[WIP] Modular Vehicle Vol. 2

[Kelheor]

I'm working on the next volume of Modular Vehicle project. In this thread, I will post my progress on it.

Following vehicles were used as references in order to make modules for this pack:

• Bereg A-222 130mm coastal mobile artillery system
• АА-60-160-01 Airport Crash Tender Vehicle
• MAZ 543 cargo truck
• Fighting vehicle for support combat duty missile system
• 9K58 "Smerch"

Main features:

• 5 vehicle presets with a lot of module combinations between them
• Advanced customization system
• Dynamic vehicle creation at runtime
• Add your own modules/module types to extend existing capabilities
• N-wheeled vehicle support
• HUD support
• Camouflage support
• Different anti-stuck measures (savepoints, automatic and manual respawn, wheel jumpers)
• 2 types of camera for the vehicle with zoom support
• Vehicle AI: can find a path to waypoint, can follow to the target
• Enemy AI examples
• Health/Damage system(with environment support)
• Various weapon and projectile blueprints
• Showcase level with advanced landscape material setup and procedural grass and trees placement
• More will be added soon

Customization System features:

• Change Materials
• Edit selected module material
• Edit all materials at once
• Material layers support
• Texture masks support
• Custom skins support
• Support for changing custom scalar, vector and texture parameters
• Change Modules
• Save/Load vehicle configurations
• Pre-defined vehicle configurations
• Weapons/accessories support via custom sockets
• Module compatibility checks
• Module installation checks
• Change environments
• Customization level
• Test all module actions
• More will be added soon

Vehicle weapons:

• Artillery turret
• Rocket launcher turret
• Rocket pod
• Gatling gun
• Rotateable machine gun
• Automatic AA turret
• More will be added soon

Module types:

• Chassis
• Main Module
• Cabin
• Side Bags
• Back Stand
• Stopper
• Middle Section
• Weapons
• Accessories
• Boosters
• More will be added soon

Video:

Screenshots:




I'm working on this project for some time already, so if you want to read my progress from the beginning and maybe learn a few tips, you can read polycount thread here: https://polycount.com/discussion/209785/wip-ue4-modular-vehicle-vol-2

Feel free to tell me what you want to see in this package.

[Kelheor]

Reserved post

[Kelheor]

Reserved post

[Kelheor]

Day 49

Completed high poly version of fighting vehicle for support combat duty missile system.

[Kelheor]

Day 50.

Game ready version is ready. Turret also working fine.

[Kelheor]

Day 52

Completed high poly version of 9K58 "Smerch"

[Kelheor]

In this short tip, I want to describe my workflow of making vehicles for this project.
I hope it It would be helpful in the future for those, who would want to add new models to the existing project.

0. Decide what you want to make.

1. Gather references. You need all sides of the vehicle, because they are mostly asymmetrical.

2. Make high poly mesh by using reference images. I'm using Blender. Mostly I'm using the following modifiers: mirror, bevel, subdiv, triangulate, array, boolean, sometimes solidify and wireframe.

3. When high poly is ready, it's time to clean everything. Start from checking and applying Scale/Rotation.

4. Then you need to check your modifiers:

• Make sure that bevel has 4 segments to prevent issues with materials. I'm using Angle or Weigh Limit Mode. Sometimes it's useful to use Clamp Overlap or set bevel weighs manually (I'm using HOps, so most of the weights are set automatically).
• Make sure that your mirror modifier doesn't have Bisect or Flip U/V checkboxes selected. One Flip U checked and you're risking to redo a lot of o work due to UV overlapping after export, so check carefully.
• Make sure that your meshes have triangulate modifier with Keep Normals on. It helps in a situation when you don't have a good topology and don't want any issues with UV later.
• If you're using subdiv, 2 subdivisions are enough for baking.
• Apply boolean or solidify modifiers if you didn't do this already.
• If you have linked duplicates, which exists in multiple collections, make sure execute "Make single user" command with Object Data checkbox selected, so each collection have duplicates, related to their own collection and they not shared between collections.

5. Apply materials to your meshes. If you have HOps, you can select multiple objects, press Alt+M and apply a material to all selected objects.

6. Make UV for your meshes. Use Shift+L hotkey to select all objects with the same material to pack UV. For cylinders do UV manually, for box-like meshes Smart Unwrap mostly is enough. Apply Average Island Scale before packing your UV. Don't forget to apply solidify modifier before doing UV.

7. Create a rig for your meshes:

• For armature set rotation X to -90 and scale to 0.01 for UE4
• A vehicle for UE4 should be placed in X forward axis
• Use 3D cursor and Shift-S hotkey to place bones in the exact location.
• Use Ctrl+P -> With Empty Groups to bound meshes to an armature
• Set vertex groups for your meshes.
• Make sure that everything works fine in Pose mode

8. Save everything and exit Blender. Then copy your .blend file and rename postfix from High Poly to Game Ready. Open a new file in Blender.

9. For each mesh remove unnecessary (for low poly model) meshes, remove bevel and subdiv modifiers. Rename collection names postfix from High Poly to Game Ready.

10. Save everything again and exit Blender. Then copy your .blend file and rename postfix from Game Ready to Bake. Open a new file in Blender.

11. Append high poly collections into your bake file. Unhide all collections except current high poly and game ready for the selected model. Then by selecting similar meshes and moving them, explode model parts to get better baking results.

12. Export your bake meshes (2 meshes for each model - high poly and game ready for baking) and import them into Marmoset Toolbag.

13. Add baker, Set Multiple Texture Sets checkbox, select required materials, select all maps except Material ID, Set Fix Mirrored Tangents checkbox, Change output name, set samples to 16x, for Normal maps set Flip Y checkbox if you're using UE4, set High Poly and Low Poly meshes, hide High Poly. Make test bake with normal map only to see if everything is ok. Then bake all other maps. Paint Scew/Offset if needed.

14. Open Game Ready .blend file and export your game ready models with armatures (you can also export the combined mesh, which contains all models, to simplify the texturing process). Open Substance Painter 2, import your mesh and baked textures. Apply baked textures. Add custom channels (L8). Apply masks and export normal maps + masks + RGBAO maps (packed with Grime/Scratch/Dust/AO masks).

15. Import your game ready meshes and created textures into UE4. For masks texture set compression settings to masks. Make Physics Assets for meshes. Apply non-customizable materials (like mirror material) to the meshes. Create blueprints for new modules.

16. Test that everything works and looks fine.

[Kelheor]

Day 54

Completed game ready version of 9K58 “Smerch
Artstation (video included): https://www.artstation.com/artwork/BmJQvm

[Kelheor]

MAZ 543 Cargo Truck - High Poly Version

[Kelheor]

АА-60-160-01 Airport Crash Tender Vehicle - High Poly Version

[Kelheor]

A-222 Bereg 130mm coastal mobile artillery system - High Poly

[Kelheor]

Day 56

What's new:

• Vehicle got much stable driving behavior - no more sudden stops due to landscape irregularities or crazy spinning wheels when they in the air (now it's a per tire check if wheels touching ground instead of a general check for all tires)
• Lots of improvements and bug fixes, related to inter-module communications
• Worked a little on customization level demo environments as well as on the ability to take screenshots

In-game customization level screenshot examples:

[Kelheor]

Day 58
Working on the landscape.

[Kelheor]

Day 60

[fred64]

Very interested... definitely a buy for me as it would perfectly fit my project (see signature)

I have a few questions:

- Do you plan on having a decal system as well ?

- Do you plan to enable custom user textures (maybe though an optional C++ addon as I do not see it doable in a BP only project...) ?

Anyway keep up the good work !

Fred