Can vertex colors painted inside Unreal be transferred to the mesh inside the content browser?
Can they be exported?
Can they be instanced for all meshes for painting with the foliage tool?
Hi Kevin,
Thank you for your questions.
Can vertex colors painted inside Unreal be transferred to the mesh inside the content browser?
Yes. You can use the Copy to Source Mesh button between the Fill and Import buttons. This will apply the
vertex colors to the mesh that has the vertex material applied to it.
Can they be exported?
No, painted vertices are not able to be exported currently. Only painted textures can currently be saved out and then exported. I have since created a feature request for exporting vertex colors because of this post.
Can they be instanced for all meshes for painting with the foliage tool?
I am not sure if I understand the question. If you copy the vertex painting to the source mesh like in your first question, it will change all of the instances of the mesh in the level including foliage. Does this answer your questions?
Cheers!
Alexander
K, thx. That helps if wanting to do a quick vertex paint for a small plant inside UDK.
Looked almost all over for software that exports vertex colors and auto random generation for plants. Besides the big software. Max, Maya, Softimage.
Blenders vertex colors export fine. Maybe I can look into how to collapse the vertex color layer stack in Blender 3d’s python.
Can still paint layers in Blender with add but it’s visually annoying!
Or paint separate layers but then they have to be baked to tex. and baked back to vertex. Unless I’m missing an very important hidden function!
And someone was helpful to share for us new to python!
Collapse vertex colors stack in Blender. Just thought I would post with the vertex topic. Seems to work in object or edit mode. Just a quick test. Helpful for foliage creation.
Ideas for Vertex Color Scripting - Python Support - Blender Artists Community.
A developer did want to add the comment that you can promote an instance you have painted on to a static mesh via the mesh paint tool and then export. This workflow could probably be improved, so we would love any feedback.
I still think an auto generation of vertex colors of an imported mesh would be a great feature for Unreal 4. I guess this could be done by plugins by C++ coders. I believe it’s basically simple but I’m no coder and I guess it is a 3-4 level script because of the RGB, combining and maybe a few mask settings to get the center of leaves and outer edges. I find most model with square planes rather than the shape of the leaf itself, hanging invisible faces around the leaf.
Red is “edge deformation” with black down the middle.
Green is “per leaf for variation” for randomness.
Blue is “per leaf bending” and blue in the center black on outer edges. (backwards because brightest blue doesn’t move.)
*Please correct me if I’m wrong with the color channels because It refers to another engine and 1 of the colors may need to be swapped. I don’t believe it states exactly in the UDN documentation.