Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations.

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Pectabyte
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Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations.

Post by Pectabyte »

Hey all! So glad I found you guys. Can't believe there is still a healthy community for a game over a decade old. Been a longtime fan of UT99 and bought it on Steam the other day and decided to jump into mapping again.

Question 1: Even if I select "Show moving brushes" from the "Dynamic lighting" drop down I cannot see my elevators. All I see is their dark pink wireframe. How Do I actually make it so I can select and texture its surfaces?

Question 2: In the Actorclass >Decorations>Car1 would make an excellent addition to my Skybox if there was a way to set a star and end point and have the animation loop. Trying to make it look like the car is flying by the windows of my map. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks guys.
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by VatcilliZeitchef »

Pectabyte wrote:Hey all! So glad I found you guys. Can't believe there is still a healthy community for a game over a decade old. Been a longtime fan of UT99 and bought it on Steam the other day and decided to jump into mapping again.

Question 1: Even if I select "Show moving brushes" from the "Dynamic lighting" drop down I cannot see my elevators. All I see is their dark pink wireframe. How Do I actually make it so I can select and texture its surfaces?

Question 2: In the Actorclass >Decorations>Car1 would make an excellent addition to my Skybox if there was a way to set a star and end point and have the animation loop. Trying to make it look like the car is flying by the windows of my map. Is there a way to do this?

Thanks guys.
Hello Peta, And it's good to see that you're so pumped up to try and jump into the editor again, Let me see how well I can help you!

Answer 1: Movers are on default only shown with their wireframe, this is normal. If you want to see and edit the mover's textures you have to right click it, move your must to the "movers" tab and select "show polys" If you want to see it with lighting effect you can hit "Rebuild light" after doing this. When you're done just do a full rebuild before testing, The mover should go back to showing up as a purple wire again, but once more, this is normal.

Answer 2: This is more or less possible, but it's no basic matter. One way is to code a custom decoration that moves forward for a while before jumping back to the start, I can try and code something like that up when I return home, but I'm not a scripting guru, so it would not be the best to ask me for that. Another way is to attach the car to a mover,
Just make a small mover that's hidden completely by the car's mesh and set it's keyframes and such in the way you want it to move.

Then go to the car mesh, open the properties (Right click) Go to movement, and set the car's "attachtag" to the tag of the mover.

(Make sure that in the car's Advanced properties Movable is true, And Static and Stasis are false) The car should now stick to the mover and move in the same way as the mover. Experiment a little with this till it does what you want!

This is a tricky thing, so if you can't manage it, I might type up a more detailed "tutorial" for this later, as I did a similar thing in a HUB map a while ago!

Good luck!

-Kayako
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by papercoffee »

VatcilliZeitchef wrote:I might type up a more detailed "tutorial" for this later, as I did a similar thing in a HUB map a while ago!
You can do this anyway, because this sounds very interesting.

And I will add your tutorial into this thread afterwards. http://www.ut99.org/viewtopic.php?f=5&t ... 787#p33787
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Pectabyte
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by Pectabyte »

Hey guys. Yeah a detailed tutorial might help. I've got the mover and car mesh set. How do you find out the movers Tag to put into the "attachtag" of the car? Also in the mover properties how do I set the movie to start playing at level start and just keep looping?
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A moving car: Attachmover tutorial

Post by VatcilliZeitchef »

So, since this was asked a while ago, I decided to make a little tutorial on how to do this,
I might not be able to finish it completely before I have to head off to class, but let's see how far I can get.

This tutorial is on how to make a moving object. This can be a smoke generator, a kicker, a trigger, or a decoration
(In this case, a car) by attaching it to a mover, while it does not require any prior knowledge to the usage of movers,
it DOES assume you know how to move and place objects and brushes.

First, you start by placing your actor. where you want it to start from.
For the sake of this tutorial I chose the "Car03" Deco under Actors/Decoration
Image

Next, take your builder brush and make it into a small shape which is easily hidden within the
object you want to move, (Alternatively, you can make it an invisible sheet) I picked a triangle since it allows me to easily see
the direction of my actor. Then right click the "add mover brush" icon and select your favourite mover type from the menu.
Image

I picked "LoopMover" because I want my animation to loop without the car flying backwards on the way back.
Anyway, the result should be like this:
Image
Note: If you test the map and your object shows up black or unlit, it means the 'origin' is hidden inside the mover.
Try moving the mover aside a little until it changes.
The next part will be changing the properties.
Right click your actor, and got to "(Name)properties. A pop up window like one of these two will show up:
Image

As you see, I highlighted the important options in red.
Start in the properties of the actor you want to move and ensure that under the +Advanced: "bMovable" is true and "bStatic" and "bStasis" are false.
If you don't want your actor to become invisible online you might also want to tick "bNoDelete" to true.
Finally set the AttachTag under +Movement to something easy to remember that isn't used anywhere else in the map. I named it "MovingCar"

Next go to the mover properties (Again, by right clicking the mover)
And Change the following options:
The Tag under +Event should match the AttachTag on your moving object (In my case "MovingCar")
Under +Mover you should set "MoverEncroachType" to "ME_IgnoreWhenEncroach" unless you want the actor to jump back to start if you bump into it.
Numkeys and MoveTime can be altered to your own desire.
Numkeys=The number of 'key frames' your mover has
MoveTime=The time (In seconds) to move from one frame to the next.

The InitialState under +Object depends on the type of mover you use. If you picked a normal mover you should set it to "TriggerOpenTimed" However,
if you used a LoopMover this should be set to "LoopMove" (Sounds logical, eh?)

(This is where I run out of time, I have to go, will add the rest later!)
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Pectabyte
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by Pectabyte »

Hey. Thanks for the tutorial had a couple questions.

So this Car is actually in my Skybox. Is there a way to start it moving? I followed your tutorial and set it as a loopmover and it just sits there.
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by Metalfist »

I believe you must place a trigger at the playerstart that triggers the mover once.
Also if you place nice coronas as headlight and connect it to the mover, you can make your car look fancy.
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by Radi »

coronas placed in skybox are not visible when rendered on backdrop surfaces ;)
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by UnrealGGecko »

D'oh! And I was wondering why my coronas weren't showing up in the skybox :oops:
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by Radi »

hehe just place a light actor and change its skin to any corona texture :). remember to set gameRelevant to true in its properties :)
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by Metalfist »

Radi wrote:coronas placed in skybox are not visible when rendered on backdrop surfaces ;)
Sorry I meant UTflares (you can do it with each actor actually). Just replace the texture with the one you want. (example map: CTF-((SMP2))Enigmatic)
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by VatcilliZeitchef »

Sorry, I did not get to finishing the tutorial yet, been rather busy, let me get to it!

As you noticed, at this point the mover really doesn't do much, but what did you expect? We haven't even told it where it has to go yet!
That's where we do this:
Start by right-clicking the mover and moving to the 'mover' subcategory till it collapses. Then select "Key 1"

Now, drag the mover to where you want it to move towards, Note that it will move towards this location in a straight line.
This location is also called a "KeyPoint" or if you want it to do more than just move towards one place in a straight line multiple
KeyPoints may be necessary, just repeat the action with Key 2, 3, etc until you used these points to set out a nice path. Don't forget rotation for a natural feel!
Image

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Note: A notable difference between a loopmover and a normal mover can be found here. After reaching the last available keypoint 
with a normal mover it will slowly begin to retrace it's steps, moving backwards. 
Whereas a loopmover after reaching this frame will take the shortest path to key 0 (Base)
Important: After this part is done you will have to open the mover properties again and under
+mover set numkeys to the number of keypoints you used for the mover +1


Now comes the last part: Triggering the mover, the mover won't do anything until it is triggered and told to do it's job.
There are multiple ways to do this, including but not limited to:

A normal trigger (Not advisable in this case)
Found in the actor browser under actors>Triggers>Trigger
By simply going into Trigger properties (Right clicking it) Then going to +Events and setting the "Event" to the same as the "Tag" of your mover
(In my case "MovingCar") you can 'trigger' the mover when you, or a bot touch the trigger actor.

A monster or destructible decoration (Not advisable in this case)
Same setup as above, only the mover will be triggered when the monster is killed or the decoration is destroyed.

A timed trigger (Good option)
Found in the actor browser under actors>Triggers>Trigger>TimedTrigger
If you place this trigger anywhere in the map and set it up in the same way as he normal trigger,
it will automatically trigger the mover one second after the first player spawns. NOT before that.
You can go into TimedTrigger properties and under +TimedTrigger change the DelaySeconds to any value


A StochasticTrigger (Good option)
Found in the actor browser under actors>Triggers>StochasticTrigger
This one is a lot more difficult to set up, but is also the only native trigger that will output events before the game starts.
Once you placed it, go into the properties (Right click!) the first thing you have to look for is +Object and setting the InitialState to "AlwaysActive"
Then navigate to +StochasticTrigger and open +Events.
As the first event enter the tag of your mover, in my case "MovingCar"
Then look down and take a look at the three options, these involve randomization, which sadly only affects the first time.
To make the car start as soon as the map loads you can set MinReCheckTime and MaxReCheckTime both to 1 and TriggerProbability to 1
Image

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Note: In my example the trigger chooses a random time every 20 to 50 seconds to try and trigger my mover, it then has a 50% chance to do so.
The last thing that remains now, is to do a full rebuild and it should work!
You (Probably) made your first looped attachmover now, congratulations!
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by papercoffee »

I'll copy now your tutorial into the "Essential Tutorial links" thread.
Pectabyte
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by Pectabyte »

Hey there. So I've followed your tutorial to the letter and double and triple checked it. Still my car just sits there out in my Skybox. Could you have missed a step? Sorry to hurang you but I really had my hopes up on getting this working.
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Re: Texturing Mover Brushes & Moving (Animating) Decorations

Post by VatcilliZeitchef »

Hmm, I just followed it myself and it seems to work, if you right click your mover and press Key 1 does it jump to that location? Also which way of triggering are you using?
I'll send you a note with my mail so I can look the map over if you want.
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