Mill Valley Cabins - Real Time

[Scott Schroeder]

Rendered in real time using UDK. Lighting was created in UDK, assets were modeled in 3d Max.

 

 

C&C are always welcome.

[michaellawson1]

Looks great Scott. How did you get the reflections in the glass? They look awesome.

[Scott Schroeder]

Thanks! I created a cubemap inside UDK that created a map of the environment it is in. I used that cubemap for the reflections so they are not real time in a sense as real time reflections are quite Cpu intensive. There is an actor object in udk that creates the cubemap for you so it is an easy and fairly automated process.

 

I also added a slight distortion to the glass as real glass isn't mirror flat.

[michaellawson1]

Well done, it really looks great. I'll have to try the cubemap process. So far what I've found was too intensive and took too long. Thanks!

[Ernest Burden III]

Mill Valley as in north of San Francisco?

 

The piece is fantastic, although the DOF gives it a bit of the tiny look, aka tilt-shift.

[Scott Schroeder]

Thanks for the kind words. Yep, Ernest, you guessed it. This project was based off of the Mill Valley Cabins by Feldman Architecture:

http://www.archdaily.com/215195/mill-valley-cabins-feldman-architecture/

 

The one thing I keep thinking about when I see this is that I absolutely over used the DOF and sun flare. I had bokeh DOF at my hands using DX11, and I over used it to where it detracts some of the shots. I think later on I am going to revisit the project and rework some of the lights and cameras.

 

I would have loved to match the environment, but that many trees was a killer in real time. So I had to rework the environment it was in, and to a smaller sense, I didn't really want to make an exact match project.

[Nick_E]

Great job! What is the learning curve like for UDK? Did you have to know how to script? Did you do any texture baking in Max first?

[Scott Schroeder]

The learning curve is pretty steep, at least initially. I tried a workflow that mirrored the games industry where I built the buildings in modular sections so I can reuse them as much as possible. I did not bake any textures inside Max with the exception of some AO maps for things like the cabinets and furniture pieces. Creating materials inside UDK is easy, it is very similar to the Slate editor in Max.

 

There is no scripting as far as writing code, though you could learn it if you wanted to. UDK uses Kismet and Matinee which are node based scripting editors. You plug in what you want to happen, connect the nodes up, and you are all set to go. Cameras in UDK are simple too, very close to cameras in Max.

 

The hardest, and most pain in the butt part of the whole process is making sure you have a proper 2nd UVW lightmap channel. Without this, you won't bake lighting properly in UDK. It has to be laid out correctly as well, or else you will have shadow bleeding or not use enough resolution.

 

Eat 3d, Gnomon, and 3d Motive have really good DVD's and free tutorials on UDK that will help you get started.

http://www.3dmotive.com/training/udk/modular-building-workflow/

http://www.3dmotive.com/training/3ds-max/creating-foliage-for-udk/

That is the one I followed for modular environments and creating foliage. The foliage one works well even if you just stay in Max.

 

Once you have a modular modeling workflow down and understand what constitutes good real time geometry, UDK becomes easier. It took me about a month which was the duration of this video to really start to have a good grasp on things.

[Ernest Burden III]

Thanks for the kind words. Yep, Ernest, you guessed it...

 

I'll have to find my copy of my father's rendering book. It has his illustrations of an organic, low impact housing development he designed for Mill Valley in the 60's. He was paid with land. Pity soon-to-be wife number three convinced him to sell it soon afterwards.

[michaellawson1]

3D Buzz also has some (many) great tutorials for the beginner, though the version of UDK they use is out of date. It doesn't really hamper the experience though. I'd recommend those.

[Claudio Branch]

I think you did a great job on this. My only crit being that the colors on the foliage look a little inconsistent in terms of color saturation and brightness. I don't know how much post work you did, but that could be handled easily after the fact.

 

I do have a question or two for you though. Your camera work appears to be mostly slow pans and zooms. Did you create your cameras in the Unreal Editor and then output them through Matinee or did you do movie captures within the Unreal Engine? Perhaps you did both.

 

I have just started learning UDK and I am still shaking the Max functionality bias that I view it through. It is challenging to say the least.

[Scott Schroeder]

I did all of the work in UDK with cameras and Matinee, then used the FrameDump command when I ran the whole thing. With the FrameDump command you can force UDK to render out any size, as large as your monitors max resolution, at any FPS. So you can force a nice smooth 30 FPS even if your actual file runs at a lower rate. This is how many of the games you play create their in game cinematics. Here's the UDN page for more reference: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CapturingCinematicsAndGameplay.html

 

Though, since you can only go to a uncompressed BMP from here, make sure you have plenty of HD space. What I did was convert the BMP's using a bulk converter into smaller sized PNGs before I complied them in After Effects.

 

I did do a lot of post process chain work, I used a custom LUT on this one (UDN Ref: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/ColorGrading.html) plus a great video tutorial.

 

 

The foliage colors are a little on the super saturated to half desaturated side. That's due to mixing some of my custom trees with the more saturated ones that come with UDK. I ran out of time to really fix all of the material inconsistencies. That's also why the cameras are fairly simple. I wanted to keep in simple and easy to control since it was really a learn as I went experience.

[Claudio Branch]

Thanks for such an informative reply Scott, greatly appreciated. I am stunbling my way along and it has taken me about two weeks just too really understand how UDK works. I will probably purchase those tutorials as well. Looking forward to seeing more real time work.

[Scott Schroeder]

Thanks for such an informative reply Scott, greatly appreciated. I am stunbling my way along and it has taken me about two weeks just too really understand how UDK works. I will probably purchase those tutorials as well. Looking forward to seeing more real time work.

 

No worries. It took me a while to learn UDK and all of it's various pitfalls, and I'm still learning. So I'm more than happy to pass along any information that I may have gathered throughout my process.

 

You can find a very good amount of information from polycount's forum and their environment wiki space. http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironment

 

The video tutorials on Epic's UDK website are also a great free resource, though they may be a little dated in the version of UDK they use. The one issue I have with purchasing UDK tutorials is that they update so frequently that sometimes menus and items change from the tutorial. However, for the most part the tutorials are a pretty valuable resource.