Did you know? Every one of these messages is hand-typed live, just for you.

Texture alignment on curved pipe

For questions and discussion about UnrealEd, UnrealScript, and other aspects of Unreal Engine design.

Moderators: Semfry, ividyon

User avatar Sat42
Skaarj Warlord Skaarj Warlord
Posts: 865
Joined: 14 Jul 2013, 16:42
Contact:

Subject: Texture alignment on curved pipe

Post Posted: 25 Aug 2014, 19:41

Aligning textures on a curved pipe/tube is something I had already undertaken with mixed results.

So does anyone know how best to align textures on a curved pipe? Is skewing textures the only way?
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

User avatar Mister_Prophet
Red Nemesis Leader Red Nemesis Leader
Posts: 3098
Joined: 11 Nov 2007, 23:30
Location: Lost in Oraghar

Subject: Re: Texture alignment on curved pipe

Post Posted: 26 Aug 2014, 03:13

There's the easy and effective way and then there is the hard and "flawless" way.

Depends mostly on the brush and the shape, some angles are easier to flatten most sides to floor and then align the untouched sides with a good trim texture as if they are a wall (good if you've got an octagonal pipe or similar). Making texture properties high shadow detail helps, as does bright corners for certain situations. Usually how I'll leave it, as you spend too much time getting every nook and cranny to look like perfect you'll never finish anything. Lighting is a big deal with this either way as even if you painstakingly align everything with the skew tool lighting can make it look angular anyway. Zone Lighting is your friend.

Seed was really professional at this. Best texture aligner I ever saw with the old engine. But it must have took him a long...long time...for some of the rooms he made. Otherwise, if you are good at texture artistry you can create textures with borders for specific shapes. Not many people do this, in fact I think the only levels I've seen this attempted were some maps in The Chosen One.

User avatar Sat42
Skaarj Warlord Skaarj Warlord
Posts: 865
Joined: 14 Jul 2013, 16:42
Contact:

Subject: Re: Texture alignment on curved pipe

Post Posted: 26 Aug 2014, 18:40

Thanks for the reply Mister_Prophet :)

Yeah I figured there was only so much I could do with this matter, and since I'm no texture artist I believe I'll just stick to the easy and effective way :)
It's funny really, how obsessed you can get with tiny visual details, and yet no one is ever gonna be bitching about this or that almost insignificant nook and cranny not being perfectly aligned. After all, the aim is still to make an enjoyable level for an old game engine, and making technically perfect virtual scenery is something different. A good example of how a nice design can completely trick the average player into thinking a given structure is perfect visually, while actually exhibiting a lot of misalignments, is the pipework in DavidM's section of the Credits map in ONP (for some reason that stood out for me): the first time I saw that, I was like "wow, real cool", gazed at the scene for a few seconds and continued; only recently, when I started to wonder how best to align curved pipes and tubes, did I go back to that map to check out a few things... and I was somewhat relieved to find out that he hadn't really aligned all that shit, but the clever use of a texture covered that up!
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

User avatar Mister_Prophet
Red Nemesis Leader Red Nemesis Leader
Posts: 3098
Joined: 11 Nov 2007, 23:30
Location: Lost in Oraghar

Subject: Re: Texture alignment on curved pipe

Post Posted: 27 Aug 2014, 06:30

A big part of it is player perspective also. Sometimes i will even only focus on certain sides of a pipe if there is no way for a player to see the other end. Sometimes the part of the pipe closest to the physical space the player actually visits gets the professional treatment when the pipette up by the ceiling is much less sophisticated.

In other ways you realize that this is probably the ten millionth pipe (or some other piece of architecture) the player has probably seen and maybe the detail you need to add isn't how to make it perfect....but how to make it imperfect, or strange.

User avatar Sat42
Skaarj Warlord Skaarj Warlord
Posts: 865
Joined: 14 Jul 2013, 16:42
Contact:

Subject: Re: Texture alignment on curved pipe

Post Posted: 28 Aug 2014, 01:28

Yeah I admit that when I played through some high poly maps (like yours) I loved to take in the scenery and a fair amount of the total playtime would be down to simply taking advantage of all the eye-candy BUT I seldom (if ever) went looking for misalignments even when staring at something from multiple angles... I don't want to lose suspension of disbelief after all. Misalignments are really only a problem when they stand out. I guess it's natural that I now pay more attention to all this... the graphics engine can help achieve a certain suspension of disbelief but it does so not only through explicit or face value displays, but also through "figurative" representation.

Mister_Prophet wrote:In other ways you realize that this is probably the ten millionth pipe (or some other piece of architecture) the player has probably seen and maybe the detail you need to add isn't how to make it perfect....but how to make it imperfect, or strange.


Good point! But that's even more difficult in a way. I guess that is the advantage of disaster zones! (with all the obligatory broken pipes and everything!)
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

User avatar Mister_Prophet
Red Nemesis Leader Red Nemesis Leader
Posts: 3098
Joined: 11 Nov 2007, 23:30
Location: Lost in Oraghar

Subject: Re: Texture alignment on curved pipe

Post Posted: 28 Aug 2014, 02:21

When I was making Dead Cell I got really into valves. Like...nobody makes bsp valves in Unreal because it's such a pain. But that was kind of a defining feature of a lot of the pipes I made for it. Normally you see a pipe coming through one end of a wall and going into another, and what I was doing was making rooms where the player came into places where all the pipes met. It was kinda different and gave a lot of the substructure an endless boiler room vibe.

In other levels I've made for other things, I've done things like having "windows" or translucent pipe conduits where you can see the fluid streaming, even used that as alternate lighting. Sometimes I focus on the bracings that are attached to the ends of pipes and thus connect sections of pipes together and try to make them look interesting in some way. I often feel that these are easiest parts to manipulate.

Other mappers do different things. In ONP, DavidM added a lot notable pipes that snaked and curved and went in a lot twisting directions. I don't think a lot of them made sense, but they looked striking and made screenshots pop. Hourences was good at layering his pipes into the framework of corridors or ceilings, using them to fill space and give rooms a very thick, bustling feel as you walked through them. Ortican and parts of Xidia are good examples of levels he made where pipe work coupled with other bits of industrial trivia gave locations depth.

User avatar Sat42
Skaarj Warlord Skaarj Warlord
Posts: 865
Joined: 14 Jul 2013, 16:42
Contact:

Subject: Re: Texture alignment on curved pipe

Post Posted: 29 Aug 2014, 00:28

Actually, now that you mention it, I too have already built a pipe with a "window" where you can see the fluid streaming, and it was inspired to me by what I saw in an older DavidM map: The Warlock With The Gilded Claw V2.0, the second level of Peril on Mars. It struck me probably because it was the first such pipe that I saw in a custom UT SP map (you have to understand that I went back to playing UT only recently, when I came across the fact that there was some SP stuff for it, and upon coming to this site, I started to play through every map and mappack that had a review, starting from around the 35-40% mark - and I'm not done yet; mind you I only read said reviews after playing the associated works, and I did read all the reviews that had lower scores, too, despite not playing the maps. Some projects got higher scores than others which I felt were actually better but that is another story! Mostly, I felt the scores were severe... but it makes sense in order to distinguish nice, old maps from technically far superior new ones). By the way, forgive my ignorance, but what is the plan with Dead Cell? Did you end up merging that project with Residual Decay (I think I may have read about that somewhere)?

Valves sound like a neat idea! But at my level I think there's still a lot of stuff that's more basic which I still need to improve (trims, for example). I think bracings could be good. And yes, layering the pipes into the supporting structures is something I'm already working on, and there's endless inspiration for that. You mentioned Ortican: tell me, is the reference to Ortican at the start of Xidia a mere easter egg? Or should we consider the Jones saga to have started with that particular traumatic experience? :P (Note: I loved Ortican)

I have yet to play Seven Bullets, but like I said I'm kinda saving that for last... and I need a new computer before I go on another rampage (Project Zephon, Spatial Fear, Xenon... but also Hexephet, EXU2 of which I've only played through the first three maps and still have to provide feedback, The Fifth Vortex, The Last Fortress etc.)

I'll hopefully have finished my first project for Christmas :)
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.

User avatar Mister_Prophet
Red Nemesis Leader Red Nemesis Leader
Posts: 3098
Joined: 11 Nov 2007, 23:30
Location: Lost in Oraghar

Subject: Re: Texture alignment on curved pipe

Post Posted: 29 Aug 2014, 09:51

As I've stated previously on the official threads, I stopped work on Dead Cell chiefly due to dissatisfaction with the main gameplay element not being up to snuff. Human on Human melee ended up being little better than bots running at the player with twitchy touch damage, like in UT. I've let a few people play the working level. Typically they like the level design, story stuff, and voice acting, but gameplay just isn't very good and won't be unless I rehaul the concept and I'm making better progress with other stuff to go back and retry.

Ortican is unofficially considered a Jones mission, although the message in the beginning of Xidia is misleading since it gives people a false impression of when it is supposed to occur. Given that no further explanation exists in any officially released level I'll just say it's better for the time being to ignore the reference.

User avatar Sat42
Skaarj Warlord Skaarj Warlord
Posts: 865
Joined: 14 Jul 2013, 16:42
Contact:

Subject: Re: Texture alignment on curved pipe

Post Posted: 29 Aug 2014, 21:18

Thanks for the clarification! :tup:
I'm off to do a bit more mapping tonight :)
Thanks again for the ideas and tips :D
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 41 guests

Copyright © 2001-2024 UnrealSP.org

Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Limited