Fire Texture tutorial

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Shadow
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Re: Fire Texture tutorial

Post by Shadow »

Feralidragon wrote:
Shadow wrote:Epic wrote that fire texture subengine nearly completely in assembler, that way it was/is fast as fuck, but also seems to be limited in means of user comfort
Well, the way it was coded shouldn't justify usability. They could as easily add some further tools in the fire texture editing, like a grid and a list of generator coordinates, and the fact that they do have precise fire textures in the retail packages tells us they certainly had such a tool but never released it for some reason.
Yeah don't tell that me mate^^ Ah yeah.. now I know: Epic doesn't give a shit
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Higor
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Re: Fire Texture tutorial

Post by Higor »

Well, if you know how the game serializes the Dynamic array that composes the fire effects, then you can hex edit the coordinates.

All you need is a HEX editor, UTPT (for locating the texture itself and it's element), and the public 432 headers in order to understand how it's done.
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Re: Fire Texture tutorial

Post by Torax »

GEx wrote:Hey Torax, would this be the one?
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:FireTexture
thanks)
that nearly the thing i needed. I searched more detailed doc but i think it's the most useful now
and thanks all for participation :tu:
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Leo(T.C.K.)
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Re: Fire Texture tutorial

Post by Leo(T.C.K.) »

Actually, that's not true. Epic never had other tools for the fractal textures, they had one guy making them mostly and that guy did use a different than mouse devices to paint them so yeah..
Why do you guys in the community always assume they had some kind of super tools? I know better now because i've seen what kind of tools they had. Apart from UnrealEd and bright, there were few more tools indeed but they were pain to work with, there was a texture mapping tool and converter batch tools, but they were very primitive, yet the unreal team and licensees had to work with them. It was very frustrating job and it should make you admire the team more. The texture mapping tool worked only on MS DOS also (or win95/98 for that matter because they were still based on ms dos). Dosbox doesn't display the font correctly in it so its kinda useless. But basically it had the funtionailty of unrealfx only much harder to work with and also functionality of the mesh preview/texture tools, but you had to edit the data file each time you wanted to edit a mesh since it couldnt dynamically load it and could only load 8 skins at the time with fixed slots.
Other tool that never got released is the sound maker tool, but because they switched to simple .wav instead of the .ufx container having additional attridubtes to sound possible or randomization of pitch etc, this tool was not used in the later part of Unreal developement and especially not in UT.
But everything else was really done in UED, level wise. They had no better BSP tools either, some versions did have better node builder, that counts even for unreal 220 for example, still has the best node builder of all the official versions. Maps which build just fine on there on later versions produce bsp holes. But certainly they never had perfect node builder in the editor.
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Feralidragon
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Re: Fire Texture tutorial

Post by Feralidragon »

Leo(T.C.K.) wrote: Why do you guys in the community always assume they had some kind of super tools?
Easy, because when they provide the supposed "tools" and when you simply recompile, rebuild or try to do something with their own unmodified stuff and the results differ by a lot (to not mention sometimes not doable), we're left to wonder how they made their retail stuff stable if a simple retail rebuild with their own tools fails miserably by miles.
It wouldn't be the first time an entity would provide inferior tools relative which they were actually using, sometimes because they aren't stable or usable enough by the crowd, other times because they just didn't feel to.

As you explained, although they used Ued, you said it yourself: they used a better BSP builder version of it which they never cared to add/return to the most recent editor versions, so what you're telling us is that our assumptions are correct.
Plus, from personal experience (and other mappers can corroborate this), any BSP that you build in a 3rd party modeling program is bound to have almost 0 problems when imported to UEd and rebuilt. I made some experiments, and the simple BSP cube would have issues while floating complex islands, terrain and all sorts of objects done in a 3rd party tool would have almost no problems at all. So we're left to assume Epic did use 3rd party modeling programs for at least some of the BSP in their levels.

The same with procedural textures: they made it in Ued, but as you mentioned, they used something along it to create perfect ones, thus still in the "they had better tools" category.

Anyway, thanks for enlightening us on that subject. :tu:
I just wish Epic actually cared to talk about those rather than leaving the community in the dark in these subjects.
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Leo(T.C.K.)
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Re: Fire Texture tutorial

Post by Leo(T.C.K.) »

Feralidragon wrote:
Leo(T.C.K.) wrote: Why do you guys in the community always assume they had some kind of super tools?
Easy, because when they provide the supposed "tools" and when you simply recompile, rebuild or try to do something with their own unmodified stuff and the results differ by a lot (to not mention sometimes not doable), we're left to wonder how they made their retail stuff stable if a simple retail rebuild with their own tools fails miserably by miles.
It wouldn't be the first time an entity would provide inferior tools relative which they were actually using, sometimes because they aren't stable or usable enough by the crowd, other times because they just didn't feel to.

As you explained, although they used Ued, you said it yourself: they used a better BSP builder version of it which they never cared to add/return to the most recent editor versions, so what you're telling us is that our assumptions are correct.
Plus, from personal experience (and other mappers can corroborate this), any BSP that you build in a 3rd party modeling program is bound to have almost 0 problems when imported to UEd and rebuilt. I made some experiments, and the simple BSP cube would have issues while floating complex islands, terrain and all sorts of objects done in a 3rd party tool would have almost no problems at all. So we're left to assume Epic did use 3rd party modeling programs for at least some of the BSP in their levels.

The same with procedural textures: they made it in Ued, but as you mentioned, they used something along it to create perfect ones, thus still in the "they had better tools" category.

Anyway, thanks for enlightening us on that subject. :tu:
I just wish Epic actually cared to talk about those rather than leaving the community in the dark in these subjects.
The BSP differs greatly from version to version but you can get same rebuilding results on the earlier ones for example. But it never was quite perfect. Wheel of Time has the best node builder i've seen on the Unreal engine games, so much better that I decided to rebuild one upsx map that I changed a bit under it and have someone convert it back for me. It really has good results even with maps that would be impossible to rebuild or even screwed up on purpose almost.
Some BSP in levels by Epic was indeed imported, but it's actually in minority compared to what was done in UED. All the caves in skycaves for example were done in UED, however the mountain at the center of island at skytown in Unreal for example seems to have been imported. But as I said it seems to be actually exception and not a rule.
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Leo(T.C.K.)
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Re: Fire Texture tutorial

Post by Leo(T.C.K.) »

I just want to say, dunno if someone suggested it but one good way to deal with firetextures, apart from experimenting a lot with the options is make a blank texture first and place it at a map where the torch is or fireplace or whatever. Then make sure the firetexture you want to create is at 200% window. Then point a mouse at it and have a viewport centered AT the sheet where the new firetexture is used. But now you see it in realtime, you can see your mouse cursor moving actually with that little bit of flame and then you just click where you exactly want it positioned. This way it's much more precise than guess work. Also if you hold the mouse button too long it will get too intense/irregular, sometimes only one click is needed to create the desired effect at the spot.
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