One more semester will be done soon, so here I'd like to show the progress of the thesis work as a conclusion.
First of off, what I learned thru this semester ?There are 4 points could be answer it below.
1, How to set up the customizable sliders to adjust details on Shader editor in UE4;
2, Understood the pipeline about shadering for foliage & Snow-covered objects in UE4 ;
3, Get better familiar with skills as modeling , texturing and shadering on realistic display of the video games;
4, Improving the other modeling skills with Speedtree and World machine as well as to make optimization within them;
5, UE4 is getting free !
Well, I also finished all my extra work for the first internship and my friend's graduation work demo both.
Let's talk about my thesis work.
The project I decided to do , which inspired by Saving Private Ryan and some other RTS games such as COD or Company of Heroes.
As usual, it still started with a simple level design concept :
First of off, what I learned thru this semester ?There are 4 points could be answer it below.
1, How to set up the customizable sliders to adjust details on Shader editor in UE4;
2, Understood the pipeline about shadering for foliage & Snow-covered objects in UE4 ;
3, Get better familiar with skills as modeling , texturing and shadering on realistic display of the video games;
4, Improving the other modeling skills with Speedtree and World machine as well as to make optimization within them;
5, UE4 is getting free !
Well, I also finished all my extra work for the first internship and my friend's graduation work demo both.
Let's talk about my thesis work.
The project I decided to do , which inspired by Saving Private Ryan and some other RTS games such as COD or Company of Heroes.
As usual, it still started with a simple level design concept :
Truth be told, the concept is kind of ugly looking, but it should work without problem with me , because time is not very enough for realistic project.
Next step, I was making a series of rough models, they spent 1 month long probably.
Next step, I was making a series of rough models, they spent 1 month long probably.
However, although the animation were good looking and totally work in UE4, but their normal direction had always been wrong display. Finally I changed my mind , I was going to use world offset note to show animate, also, I theft the normal for leafs from another object, then they are looking better.
The main functions of those rough model are to help me to have better understanding for entirely environment , especially for the silhouette valuation and measure. So in the future I could do more decisions of how many models could be existing , as well as how many would not useful in the future .
After the rough models, I would like to talk about the foliage stuff. I modeled them thru Speedtree, which should be the best tool for foliage modeling, especially, the foliage objects will bring their own animations into the game engine such Unity or UE4. So on this image, it shows that how I was improving them to be better looking.
Meanwhile, I also prepared the terrain model thru Worldmachine, after about 10 times testing, I finally agree with the shape as what the image shows upon.
Although the animations of trees were working well, however, the normal on the leaf pieces were facing to different directions. This issues causes leaves are looking dark very much, so I need to find a way to figure it out.
So ,I imported the tree into the 3ds max again, and theft the normal from a sphere object. Finally. normal are going to be consistence, although it missed the animation that from Speedtree.
So ,I imported the tree into the 3ds max again, and theft the normal from a sphere object. Finally. normal are going to be consistence, although it missed the animation that from Speedtree.
For animate the leave pieces again, I was trying to use a very normal way that thru World Offset Channel setting on the shader tree.
After the tree modeling and shape the terrain, I was be back to the props working again. The first of all, I need to improve the silhouette first. After that, I used famous Quixel Suite for PBR textures rendering and making after UV wrapping . I also used 3Dcoat to brush some details such as crack or bullet holes on some places on. Then I imported them into UE4 for shader tree setting.
First of wall, I used the green channel from Albedo texture, then add the color as white to be connected with it. Meanwhile, I also setup a group that let the snow to come up on entirely object. When it is done, the bunker will look like covered by snow. This shader tree as a template, for the other props, I just needs to use other textures to replace small bunker textures, it will be working without any problem,
After the shader tree setting, the bunker is looking like the upon images.
But, I set up a template shader is not mean that every shader tree will be same, it should be changed depend on necessary .
For example, there are four lights on the top of the small bunkers, but the lighting strength was no changing at start. After play Resident evil, some light shaders in house are looking bright and have lighting intensity variations. Therefore, I also want emmisive could to be flickering as well.
After the setting of the emmisive group, especially when the sine really works, the flicker effect is happened. So the image also shows how different when sine value is getting change.
The final step for emmisive channel works, it is to install a note as a circle lets sine to play it own 2 different values time after time.
For example, there are four lights on the top of the small bunkers, but the lighting strength was no changing at start. After play Resident evil, some light shaders in house are looking bright and have lighting intensity variations. Therefore, I also want emmisive could to be flickering as well.
After the setting of the emmisive group, especially when the sine really works, the flicker effect is happened. So the image also shows how different when sine value is getting change.
The final step for emmisive channel works, it is to install a note as a circle lets sine to play it own 2 different values time after time.
Compare to the shader tree of small bunkers, the shader tree seems not that complicate on the wall. But only roughness channel drives me take to long time for testing, because I tried to give the variations for the roughness when camera goes to different view . So the images can show how the various work below.
Here are two images show that how the roughness channel works, and how to break the board to be more naturally displaying between the metal part and snow covered part.
When I was doing shader for hedgehog, the most challenge was to overlaying the reflection on the snow and metal layers. This is the shader tree image below.
The image below shows how the roughness groups work.
This is the final rendered result , hedgehog.
Conclusion: the progress was going to slow , I think the reason should be like I take over long time to testing shader tree and speedtree modeling. However, those tough issues are figured out , and I can accelerated to make everything until totally done when September coming . THANK YOU~~