Unreal Engine 3 Features @ GDC 2009

[Darkdrium]

Originally Posted by Leo(T.C.K.)

blah blah blah

It drags and drops onto something on the screen, something that you see in your viewport obviously, not some place random. Therefore if you make a mistake you will see it. And CTRL+Z takes care of mistakes well enough.

Plus it's not like level artists were excited monkeys, they show great precision and thoroughness in their work, so it's highly unlikely they're going to miss a wrong material applied in the area they are working in before they hit rebuild.

[Molgan]

Drag n' drop owns! :P

[dub]

Wear drag n' drop your knickers?

[zynthetic]

Originally Posted by GreatEmerald

What does the MCP actually do?

Whatever it wants

[TheSpoonDog]

Wow that impresses me...

I guess with the drag n drop of material onto mesh, they could do it (may already be like) so if the poly/tri you dropped onto has id=1 it would use that slot. Thing is, most games use one material per mesh anyway for performance reasons.

The MCP does look great how it can show you those kind of stats on your level - but I really wonder how much of a b1tch it is to set up - I mean, I imagine you'd have to outline the gameplay areas by hand - and I wonder how it's handled when there are multiple levels of play on top of each other? Picking which gameplay you want to record the stats for?

... and yea the lighting looks just awesome. Pity we won't have a UT to use it in for years Just have to get some contract work I suppose!

[Chandler]

Really excited to see this. Did anyone find it funny at all that they effectively looped the MCP part and the music picked up, and all it is, are two separate heat maps (three. maybe) and it's got fast cut away, and "awesome action shots", etc? I just had to chuckle while watching it.

Mos def cool though.

[nELsOn]

okay, the changes to the way you apply materials or insert meshes and so on looked okay but there was some stuff i didn't really understand.
however, when the lighting section started i was pretty much drooling on my keyboard. this is just really impressive
me wants!

[The_Head]

I hope this gets added into UT3

Some impressive stuff - as to complaining about having drag and drop. I seriously doubt they will have removed the normal methods - and if you drag and drop accidental you're clearly a tool.

[Mozi]

Originally Posted by The_Head

I hope this gets added into UT3

Some impressive stuff - as to complaining about having drag and drop. I seriously doubt they will have removed the normal methods - and if you drag and drop accidental you're clearly a tool.

Good point, cause those of you that now use UE 3 for UT 3 notice that it shipped with the widget tools to act like Max or Maya but you can turn those off and do things the old school way...the editor does not force you to use those widgets.

I assume drag and drop is the same deal as The_Head mentioned...it's there but would not be surprised if right clicking in the scene and clicking add actor still works...

[N1ghtmare]

Just because you drag and drop does not mean you have to leave it there-of course you are going to adjust it. This just makes it easier to put in the same vicinity.

jeesh.

[lashtal]

Darn, looks awesome but do they plan to release some standalone app to use the engine in realtime arch viz? I mean i'd like to see a ut3 powered exporter for some 3d app sometime.

Btw does GI get calculated in realtime or everything is baked into lightmap? If everything is baked its no good for any moving parts of the level, obviously.

[Lee3dee]

you know you can press S to drop in a mesh in UT3

Lighting looks as good as Beast's lighting engine that is an add-on for UE3. Wonder if they compute times are as long.

[Slyrr77]

Lightmass: Yet another way 3D developers are laboring to make sure that you can't see a dang THING....

Seriously - anyone who misses Darkmatching from Unreal1 - why? All you have to do is play UT3, where you can't see anything at all, even in the outdoor daylight levels....

[lashtal]

@Slyrr77 - meh, stop whining. Its called proper exposure — try to take a photo on a sunny day: while sunlit areas will appear bright, unlit will be almost black. Its how all the cameras work. To reduce the difference just use higher gamma setting, but doing so will kill contrast making images appear dull.

[Bazzwano]

I want this... I cant wait for UT to get this engine update.

[toniglandyl]

Originally Posted by Bazzwano

I cant wait for UT to get this engine update.

yes you can

[Ignotium]

Originally Posted by toniglandyl

yes you can

and you will

[Slyrr77]

meh, stop whining. Its called proper exposure — try to take a photo on a sunny day: while sunlit areas will appear bright, unlit will be almost black. Its how all the cameras work.

All I know is I got tired of the 'pitch black or totally washed out' look after playing Doom3. Plus the human eye is not a camera. A photo may well look as you described, but the human eye will show much more range and what you see isn't what the camera sees.

The HL2 engine managed to pull bright areas, dark areas, and have a nice MID-range as well. Surely they could do this in the UT3 engine? Or is it just the level designers doing this?

If so - come on, people. Not every level has to be the interior of a coal mine at midnight with a couple of flourescent bulbs here and there....

[LANCE.xd]

The human eye adjusts its exposure to bright light on the fly. Wherever you look you'll have the lighting adjusted to comfortable levels fairly quickly. Your eyes dart around a lot which gives the illusion of a higher light range, when in reality it's constantly adjusting the range based on where you're looking.

HL2 is the closest I've come across so far to simulating this effect, by adjusting lighting levels based on where you're looking. But it has the same drawbacks as the eye, only it's more obvious in HL2 because you have the whole screen to look at. Point your crosshair at a bright light and try to get a good look at the rest of the room. It just doesn't work.

I don't disagree with you in that UT3 as it is could use a better balance of lighting. But from the looks of what they showed us in the demo, their lighting solution seems to make most things in their environments reasonably visible. The map in the light demo likely wasn't a UT3 gameplay map. So it'd make sense that there'd be excessively dark areas in the level to demonstrate the capabilities of their lighting.

[neoduck]

wooooooooot! that stuff looks aaaawesome!

one of the coolest things with that browser is that now you don't have to open individual asset files any more. you just search, and it scours through them for you.

hopefully not long till i'm working with it!