[TUTORIALS] Photons Be Free: Mini-tutorials and other curiosities

[Tim Hobson]

Rigid mesh Animation using bake Destruction simulation

Destructible's How-To 2: Rigid Mesh Animation (No Bones Required!)

Thanks to Osman for his help in getting this working originally for me!

Overview:

**While this tutorial is meant to show phyiscs simulations that baked to an animation timeline you can use this for other animations that are not physics or destruction oriented.**

In this tutorial we will take a physics simulation created in Max (sub in your own modeling software if need be) and baked to the animation timeline and bring that into Unreal Engine 4 without the need to rig, skin, or use any bones for the chunks that are being animated.

**This will not cover using PhysX Labs plugin or MassFX to bake the animation to the timeline. This will assume you've already gotten to that point and start from there to UE4.

Max 2013 file and FBX file assets: https://www.dropbox.com/s/wq3bqudxg5...ssets.zip?dl=0

Step 1: Before Exporting the Animation

Animation we'll export:



This is my mesh with the timeline animation:



Once you've got your animation setup the way that you would like you'll need to select all the Fracture chunks or pieces and place them in a group:

You can do this in Max by going to the menu bar > Group > Group > pop-up window > Give your group a name



After you've grouped your pieces we can export.

Select your group and choose Export Selected.

Use these FBX settings, making sure that you include the animation. You can specify the exact frames you want to export if you'd like)

In my animation it is ~200 frames




Step 2: Importing your Rigid Mesh Animation into UE4

When you import the FBX into UE4 make sure that you've selected the option for "Import as Skeletal" for this to work correctly.

Use the following settings:




Step 3: Using your Rigid Mesh Animation

Place your skeletal mesh in your scene and create a reference to it in your Level BP and pull off a the pin to create a "Play Animation" Node. Select the animation and whether it should loop.



Then Play in Editor which should result in this.

This technique was used extensively in the Elemental Demo for the destruction when the Lava is flowing and shattering the rocks.

I hope you've enjoyed this and if you have any questions feel free to ask!

EDIT: Apparently I left my music playlist playing in the background. Enjoy the music courtesy of Star Trek.

[Tim Hobson]

Destructible How-To 3: How to use "Large Chunk Threshold"



Overview:

This video will look at how to use Large Chunk Threshold in your Destructibles component settings in the Details Panel.

What is Large Chunk Threshold?

Quite simply this is the minimum size that each chunk must be to be considered a large blocking chunk to prevent the player from passing. Anything that is below this threshold will not block the collision capsule of the player. This is extremely great in circumstances where you want to have destruction with smaller pieces that do not obstruct the player from reaching the goal, which can happen with smaller threshold levels. Test and tweak accordingly to get the best results!


Project Download Link

In this demo here are some of the settings:

DM 1 is set to the default of 25.
DM 2 is set to 75 and only some chunks will block the player and others will allow the player to walk through with no collision
DM 3 is set to 500 which means that none of the chunks are larger than that value so the player can walk through all the chunks.

Keep in mind that this is only for the chunks and does not apply to the DM before the fracture occurs.

[Tim Hobson]

Project 8: Day/Night Level Switch with different baked lighting



Overview:

A while ago I had an AnswerHub question that asked could there be different lighting baked for levels that occupy the same place. The goal was to have a Day and Night version of the same place. This is possible with some doubling of assets and using level streaming to handle the switch.

With this demo for the question I set up my base level (persistent level) that would handle the Level BP with the level streaming switch. Then I would setup two additional levels. 1 for the Day and 1 for the Night.

Now that I had this in place all that was needed to do was to toggle each maps Visibility via the Levels window and build lighting for each individually. It's completely possible for each level to have it's own baked lighting using this method. It's also key to remember that anything in the Base (Persistent) level will be baked into any level below it. (Ie. if you have a blue light in your persistent and you only want to bake lighting for the day map, the night map will also bake this blue lighting.)

You will see that each map I duplicated everything so that I could have the day setting and the night settings for their respective map. This is a broad example just to show the technique is possible.

Project Download Link

Just press Play to see the results. If you look at the level BP you can disable the event begin play and load in by key press of F for Map 1 and G for Map 2.

[Hevedy]

Useful and nice tutorials.
Thanks you Tim.

[BrUnO XaVIeR]

Jump pads! I love jump pads

[Tim Hobson]

Those look like a lot of fun BrUnO! A lot more fun than my simple setup.

[Tom Looman]

Lovely collection! Definitely some gems here for my side projects

[Tim Hobson]

Other How-To 2: Creating (Mostly) and Importing a APEX Cloth asset created with 3Ds Max and PhysX DCC Plugin

Requirements using this method: 3Ds Max/Maya and PhysX DCC Plugin

If you need the PhysX DCC plugin you can sign up at Nvidia.com. This page will help get you started: http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_dcc_plugins.html

Overview:

This will be a short tutorial to quickly cover creating a simple cloth asset and importing it into the Unreal Engine 4. There have been similar tutorials already, but mostly wanted to cover a written tutorial for this. The video is just an added bonus as I had made it while troubleshooting the process for an AnswerHub post.

FBX and APB Files: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fi5nxcvxju...Cloth.zip?dl=0

Video: This will not cover much other than a run through of the process.

Step 1: Create a plane with a lot of verts (within reason) and convert to Edit Poly



Pretty straight forward. Create a plane and add some verts to it. I just used an arbitrary size and set the length and width segments to 24 for this demonstration.

Step 2: Apply a material to the plane (Important!)



This, at least to me, is a very important step that confused me quite a bit when I first started using cloth. If you do not apply a default material to your mesh and use the one that is on the mesh when you created it there will be no material assigned to the cloth asset when you import it into UE4.

So make sure to add a default material otherwise you'll not have a material to be able to assign the cloth apb file to your mesh later when imported into UE4.

Step 3: Create a bone



Create a bone that we can use in the next step to "skin" to our mesh.

Step 4: Add a Skin Modifier to your Plane

Add a skin modifier via the drop down modifier list to your cloth plane.



Once the modifier is selected locate the Bones: "Add" button and click this. This will bring up a small window where you can select the bones in the scene to skin your mesh to.



Step 5: Add the PhysX cloth modifier via the PhysX toolbar

Next you'll need to add the cloth modifier from the PhysX DCC Plugin toolbar



Once this has been added you will see it populate in your modifier stack along with its settings when selected.



Step 6: Paint weight accordingly for your cloth and test with the simulation

Under the settings locate "Paint" and set a value for the Brush Value.

I will use 200 for mine. The default is 0 which effectively means there will be no cloth simulation for any areas painted with a 0 weight.



Select the brush to paint the weighting.



As you paint you will see red trace lines that come out. This is the 200 cm value that we used. If you use higher or lower values this will be longer or shorter. 0 will have no trace lines.



Step 7: Test your assets simulation

Select the play button here to see your cloth simulation.



If you want to see wind simulation to see a more practical use of your cloth in the settings locate the Wind section and use these settings before hitting play.

Adjust according to your needs.



Simulation result:



Step 8: Select the Cloth and Bone to export selected as and FBX

Select the bone and the cloth plane. Then go to File > Export > Export Selected > Choose a name for your file > Change File Type to FBX > Click Save

Step 9: Export the scene (not just selected) with the file type PhysX and APEX


Same as above with exception that we will just export the scene this time and not just the selected object.

File > Export > Change file type to "PhysX and APEX" > Click Save



After you click save a new window will pop up. Use these settings:



Step 10: Open UE4

Self explanatory.

Step 11: Import the FBX we just created for our Cloth plane

Locate your FBX that was first exported with just your Cloth plane and bone and import this into UE4.

Use these settings:


Once that is imported locate the cloth skeletal mesh and open the asset.

Once this is opened verify that you do have your material slot. If not, you'll need to go back to Max/Maya and add a default material.



Step 12: Open the our Cloth plane skeletal mesh to apply the cloth apb file we exported last

Now we'll click the the option to "Add APEX clothing file..." and navigate to where we saved our APB file we created.



After importing the apb file you'll be able to assign this to the material via a drop down.

You will also notice that you can adjust various settings for your apb file to control how the cloth reacts. These are all settings that can be setup via the PhysX DCC Plugin as well.

[Tim Hobson]

Wiki Tutorial 1: Lighting Troubleshooting and Tips Guide

https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Lighti...eshootingGuide

This one is still very much a Work-In-Progress as Eric and I work to get some simple troubleshooting and tips up for everyone. We've wanted to do this for a long time and have gotten a little bit of a push to make this available for those having issues.

The majority of these will be simple steps with a little bit of explanation for the "why" of it all.

Over the next couple of weeks Eric and I will be updating this regularly as we knock some of these out.

If you see anything missing or something you want covered please let me know and I'll add it to our list.

Here is what has been added so far:

General Lighting Tips:
- Why are my shadows black?
- Converting BSP to Static Mesh Lightmapping
- Two-Sided Lighting for Single Sided Meshes, or Why does my light come through the roof?
- What if I don't want to have lightmaps at all or my game doesn't need them?
- Why Does this look nothing like it did before, or Engine Scalability and you
- Why is there a red 'X' over my light?

Movable (Dynamic) Lighting Tips
- Shadow Bleed or Incorrect Shadows
1. Directional Light ONLY: Cascaded Shadow Map Settings
2. Adjusting Cascades for better Quality
3. All Dynamic Light Types (Light Tab Settings)
- Why does my Movable light shine through my mesh at far distances?


Static Lighting Tips:
- Lightmap Resolution / Shadow Quality (Static mesh vs BSP)
- What does this "Warning: Overlapping UVs" nonsense mean?
- How do I generate lightmap UVs in the editor?
- How to control Global Illumination with Static Lighting?, or The Wonderful Thing About Bounce
- Why is there shadow splotches on my static mesh?, or How to clean those dirty lightmaps?
- What is the "Lighting needs to be rebuilt" in the Top Left corner error?
- Lighting Quality Comparison, or Production > Preview

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Planned:

These are done just not up yet.




In the works.

[K-MUS]

Hi Tim, the link of the project
Gregdumb's wiki tutorial for Day Night system (with some tweaks)

Redirect you to a dropbox file DayNightProject1.zip of 1,16 KB. I downloaded and it only has 2 .ini

Thx for sharing this tutorials !!!

[Tim Hobson]

You're totally right on that. I've fixed it now.

Thanks for letting me know.

[Mr_SquarePeg]

Hey Tim -

The Split Screen tutorial images are not showing would you mind fixing them?

[Tim Hobson]

Hey Tim -

The Split Screen tutorial images are not showing would you mind fixing them?

It's fixed now. Thanks for point it out!

https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...l=1#post209758

[Mr_SquarePeg]

It's fixed now. Thanks for point it out!

https://forums.unrealengine.com/show...l=1#post209758

Hey thanks for that

Stay Epic Tim!

[Nudlegaru]

Thank you very much for all the tutorials and project files.