Re-assembling FBX imports

At the moment I am working on a script that would allow the reassembling of the static meshes imported into UnrealED to alleviate manually reassembling of scenes created in Maya. This may also be applicable to other 3D programs that export using the FBX format.

The approach that I am currently undertaking are

1. Importing static meshes at location 0,0,0. When a static mesh is added to the scene in the UnrealED, location 0,0,0 for the static mesh that is being add is the point at which you right click to add the static mesh. Since this point is not actually location 0,0,0 the static mesh that is added would be relative to this point. In order to correct this you must manually set the location of the added mesh to location 0,0,0. So the first purpose of the script is to move the added static mesh to location 0,0,0.
2. Duplicating static meshes. Once I am able to successfully duplicate static meshes in script, I would then be able to create and indefinite amount of static mesh using a for loop.
3. Create a list of static mesh locations from the selected mesh in the content browser. This list would then be used to replace the meshes that are being duplicated in the preceding for loop.

Some of the classes that would be examined to accomplish some of these features are the functions found in the Actor class for movement and relocation, StaticMeshComponent class for the replacing of static meshes in the for loop and the ThumbnailRenderer, ThumbnailManager etc for creating a list of the static mesh locations.

The current hurdle that I am facing is using the SetLocation function that is native to the Actor class on the active or currently selected static mesh actor that is being added to the scene.

Exporting

These are some the stuff I learnt in the process of importing assets into the Unreal Editor:-

• When exporting selection using FBX its important to delete history or the FBX plugin would export the entire scene.
• When placing objects into the scene in Unreal Editor its best to place the object from the top view. It aligns the object relative to the location in my on the Y axis.
• Re-importing meshes require importing the mesh again instead of using the re-import option in the Content Browser.
• Re-use UVs for lightmap by changing the Light Map Coordinate Index to 0 instead of 1.

The screenshot above is using one Dominant light with lightmass to generate the indirect lighting. The lightmaps for the scene varies depending on the size of the mesh. The largest lightmap in use in this shot is 1024.

Lightmaps

This is a sample of using lightmaps at varying resolution. For larger models higher resolutions are needed however for small models a resolution of 128 seems to suffice.

Anti Aliasing,T3D and FBX

This image is the original screenshot taken from the Unreal Editor without GPU anti aliasing.

• This is a resized version of the first screenshot rendered at twice the resolution. Rendering beyond 200% of the original reduces several in game effects and in some cases removes it all together. There is no benefit to rendering beyond twice the original resolution for the purpose of achieving cheap anti-aliasing.
  
  




• After working on making a plugin that would export to t3d for importing into UnrealEd, I have found out through several test that this filetype only stores the creation of BSP and the transformation of meshes that are already loaded into the an Unreal package.
  
  




• Exporting FBX from Maya to UnrealEd and proven to be unrealiable at the moment. Beveled edges are unable to be exported at the moment however, using the same fbx that was exported from Maya to 3Ds Max and then exporting again to fbx creates positive results. Reason for this is still unknown. Apparently, the way in which 3DsMax exports fbx is more compatible with UnrealEd than Maya.
  
  
  
  

Hiccups

The reference image that I have decided on using has several perspective problems when translated into 3D. So the final project would be based of the reference and not attempt to be identical in perspective since the perspective is off in the reference. In addition if I had decided to match the perspective in the scene, the models would have been severely distorted preventing any type of fly through since the scene would have been camera specific.

Unreal High Quality Rendering Project

This is the reference image that would be used in this project. It was done by Antifan Real from Deviantart.

The objective is to create a high quality render that is comparable to Mental Ray and other high end renderers using the Unreal Engine as the renderer. The scene would be modeled, textured and lit in Maya. Then the scene would be exported to the Unreal Engine for rendering. One of the features that would be worked on to facilitate the exporting of the scene is a custom exporter. The main function of this exporter is to exporter the scene intact, seamlessly carrying across to the Unreal Engine models, textures, lights and cameras. Once that is successful the next step would be animation of models, lights and cameras. The file format of choice would be .t3d.

• The first step in the creation of the exporter would be to export the camera. This would include camera translation and rotation in relation to world space. Some additional features would include the camera lens attributes so that the camera view is as identical as possible as it is in Maya.


• Next would be exporting lights. This would include translation, rotation, type and all the other attributes that are directly translatable to the Unreal Engine such as shadows, light intensity, penumbra, fall off etc.
  
• The next feature would be the model export, which includes translation, rotation, UVs and normals.
  
• The final feature of the plug-in would be the most complex that being material and shader networks.

A successful plug-in would make the transition between to the two programs as seamless as possible allowing for most of the work to be done in Maya and little to no configuration of the scene when exported to the Unreal Editor.

Current plug-in reference is from http://nccastaff.bournemouth.ac.uk/jmacey/RobTheBloke/www/research/maya/exp_plugin.htm

.t3d reference would be from exporting scenes from Unreal Ed to .t3d and examining the ASCII file. In order to verify the integritity of the .t3d during these .t3d extractions from Unreal Ed, the same export would be imported back into the Unreal Ed to verify the integritity .t3d importing.

Interiors

These are four design layouts from one of my fellow Master students in Interior Decorating, Rima Pivetta that I did for her thesis.