Hey everyone,
I noticed that vertex colors that have been made in 3ds max or handpainted inside UE4 BEFORE using the merge Actors tool to create a new static mesh project down onto the automaticly generated lods great, but as soon as I paint a single stroke on a mesh inside my level, that corrupts the way the vertex colors are projected onto the lods.
The vertex colors start bleeding between elements on the lods, even if there was just a minor change on the other end of the model.
Is there a way to forece the handpainted vertex colors to project down onto the lods with the same non-average hardness that the vertex colors get projected, that weren´t altered from how they were when the mesh and lods were created?
Here are some screenshots of what I´m talking about. The left row was slightly altered after it was placed in the level, while the right row had it´s vertex colors painted before beeing made into a static mesh, and has them “baked into the mesh itself”.
Doesn´t anyone know how to do that? There must be someone who took a look at how the vertex paint projection works in detail!
I also posted a question on answer hub, but got no response there aswell.
As far as I am aware, there is no functionality to project painted vertex color data from LOD0 onto lower LODs, but I’d join you in requesting such feature.
It is hard to tell what to make of this since none of those look like vertex colors due to the subtle edge wobble and lack of any interpolation. I am aware you can import vertex colors with hard edges but that involves splitting the vertices. I am not aware of a way to paint with hard edges like your upper left image since the brush will always overlap and paint on both verts, leading to interpolation.
This model was merged from many small, completely seperated brick objects, each of which has his own shade of red vertex paint. The red vertex paint is used to give identical objects an offset in UV space to prevent a row of bricks from forming a pattern when seen next to each other. The Red vertex paints different shades are therefore indicating the former seperated objects in the screenshots above.
The problem I´m having is this: The lods normaly work great with this vertex coloring. They take on the lod0 vertex colors without mixing up different shades. The offset per brick is maintained on higher lod levels this way.
However, if I edit any instance of this mesh by painting additional vertex colors onto it, that causes the lods to start estimating an average between the seperated bricks, causingt the different shades of reds to bleed into one another.
What I am looking for is a way to force the vertex paint to be projected down as it is beeing projected down without additional handpainted changes.
In other words: I want to maintain the different shades of red on all lod levels, which works with the unaltered vertex paint (that was created in 3ds max or in UE4 before I merged the block together), but not if I add any stroke on an instance after dragging it into the level. This is a problem since I want to use the green channel to mask moss etc.
The Problem is not that there isn´t one, the problem is that the are two.
When the mesh is created to imported, the vertex colors are translated to all lods flawlessly. Each brick stays as 1 solid shade of red.
But when I paint additional vertex colors onto a mesh in the level, f.ex. moss, that I want to paint manually per instance of the mesh, the lods start “estimating” an average shade, leading to the different shades of red bleeding from one block to another.
To clarify: I dont want to learn about a way to paint with hard edges. These models consist of small, seperated elements that are colored using the fill tool. What I need is a way to force the lod levels to maintain this strickt seperation of shades, as they already do by default. But I need to force them to do so after altering the vertex paint. Because right now, they start to bleed into one another when I start painting unique details per instace on top of the default vertex paint of the mesh.
Anyone? It really would be a great help if anyone could tell me if there is a way to do what I want to do or not. Somebody HAS to know this kind of stuff.
