█████▓▒░ UNCLE MUGEN'S FREE VN (OELVN) RESOURCES ░▒▓█████

[mugenjohncel]

You know what... I'll just keep quiet on this one and put these BG's for everyone to enjoy

Same terms as previous resources... FREE to use on any projects. OK for commercial use. Modification is OK and highly encouraged... just say hi to me when used... It gets lonely here sometimes...

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[Kami]

This looks amazing! I just got one question about the tree models you are using! ;D Are you using flat images or models? And if these are models, which ones? I cant seem to find decent tree which would not lag my PC (and my PC has more than enough ram to keep it all in memory D;)

[mugenjohncel]

about the tree models you are using! ;D Are you using flat images or models?

The are indeed full 3D models...

And if these are models, which ones? I cant seem to find decent tree which would not lag my PC (and my PC has more than enough ram to keep it all in memory D;)

If you look closely they are just the same Sketchup tree models available at the 3D warehouse. Each individual tree you see here consist of 3 trees each rotated by 30, 60, and 90 degrees and combined together to give the now single entity tree more leaves volume and slightly trimming a few parts to make them look asymmetrical and more natural. Unfortunately, lag cannot be avoided so I just maxed out my PC specs to minimize lag...



By the way, they are not rendered in Sketchup... Yes they are Sketchup models but I import and rendered them in UDK because I needed to have a real time renderer that will enable me to change the time of day settings without re-rendering the whole scene and I also have the luxury and freedom of walking/flying around the scene and chose the best angle... again, without re-rendering the whole thing (and I don't have time to learn Blender)... it pales on comparison with my previous method and doesn't produce the anime/cartoon render I always wanted but cheap and quick backgrounds is enough justification for now to sacrifice quality for quantity...

And best of all... UDK is FREE for non-commercial use... I highly recommend stealing borrowing and dissecting a few existing working games to speed up learning process
http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/

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[Kami]

That is generous idea! I did use UDK before, but I did not realise that I can use Unreal for that... Thanks for tips ;o I will post some results once I get home and play around with it :]

I got HD7970, which I would really like to be used while on Sketch up, but I have a feeling that Sketch up is more of a RAM/CPU program (and then again I have 16GB of ram and my CPU is at 3.7GHz with 6 cores...) and it uses up to about 500MB of my ram and lags... I will try seeing if I can increase Sketch up RAM usage like Photoshop allows you to do.

[mugenjohncel]

I got HD7970, which I would really like to be used while on Sketch up, but I have a feeling that Sketch up is more of a RAM/CPU program (and then again I have 16GB of ram and my CPU is at 3.7GHz with 6 cores...)

You got me beat in the video-card department but I have 32Gig RAM

The real problem with Sketchup is... it's a 32bit application meaning I can only use up to 4Gig RAM and no... the only performance tweak you can do with Sketchup is to allow it to use OpenGL and that's pretty much it... and given the nature of how the way Sketchup renders everything on screen... a 64bit sketchup might actually end up being slower than 32bit



So yes, I began exploring other software like Blender and just less than 24 hours ago UDK which I did a quick crash course in one sitting. Of course I will still be using Sketchup since it's still the unbeaten champion in quick modeling

Now here's a test video using UDK for no apparent reason



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[Kami]

You know, yesterday fiddling around in UDK after work, I bumped into a problem. I exported 3D model from Sketch up as FBX file and imported it into UDK, however, it would make it look weird, without any textures, missing building walls etc. Do you have to re-texture all your models once imported to UDK?

By the way it is awesome short video, good ideas to use them in game too, but that would make a game much bigger (file size)...

[mugenjohncel]

You know, yesterday fiddling around in UDK after work, I bumped into a problem. I exported 3D model from Sketch up as FBX file and imported it into UDK, however, it would make it look weird, without any textures, missing building walls etc. Do you have to re-texture all your models once imported to UDK?

Um... I guess you are using Sketchup Free version... aka Sketchup Make

You need to use Sketchup Pro 8 and export it as COLLADA (.dae)... Also, try exploding your model first before exporting to collada. Nestled components it seems had been a known issue for quite some time... Also, Sketchup Pro 2013 is also problematic so I didn't upgrade and stick to my old license...

Yes, not all textures are exported successfully so I have to re-texture a few of them...

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[mugenjohncel]

OK back then there was this request...
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 08#p276308

And I the good UNCLE MUGEN granted here...
http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 12#p276312

But what I didn't tell him back then was this is nothing but a sloppy 10 minute attempt.



While on one hand I did fullfill his request there is this guilty feeling inside me that I should have done better... and this feeling of guilt has kept me awake on some nights... until I microwaved a pizza

So to address this thing... I decided to put a little bit more effort this time and give him the best quality BG I can deliver but making sure I do not overwork myself because that will go contrary to my overall motto of Cheaper, Faster Backgrounds without too much effort so here they are... and with added bonus of time of day variations... I intentionally left them unedited so you'll have to post process them yourself

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[Kami]

Dear Uncle Mugen,

I bumped into an interesting issue. When I load your models, they look fine (just have no textures, which is also fine, because I can retexture them the way I want to). But if I upload more complex models, like huge blocks of flats to the UDK they seem to be missing a lot of walls etc. Did you run into this problem too? And if you did how did you deal with it?

[mugenjohncel]

Did you run into this problem too? And if you did how did you deal with it?

Yes I did... so what I did is explode all components before exporting so each individual components are actual geometry and not emulated via instancing. This will bloat your polycount though. Also, before exporting make sure all visible surfaces are all "face up" meaning the lighter side is exposed and while we are at it you might want to manually subdivide really very large flat surfaces... for no apparent reason they just disappears so divide them into 8 maybe 12 parts just to be safe... You might also want to go to WINDOW > MODEL INFO > STATISTICS and purge any unused geometry and texture to prevent junk detail being exported as a precaution...

Oh dear... I'm beginning to sound like a purofeshunal (professional) even though it's only been a mere three days since the first time I've used and messed with UDK

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[Kami]

Haha, I am glad you are! I can get some useful information! I will try to do that!

I spent this weekend gaming on Xbox 360 and playing with UDK. I figured out quite a bit of stuff which at first wouldn't let me move forwards. Though still have a fair bit to figure out. E.g. that issue with disappearing walls, I will try to explode each componene in the model later (oh it will be loads of work for a big blocks of flats building!) Also what is quite annoying that you can upload only certain amount of vertices and if the value of your scene has more you got to upload each component separately and recreate scene all over again in UDK, but after playing with it this weekend it doesn't seem to be difficult task. Also the lighting seems to be messed up, I wanted to post screenshots but it took ages to rebuild it when I last changed it, so I think I may messed something up. Hopefully I will be able to get it right today and show you the issue with lighting maybe you had that problem too.

[Kami]

Here we go this is the problem I run into after building the light, shading looks very... umm wrong? http://i.imgur.com/KXYU0v6.png Do you have any idea?

[mugenjohncel]

Here we go this is the problem I run into after building the light, shading looks very... umm wrong? http://i.imgur.com/KXYU0v6.png Do you have any idea?

I actually have a pretty good idea what's going on but can you send me the sketchup model you used on this one so I can be sure what's going on?...

Edit:
I'm currently scratching my head what's wrong with this model you sent me but is sure does have a lot of nestled components and a few more components nestled inside more components...

OK... Do this... First select the model in Sketchup... everything as in the whole model then right click and chose explode. Repeat the process until the component count is zero. Then align your model to the axis. This is very important since if you export your model the way it is (which is slightly rotated off)... Sketchup will triangulate it chaotically because sad as it is... the exporter algorithm in Sketchup is sort of... dumb ;_;



Before you export you will notice that there is this triangle thing which you can toggle. Now go back to your model... you may want to export two versions of your model... one with triangulation and one without... it really depends on the model but you really don't know what Sketchup will produce so better make two versions...



In this case, I chose to not triangulate the model and here it was...



Artificial lighting on the other hand... I'm still trying to figure out how to add them properly...

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[Kami]

Thank you very much! I am just confused how did you manage to keep all the textures? Whenever I import them, they seem to be all gone ;o
And one more question.. when I import the model it is very tiny so I size it up to 50x times, do you have to do it too? Or is the model already big in size when you import them to UDK?

[anothernoona]

Your backgrounds looks simply AWESOME!
Thanks a million times, I plan using them in my game but..

Do you recommend resizing the BGs or adjusting the game size to them? Because right now i'm using 800x600 and I'm not sure if it'll keep its effect if I crop them..