already 10 games

[exotic cave]

That fractal sketch from earlier was yours, right?

[thorn scarab]

yep

[exotic cave]

I have a client right now who's working with a pretty serious Hollywood VR guy, currently working on the Star Wars VR thing at Disney, the theme park one...

They have a serious need for UE fractal tech

We should probably chat at some point

[thorn scarab]

i lived between ny/ca and london for some time. now in florida, taking care of my parents in law

they got sick a bit

[exotic cave]

(Not for the Star Wars project though, this is a side deal and not Disney)

[thorn scarab]

I barely worked there, i just knew Nolans

so if you will be adventurous about vr game, trust me, it's simple

i'll shoot you nda, if you like it, we'll sign a contract 😉

but it will be super scandalist +18 ( obviously not porn) and everyone will talk about you 😉

okie dokie

well it will be unavoidable 🙂

i see

sure thing, good night

this is not a game

this is - experience

that the max i can tell about the idea without nda 🙂

super simple in execution, super scandalist, maybe even will be in "breaking news" lol

[exotic cave]

Your career certainly warrants interest in any project you're excited about @thorn scarab 😄

[thorn scarab]

lol

[lucid socket]

There's always someone who's made more money... ...

[thorn scarab]

@lucid socket agree. lately gamedevs got billions of tools but the story is the same, it's not "how" but "what".

[lucid socket]

Sounds like you're doing some pretty interesting stuff.

[thorn scarab]

@lucid socket nah i'm on the same boat. trying to launch a few ip

[lucid socket]

Ah yeah, same here.

[autumn elbow]

Sup peeps

What we talking bout?

[thorn scarab]

quick question. does anyone seen some car designs "real life like" in ue4? not digital representation but something like wow cow. trying to learn about metal sheets with base paint + clear layers maube with some flakes or whatever surfaces

couldn't find anything yet

[autumn elbow]

BMW has one

[thorn scarab]

where

[autumn elbow]

https://youtu.be/udm1ySDmlWk

https://youtu.be/XuoFq1ZXVsY

https://youtu.be/yxdp0icxcC0

[exotic cave]

Whoooo my

Those are shiny

[thorn scarab]

bmw is not good. look at tires, also body surfaces. in real life situation it's impossible.

[lucid socket]

Mclaren also has a thing.

[autumn elbow]

There are tons

[thorn scarab]

nah i restore an old car as a hobby. so i learned a bit about surfaces paint clear and etc. they just can't be "straight" plus many other tiny things that make it "oh no" in the reality, but "please yes" in digital rep

i just trying to recreate those surfaces and so far looks sucks

trying to learn from someones example hm

[marsh chasm]

how do i add water to this

[plush yew]

@marsh chasm add a plane and assign a water material to it. check Dean Ashfords Cartoon Water Shader on youtube for a good example on the shader.

[untold swallow]

Hey How do I add an interstial Ad from Admob whenever the player dies?

[marsh chasm]

how do i open back up the detail tab

[worldly otter]

I'm trying to use unreal insights to capture cpu and network data from a game instance, but nothing is captured. Is that missing dll the reason or is there some other known problems?

I'm running a shortcut of packaged game with parameters -NetTrace=1 -trace=net, cpu, gpu

Okay got the cpu tracing working by adding -cpuprofilertrace

[rough knoll]

can i hide this?

[inland kettle]

Hello together,
i want to attach an actor to another actor an weld them together. My goal is, that the actor componets are welded to. I dont want to weld every component. So. When i weld one actor to another, the components are not effected. Ana clou what iam doing wrong here?

PS: iam working with the default scene root

[viral rivet]

when i build a scene for offline rendering and i get some problems with texture streaming can i just disable it somewhere ?

[inland kettle]

Project Settings

[viral rivet]

thanks!

[inland kettle]

🙂

At the top of the Project Settings is a search bar.

[winged crypt]

Anyone that upgraded from 4.24 to 4.25 notice anything strange with player movement speeds? Without changing the speeds, they're a lot faster in 4.25 for some reason 🤔

[open wadi]

Does UE4 have native support for an HTTP cookie jar implementation?

[honest vale]

the what

you mean does it manage cookies?

[exotic thicket]

You probably have to manage it yourself, I don't remember seeing anything about cookies in the docs

But I mean it's basically just a bunch of HTTP headers so it's not hugely complicated

[inland kettle]

OneToWeldThemAll

Problem is. The Components are not affected

I works only, when the root is a Component

[elder crest]

Hello all. im new here. do expect alot of dumb questions

my last project was done on RPG MV but i felt it was too limiting. so im trying (and failing) to learn unreal.

can you give a better screen shot? Hold the windows Key Shift and S and highlite the mapping only please

[exotic thicket]

@ebon linden have you checked if the heal custom event gets called?

It looks like the "set timer by function" is missing the object parameter so I'm not sure if it's right... the logic itself for the heal looks like it should work assuming all your variables have been set to correct values

yeah so you need to start by debugging where the problem is

so best to start by verifying the function is called correctly first

[elder crest]

interesting o.o this stuff kinda bewildering at first o.o

[lofty wave]

Ok yesterday I already talked about ue crashing my project when I open a level per BP
I looked into the logs today and its just full ofWarning: PopulatePhysXGeometryAndTransform(Convex): ConvexElem is missing ConvexMesh
Does anyone know what that means?

[elder crest]

not I, it all depends on what the convex item was in the first place. did you change any items recently? dont mine me tho im noob at this

[lofty wave]

I havent changed anything with the blueprints in the levels

It even crashes when opening a completely new level

[exotic thicket]

@ebon linden you could have a print node, or add a breakpoint, whichever is easiest for you

[lofty wave]

The last line of the log is Runnable thread TaskGraphThreadHP 18 crashed.

[elder crest]

so from watching people on yourtube. you make your own levels there no prefabs?

[exotic thicket]

right, but you also need to verify it calls the Heal event

yep

the idea is to see that the graph in there gets executed, so having a print there would indeed work

okay, the timer is probably wrong then.. try using a self node and connect it to the object parameter on the timer

[elder crest]

is there any easy/coherent videos to start learning the basics of unreal?

[whole quarry]

@elder crest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM_HYqQdToE& this is a good one

[exotic thicket]

@ebon linden Is your timer variable set correctly?

hmm not really sure 🤔 what did you change when it stopped working?

it might be a good idea to remove that parameter from Heal since it's clearly not being used... I don't know if timers support functions with parameters

[elder crest]

so i assume everyone and their grandmother use paragon assets yeah?

[whole quarry]

How does that logic work?

[elder crest]

well free assets are free so...

[exotic thicket]

I have no idea how I would integrate this asset into my retro sprite based shooter

so no I don't think everyone is using them lol

[elder crest]

haha fair enough

[untold hollow]

hi all. So I disabled projectsettings|rendering|enable static lighting hid every light source and fog and skysphere in the scene, and turned worldsettings lightmass environment intensity to zero. The sky is black now, but objects are lit up like it's bright as day. How can I make it pitch black until I add a light source?

[exotic cave]

@untold hollow : Turn off your eye adaptation.

If you scroll up a few pages I gave a lovely lesson on how to do this.

[untold hollow]

thanks

btw i figured out my input problem with a little help online, in case you're around when some poor future soul arrives. In the project input settings, the entries for usb controller, and xbox gamepad were interfering with eachother. just got rid of the usb ones, and everything is wonderful now

[elder crest]

how does unreal handle multiplayer? does is have reserved Servers or something?

[untold hollow]

you might get more details from someone else, because I'm like day 1 here. But, I asked a similar question online, and from I can gather it doesn't have reserved servers, so aside from helping you matchmake, you need to get the servers yourself or do peer to peer

[somber quail]

Hey I'm having trouble launching a light build from commandline - I've hit the character count on the "target" dialogue box for the UE4Editor-CMD shortcut. Is there any way around this or any other way to launch a lightbuild without opening the map?

[dark rune]

what does Height map translate to in UE4 materials

[rough knoll]

i forgot functions existed

👍

[plush yew]

Hello guys I need little help about following the docs:

[golden condor]

Hello

[golden condor]

I am running into an issue

[plush yew]

where is this file?

I tried to find it but I didn't

[tender pecan]

Hi @plush yew you can find where your engine files are here. https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Programming/Basics/ConfigurationFiles/index.html, compare the documentation engine version, it needs to be current or prior to yours. if you cant find the file, or you can find the file, but the setting does not seem to work, it may be why.

[alpine badger]

How can I draw not the whole square, but a part of it on landscape?

[golden condor]

How do I find the references of a particle effect?

[steel rock]

Greetings folks, I'm planning on releasing my game (basically just uploading it for anyone to play for free) but I'm confused about the licencing process. I have no idea how to go about it. I've read the publishing licence, but since my game would be completely free I'm not sure how to go about it. The game I would upload would be more for testing purposes and of course if someone enjoys it even better, but that is pretty much it. I realise I don't need to pay any royalties to Epic, but I'm just confused what to do with the licence in general. Is there a step by step process of how to go about licensing your game or am I free to just package and upload it without complicating it further? Thanks

[tender pecan]

how are you 'releasing' it?

[exotic thicket]

By using UE you accepted the licensing terms. As long as you abide by the terms of the license agreement you're fine

[exotic cave]

@steel rock : A good read on UE licensing terms below

Since your project would be public, you'll probably need this license: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/publishing

Some important points: You can't break the law. You must keep project records sufficient to satisfy legal requirements of software projects in your jurisdictions of company operation. You agree to indemnify Epic of liability related to your project. You must keep your Unreal Engine account secure and make every effort to prevent other actions that could compromise the engine/expose it to criminal hackers. If you monetize and make more than $1,000,000, Epic gets its 5%.

(Note that I am not a lawyer, and lawyers should properly be consulted on these issues when a project is large enough. There are other important points as well and it's worth it to read the whole thing. Do your own research.)

[steel rock]

@exotic cave Yea I've read it and the other licences, in other words I've done my research as well as I could, and I'm not confused about what is written in the license but the process around it regarding a game going public. In any case, your info was helpful and @exotic thicket thanks a lot, nothing better than a concise answer 😄 love it 😄

[exotic cave]

Epic is in my (very limited) experience pretty cool, they want people to make things and projects that matter, that keep getting the UE and Epic name out there 🙂

What is the jurisdiction of release? Is this some kind of public MMO or other multiplayer game designed to be released without restriction?

If you don't feel the need to tell me that's fine 😄

[steel rock]

no not at all, it is actually my first complete project and its a simple single player space top down shooter. I would use this as a way to get feedback, and to have something for my portfolio

[exotic cave]

You're 100% fine

People release student/portfolio projects every single day on LinkedIn and other social networks and Epic staff regularly give likes and approval to the best ones in my experience 😄

Don't break the law and you should be just golden.

[steel rock]

awesome 🙂 thanks

[exotic cave]

(Note that I do not speak for Epic in any way, just a journeyman dev hoping to become a UE expert, would be nice to see an Epicer weigh in on it all - 👍🏻 )

[steel rock]

true 😄

[open compass]

how come some materials work on my landscape and some go on but just display the default grid material

[exotic cave]

Landscape materials are not like regular materials very much

They require their own set of learning

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Landscape/Materials/index.html

Super powerful stuff but def read up on the differences

[open compass]

alrighty thanks, is there a way i can quickly transfer it into a landscape material?

[exotic cave]

In particular if you are using over a certain number of textures you've gotta start setting them to Shared mode or the material stops working, that's a frequent complaint of new landscape material designers

Is it just, like, an ordinary material you want to go on a landscape?

[open compass]

yep

[exotic cave]

Read up on that documentation, it's pretty good

If it still doesn't work post some screenshots of the problem you're having and I'll try to help

[open compass]

alrighty cheers

[plush yew]

ue4 crash at launching pls help

[exotic cave]

plz logs, plz screenshot

[plush yew]

it crash only in one specified project

wait

[exotic cave]

That's not much to go on, it's true.

What changed?

[plush yew]

nothing

it crashes at the splash screen

[exotic cave]

What changed about your project, computer configuration, or et cetera that was the most recent change before it stopped working?

[plush yew]

i had problem b4 for example it cant build in any project

[exotic cave]

System specs?

[plush yew]

What changed about your project, computer configuration, or et cetera that was the most recent change before it stopped working?
@exotic cave litteraly nothing

wait

i3 6100
gtx 1050
8 gb ram(ik it sucks)

[exotic cave]

Yeah an i3 is not the best choice for UE

You're lucky it's ever even run at all 😦

UE4, at least

I know it's what you have, but projects of any real size will choke those specs

[plush yew]

it ran perfectly b4

[exotic cave]

Something changed 🙂

Could be that your computer is running out of hard drive space? Your RAM is okay but you're probably hitting the swapfile regularly on 8GB these days, and if you start running out of HD space then everything on your computer that depends on your swapfile could break

[plush yew]

i have 70 gb left

[exotic cave]

Should be enough. Not sure how to help other than that. Sorry.

[plush yew]

ok

thanks

[exotic cave]

Invest in a higher end machine if you can at some point, an i3 just can't really be a serious UE dev machine. 😢

[plush yew]

yea im planning in changing my system

[merry gazelle]

I've created some building BP actors and decided I want them to have CCTV the player can switch too. Is it possible to switch between a player pawn and regular actor, or do I need to make my buildings in characters?

[plush yew]

so the project files are fucked?

[exotic cave]

@merry gazelle : You should be able to design a system that switches between various characters, though I haven't done it myself 🙂

@plush yew : I have no way of knowing without taking a look at your project, and I just can't right now, so busy.

[plush yew]

ok

[merry gazelle]

yeah but the building isn't a character, so I would need to switch it?

[exotic cave]

I mean if all you're doing is switching between camera viewports, so easy

I have a basic BP for that I can show

I'm not sure what you mean by CCTV and the building's role in this stuff?

[merry gazelle]

so the building is just a regular actor with a camera component inside

[exotic cave]

You can create a blueprint that accepts inputs to change your camera, if all you want to do is be able to have the player find like a CCTV console with various cams or whatnot

Very easy

Here's what I use to allow the user to press C to change between some scenic cams

All those inputs coming in from the left are just camera components, drag them into the blueprint to get a reference 👍🏻

"Current Camera" is a variable

[merry gazelle]

thanks, I was attempting something like this

I'll check yours out, I think it'll work better

[exotic cave]

Nope, you want Set View Target

Easiest way

[fierce forge]

why these particles appear just when i eject from the character ? https://imgur.com/a/UuawT1u

[merry gazelle]

cool, this does the job

[hearty walrus]

how do I make a cube that the player can pick up, move and lock in place?

so pressing a button locks an object in place, and pressing it again unlcoks it

like in gmod

https://www.nohello.com

@stiff hawk

[fierce forge]

where i can find a tutorial for a fishing system with a fishing rod ?

[tame marsh]

Hello, has someone worked with multiple GPUs and UE4 Editor? As in, run multiple instances of a non-packaged project, each using a different GPU?

[limber swallow]

Hello... So... I'm making a "Shooter" actor component that will spawn bullets according to parameters. The idea is that I can put it on any enemy and it will be able to shoot. Problem is... I need to get the origin of the shoots from that Actor. I was thinking about using a socket with a specific (or parametrized) name and getting it's position, but I want to be able to use for static meshes too, and those have no bones. So... is there a way around that? Or should I just limit it to use only skeletal meshes?

[restive yarrow]

Guys is it okay to delete Appdata/Local/UnrealEngine?

Anyone?

[hearty walrus]

how do I spawn an actor?

[river mesa]

@ebon linden maybe a decail works

[vocal beacon]

So I just realized on Quixel that megascan assets say something like "4 points". Is that the price of the asset? And if so, how many points do I get with the regular UE license

[noble tapir]

Have any of you used FFrameGrabber before? Trying to use it and having some problems. Trying to do #include "FrameGrabber.h" and it's saying it doesnt exist.

when I use the full path

#include "MovieSceneCapture/Public/FrameGrabber.h"

a bunch of errors come up

[limber mesa]

Anyone know of some animation software for animating objects

[hearty walrus]

blender

[exotic cave]

@vocal beacon : Megascans are free for Unreal Engine users. The points value is for use among Quixel's non-UE users (who still pay a subscription).

However, you can only distribute Megascans with end-user applications (finished games, etc.) - no third-party or Marketplace packs.

[vocal beacon]

Ah thanks

[open wadi]

Does UE4 have native HTTP cookie jar support?

[midnight gate]

im doing a poll on twitter because i want to make more tutorials vote pls thank you https://twitter.com/GloriaAnimator/status/1289228694578270208?s=20

GloriaTheAnimator (@GloriaAnimator)

hey i wanna help out artist improve their skills by making tutorials what kind of 3D or art fundamentals tutorial should i make?

please retweet for more accurate results of what knowledge i could share in our art community THANK YOU <3

#b3d #indiedev #artist #ArtistOnTwitte...

Twitter

[ember star]

Anyone have a suggestion for designing 'races' for characters? Do I want a 'Race' Actor component class, which I can make subclasses of, 'human' actor component?

or 1 actor component with a variable of some race class?

[balmy tide]

how to fix the Intellisense when using VS with UE4?

It is running very slow, detecting errors late, not giving suggestions

[midnight gate]

i dont think i specialize too much in that kind of stylization

[restive yarrow]

Is it okay to delete AppData/Local/UnrealEngine?

Will it recompile all shaders?

[crystal swallow]

i made a thing

Better than atan2 (In VectorToRadialValue) because atan2 makes it pixellated at slanted ends

[fleet helm]

Hey! Dees anyone know how to influence motion vectors in UE4? I have a lot of smearing with parameter bound WPO 😦

[grim ore]

@hearty rose there are addons for UE4 that let you use html/css for UI, look at coherent

[limpid egret]

Good luck getting access to coherent unless you're a large studio

There are open source version though on github, Mathew is right

[ember star]

Is there an easy way to associate enums with class refs? Besides doing a switch on the enum and assigning them all manually?

Or, is there a way for me to 'get all subclasses of type'

[somber quail]

Use a dictionary?

@ember starJust threw together this nonsensical example - just to show how to map an enum to a specific reference. Hopefully it makes sense

[plush yew]

Hi guys, is there a way to figure out which collision? I got this box collision that keep colliding with my physich and I have no clue where it come from

Any idea? :S

[ember star]

thanks @somber quail ill follow that lead

[marsh swallow]

@plush yew its all based on what the collision object is set to on the collision box itself. Thats what its feeding the other collision boxes it overlaps.

[plush yew]

I don't really have a box collision in my BP tho

I have absolutely no idea where this box come from

all i have is a capsule component

[ember star]

@somber quail have a suggestion for where i can define that map to use it pretty globally?

[scarlet birch]

You can add a print statement to the collision event and print the hit actor or , IIRC, press T in the editor to select transparent and just carefully click the box.

[open wadi]

@grim ore Does UE4 have native HTML cookie jar support?

[scarlet birch]

@ember star Maybe get it from GameInstance. The framework page of the docs might be helpful.

[ember star]

thanks!

[open wadi]

I ask about native HTML cookie jar support because I'm building an external authentication system for my UE4 app in node.js, but I've learned from multiple people in the know that using stateless JWTs for authorization has many flaws, and it would be superior if I could use session cookies like any normal web browser.

If UE4 doesn't have such an implementation, I would have to build my own.

But it's hard to find documentation either way. I see that UE4 has native HTTP/HTTPS support with references to saving cookies, but it's hard to determine if that's related to some sort of in-game browser.

[thorn scarab]

my brothers, who could level me up in developing super realistic rain? my results from last year. I'd love to come back to it and ramp it up 😇

[exotic cave]

@thorn scarab : That's pretty good - are you open to things like rain on the camera lens and/or on windowpanes? I can't tell from here if your windows have realistic runlets.

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave I didn't bother yet with on camera yet cuz my rain still isn't that great

[exotic cave]

I have only the barest experience writing water shaders and none for UE yet, sad to say. But what I do know is that the most realistic water looks I've seen almost always include some kind of actual droplet/runlet distortions on materials, particularly transparent ones

Ehhhh your particles look pretty solid from here

[thorn scarab]

when i done with it iguess id move to on screen and etc

[exotic cave]

But "wet" is a whole concept, and droplets merging together somehow/distorting surfaces with moving water is what really sophisticated looks I've seen do

Adding runlet distortion to scene materials is a concept. If you're just asking about the particles themselves, IDK because yours look pretty great from here. 😄

Here's a nice article on the kind of thing I'm talking about, maybe not your needs right now though : https://80.lv/articles/setting-up-rain-materials-in-substance-designer/

[thorn scarab]

so far my drops are able to fall on the surface, change their shape depends on the surface and angle, go down and fall again

[exotic cave]

Yeah but drops merge in real world, drops alone will never get the most realistic look, because rain can be both wave and particle 😄

I don't think you can easily simulate real particle stuffs merging like fluids in Houdini or anything, unless you want to get really spicy, that's a lot of work

But there's def material stuffs that can make things look "wetter"

[thorn scarab]

I see, it's a different game with drops on camera, just not everything works for it. like when you open a door outside

i'm not in the "rain" so nothing to

[exotic cave]

I agree, I don't think drops on camera can fully cover what I'm talking about, it's mostly the kind of really "wet" distortion in that picture there that can't be purely simulated with particle systems

[thorn scarab]

be on the camera and etc. plus in the reality i have no glasses so that thing is not good for such thing 🙂

[exotic cave]

I apologize then, probably not helpful to your current needs 😄

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave nope it's actually good, I need to work on my windows shaders to create interesting look

[exotic cave]

Real wet out in the world splashes around, drops get on your windows, your stuff, even in your eyes

That's why I suggest

[thorn scarab]

also car windows and etc

[exotic cave]

I seriously think even just a little bit of a wet-camera look could be cool, esp if it weren't uniformly applied, I may experiment with that at some point as this has me interested now

Variable coverage that would allow focus on scene objects but kind of simulate the effect of water from heavy rain splashing into the corners of your eyes

Who knows, could be bad 🙂

[thorn scarab]

@exotic cave it is cool if my characters would have helmets or glasses but so far none of that. maybe i'd use it for some scene with helmet or whatever

[exotic cave]

Yeah that's a really good idea

[thorn scarab]

but in other situations it's not as useful unfortunately

[vivid plume]

Hey guys, how do you handle bug fixing in your game especially if the game crashes in a certain situation?

[exotic cave]

Breakpoints, logs

Do you know how to use breakpoints in your Blueprints?

[hearty walrus]

how do I make an object translucent if it's in the way of the camera?

[vivid plume]

yeah of course but the game crashes in the package version and only for clients

[exotic cave]

Hmmm, I'm not a build expert yet in UE. Def sounds related to your deployment process

Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of the hardest working devs in the world, running in Viewport and in package will always be somewhat different

The package works for you, but not them?

@hearty walrus : Explain "way of the camera" more? You mean testing to see if an object is in front of the camera and blocking other objects?

[hearty walrus]

eyah

yeah*

[exotic cave]

You can cast a ray or series of rays from your eye position (often directly forward, but you may need to test a range of angles) and see what you hit, and adjust the material accordingly.

[hearty walrus]

so if a part is blocking view of the player, make it translucent

[exotic cave]

However, you will probably have to hotswap materials at runtime as you really don't want to use a partially transparent model for everything in your scene all the time.

[hearty walrus]

it's only the walls

[exotic cave]

You would cast the ray, see what you hit, see if that object meets your conditions for being big/important enough to make translucent, and then swap/adjust transparency on the material as needed.

[vivid plume]

the package is not the problem, I think I made a misstake by disconnecting the clients or something because the game crashes if the host moves the party from the map where you are game over over to the lobby and right there the game crashes for the clients

[exotic cave]

"Only the walls" is a lot of screen space at any given time. 😄 Transparency is super expensive. You super don't want to just have a bunch of materials that are rendering in transparent mode if they are fully opaque, the shader won't be smart enough to tell the difference unless you get really fancy.

Basically, cast a ray, hit a wall, see if it matches your criteria, if so, you activate material partial transparency (fully transparent would make it disappear)

[hearty walrus]

there's 4 walls

[exotic cave]

@vivid plume : I can't help debug networking, sorry. 😦 Out of my wheelhouse.

[hearty walrus]

so each room has 4 walls, that need to go transparent so the player can see what they are doing

[exotic cave]

Doesn't matter how many walls there are. It matters how big the walls are on the screen, because if you have a 2 triangle wall that's taking up 50% of the screen it's still rendering hundreds of thousands of pixels.

[vivid plume]

thanks nevertheless 😄

[exotic cave]

Is this for something like an Onimusha style camera? I don't know how to describe technically....

Semi-fixed camera that needs to see through parts of buildings to maintain a cinematic perspective

I don't find too many good links on an existing procedure, @hearty walrus . But the process I described to you should work, if you're technically proficient enough.

Do you know how to cast rays?

This is the general approach - you'd replace the ray casting from the third person described here with one casting out of your eye position: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/Physics/Tracing/HowTo/SingleLineTraceByChannel/index.html

Once you have the object that your Trace has hit (as raycasts are called in UE) you can do whatever you want with it

If all you need is either fully opaque/fully transparent then you can just turn off rendering on the object when you hit it. If you need AAA cool partial transparency you'll have to get fancy. Good luck!

[rain pier]

Hey everyone,

Posting here since I don't find any appropriate channel.
We are working on an RPG with a lot of text and dialogs, be it random NPC or cinematics. I'm wondering if you would have any advice on a tool to use to keep track of all this text, especially for Localization.
We are going to work with a writer who doesn't know anything about UE and ideally we'd like to simply extract his Excel into UE and have it work in a Datatable.

Does any of you have any experience on this ? If there is a recommended workflow or something. I went through the dialog systems on the marketplace and in most of them you just enter the text directly in UE, it doesn't come from a datatable. If you know any asset that works like that, I'd be glad to hear about it

So basically every text in the game should point towards a Datatable eventually is that it ?

[plush yew]

why i feel like ue4 is missing alot of features ?

the ui dont show all its power

[quartz cosmos]

Hello!How can I call a function when an Actor is Destroyed?I tried OnDestroyed.AddDynamic() and it didn't work.

[rain pier]

Gotcha, still unsure how to technically do it but at least the idea is correct

[exotic cave]

One thing that the big engines still lack is the kind of truly robust database support and integration that desktop apps have had for awhile, @rain pier

There are some SQL plugins you could explore as well however

[rain pier]

Single player RPG

[exotic cave]

Yeah, might not need it then 🙂

Still a big fan of SQL however for anything truly data intensive

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/driving-gameplay-with-data-from-excel

This might also be relevant

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/directexcel

I always tend to prefer Blueprints to C++ these days 😄

[rain pier]

Oooh that looks super interesting

[exotic cave]

I'm sure I'll have to deep dive into UEC++ eventually

[rain pier]

I'll check it out

[exotic cave]

Not too expensive 😄

[rain pier]

Thanks for the help guys

I feel like the doc is severely lacking on how to handle hundreds of pages of text

[exotic cave]

I think it's pretty good, just sometimes hard to find what's needed unless your search skills are very good

And some articles are certainly intimidating for the newcomer

[open gorge]

some of the comments are lack luster as well

some are fantastic though

[thorn scarab]

@rain pier unreal has API which includes operations with dialog system. you can connect any front end you want to manipulate with dialogs.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/API/index.html

[untold swallow]

Hey Do I need To get SDK if I need to test the game on mobile with usb cable?

Okay thanks

[worn oasis]

for unreal engine, whats the max resoutio an HDRI can be?
4k or 8k?

8k right?

[digital badger]

8K

Am I blind? Is there a share functionality in the Marketplace( launcher version)?

Need to copy the link

[open wadi]

Question: Does UE4 have native HTML cookie jar support?

[ember star]

I have a bunch of classes that I dont ever create/spawn, i just use a lot of 'get Class Defaults'. Am i designing this wrong?

[warm plume]

Hello everyone!! Can someone help me with somthing :(

[plush yew]

Hello, is there a way to just turn off shadows?
and is there a way to make the void black, instead of white?

Hello everyone!! Can someone help me with somthing :(
@warm plume

just ask the question.. 😄 🙂

[warm plume]

@plush yew ty

I edit an animtion on my oc when I hit save/comply it dose not save

The change I make on that animtion dose not happend even if I press save

[plush yew]

make sure that you're not previeuwing/playing the game if you are editing in unreal.

[warm plume]

I do not do that

It's just do not save the change I make on the animtion after I retaget

[worn oasis]

im having trouble with lighting

im trying to use this hdri, which i have loaded into the scene, but i dont know how to "activate" it

[thorn scarab]

nah

just add inverted sphere

and dump this material

[worn oasis]

because after building the light and all, i still get this in the outside

[thorn scarab]

this is inverted sphere 4.25.2

and this is your basic material

[plush yew]

does someone now how to turn off shadows?

i hate it to add lights, and there is previeuw everywhere.. xD

@plush yew on static mesh?

or on the light

@plush yew see the green mark, turn it off

on ur lighting

on the lightning bulb? i only have 1 in the hole map.

i'll have a check

you're map looks nice btw! 🙂

[fiery mortar]

is there way to record the gameplay inside ue4?

[plush yew]

i don't think so, but if you have something of geforce installed, try shadowplay.

@fiery mortar you can use fraps software

[fiery mortar]

ok thanks

[plush yew]

@plush yew it worked, thank you very much!!

👌

1 question, do you know how to make a save progress option? @plush yew

@plush yew no i cant program

aah daim, but thank you for you're help anyways. 😄

good! i'm making some levels right now, and setting up a command to tp you back when you hit the wrong block

happy new profile noises

[hearty walrus]

how do I make a tube that dispenses a box when a button is pressed?

[digital badger]

lmao as if I had that many browser tabs open that I couldn't build PCH

[opal totem]

@hearty walrus spawn actor

[hearty walrus]

confused variable

@opal totem ?

I've already got a cube in-scene

is there a way to clone it

[opal totem]

right click the cube in scene and make it an actor then use that to spawn actor

i'm not sure about duplicating i'm sure there is a way to do that though