For a long time I wanted to be able to generate Distance Field textures on the fly to create various visual effects. Lately I needed this effect to replicate the Photoshop “glow” filter that you can add on layers. The goal was to apply a “bloom” or “glow” on the UI I’m designing for my current project. This article was written based on Unreal Engine 4.20 Distance Field ? Quick recap for people who don’t know what distance fields areRead more
Setting up Perforce with Docker for Unreal Engine 4
This guide explains how to setup a Perforce server on a Synology NAS via Docker to be used with Unreal Engine 4. That’s something I wanted to do for a while and I finally took the time for it. I’m therefor writing this guide as a reminder for me but it will probably be useful for others as well. (Cover image from Unsplash) Disclaimer : I’m just a technical artist. My knowledge of network software, IT and anything related isRead more
True First Person Camera in Unreal Engine 4
I decided to share the method I use in my current project to handle my true first person camera. There is little to no documentation on this specific type of first person view, so after looking into the subject for a while I wanted to write about it. Especially since I had a few issues which took me a bit of time to resolve. The end result looks something like that : True First Person ? What do we callRead more
froTools 3.3 : Maya 2018 compatibility, mesh analyzer, reworked export
Interface preview : The froTools is a toolset for Autodesk Maya to speed up your modeling workflow. This game content oriented script allow you a quicker access to the common tools that you use in Maya when you do polygonal modeling. It also provide a lot of new tools to make some tasks more easy to perform. This script also provides : A quick exporter for the FBX and OBJ format Custom hotkeys dedicated to the functions inside the froToolsRead more
UE4 : Specify default monitor location at launch
As I recently moved from a two screens to three screens setup for my desktop computer I met a little annoyance in the way the Unreal Engine 4 create its game window (everything is fine with the editor). By default the engine will create a new game window on the first screen it finds, probably because the Operating System sort them in a specific order and the engine parse the list as-is. My main problem is that the first screenRead more
Anamorphic bloom with Unreal Engine 4
The goal of this blog post is to describe how to modify the UE4 default bloom shape. This is possible with a specific console command but also by modifying the source of the engine. Usually a bloom effect is used to simulate an artifact from a camera. The part producing the artifact is the lens and not all of them behave the same way. The most common shape is a circle but some can bleed in other ways depending ofRead more
Stop using the if() node
I admit, that title is a bit misleading. Too many time I see people using the “if()” node in UDK/UE4 for some specific use case while there are other way to avoid the if() node and therefore its cost. (All my tests and comparisons were made with the UE4 4.12.3 and an NVIDIA GPU.) The cost Branching on modern hardware has less impact that a few years ago, but if it can be avoided by some simple math it’s oftenRead more
Making Maya faster again to exit/quit
As a long time user of Maya 2013 it pains me to see that while Maya 2015 (but also 2016/2017) looks great on the feature list, it is bothered with a lot of little lags or big slowdowns. One of the most common being the long time necessary to close Maya 2015 (an issue that have been discussed here for example). Closing maya quickly The trick is a bit dirty, but it does the job. The reason why Maya 2016Read more
Face Skin in Substance Painter
I wanted to share my method for painting somewhat realistic skin in Substance Painter. It’s far from perfect but it gives good result when rendered in Real-time with the Unreal Engine 4. Following is the step by step process (more or less). 🙂 Note that this tutorial was based on Substance Painter 2.1. Baking First step before starting to paint is to setup your additional maps (baked textures) in Substance Painter. I mostly use the default baking settings as theyRead more
[Breakdown] Assassin’s Creed II
This article is a reprint of the original I wrote in February 2013 for MapCore, you can read the original version over here. ———————————– The following breakdown is based on my own guesses and how I understand the game from the textures and meshes I have watched. I can’t tell you exactly if I’m right or wrong since I’m not a developer of the game. However, I believe I’m rational enough to think that most of what I say is close toRead more
Summary of 2015
I have been more busy that I would have thought in the first place. I’m a bit sad that my blog is so slow currently, I always enjoyed posting my current progress. Anyway, this post today will present a bit what I have done during this year. Hopefully I won’t have to do the same next year. 🙂 EXIL During the beginning of 2015 I have worked on my UE4 game project named EXIL. I wanted to do a trailer thatRead more
UE4 : My Engine/C++ modifications
I did several changes in the UE4 engine, mostly personal changes. Some choices made by Epic doesn’t always fit my needs. I believe some people would also be interested those. Also this post will be useful for me too to track all my modifications. 🙂 Comments are open if you have questions ! I will keep this post updated when I will change my version or that I edit some other parts of the engine code. Currently the code belowRead more