Wavy texture mapping around building window openings

Development Character & Animation
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1

I’m very new to Unreal, and really enjoying getting to know the engine, but I’ve come across something seemingly really basic that is starting to make my hair fall out…

Imagine a building with a row of rectangular window openings. When I UV map the wall in 3dsMax it looks fine, but after exporting it into Unreal the mapping is wavy/distorted around the openings. I’m guessing its triangulation related and seems to be worse the longer and thinner the polys. Triangulating in Max and converting editable poly to editable mesh doesn’t help, nor does turning triangulation off in the FBX export. I’m using Max 2014 (and exporting as FBX 2014), Unreal 4.9.2 and my graphics card is a slightly creaky Quadro K3000M.

These images should show what I mean (please ignore the stone block courses not matching in the depth of the wall/window reveals):

funkymapping.jpg
funkymapping.jpg800×1600 522 KB

Now I’ve found a solution - which is to create new horizontal and vertical edges around the openings, like this:

funkymappingsolutionmaybe.jpg
funkymappingsolutionmaybe.jpg800×1016 182 KB

But is subdividing the geometry really the answer? In some situations eg: around curved arched windows this could really add to my vert/poly count. I’m not sure I’m happy about adding geometry that isn’t really visible… and I’m also a bit puzzled about how I’ve managed to get away without encountering this issue with other game engines in the past. I would really appreciate some help with this - is my geometry at fault or something else? Thanks!

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Anybody? I don’t want to offend by saying I never encountered this issue with Un*** - not least because because that engine is far from perfect and there is so much to like with Unreal. But this seems like such a basic thing. I can’t help feeling there is a ‘secret’ thing everyone does when exporting fbx from Max that I’ve somehow missed. Also please excuse the big ugly screen grabs/notes in my original post, I wanted to leave no doubt about what the issue was :slight_smile:

3

2 different suggestions:
#1 enable “high precision UVs” in mesh settings.
#2 export the mesh from unreal engine, and import back into max. If UV texture looks wrong back in 3dsmax, then you can probably see whats wrong with the mesh/uvs.

4

Thanks for the reply somawheels. I did try enabling ‘high precision UVs’ and I didn’t notice any change. I also tried collapsing to editable mesh before export in case it was a weird editable poly glitch. Exporting the mesh from unreal is a good idea though - if its wonky in Max then it might imply the triangulation is the issue. Thanks again, I’ll report back once I get chance to test.