Explanation on advanced splatter map creation?

[SpoolsOfWar]

Hey all,

I've been getting along with splatter maps just fine when it comes to combining surfaces that are relatively flat, but combing walls that are at 90 degrees and such always stretches out certain sides (which is how planar projection works I gather). Fine I thought, I'll keep everything flat as possible and move on.

I then had a look through the official maps and found that TW seem to be able to combine all sorts of walls and angles and still have perfect splatter maps with no stretching. I was wondering how this was done and if I'm just misunderstanding something, or overlooking the obvious.

Let's take this mesh from Prison for an example:

The splatter map is fine on all angles:

But if we recreate the splatter map from the default projection angle it will stretch the sides as expected:

What am I missing here? Is there a way to manually set each face or something similar? The SDK wiki is of no help so hopefully someone has figured it out!

 

[Seanchaoz]

I wish I knew man, it's been bugging me as well.

 

[RockMax]

If I have a room, I always go with 45 and 45 degrees. If you need perfect splatter maps you need to go to 3ds max and detach those walls like I did on my Lab X16 stalker map.

 

[SpoolsOfWar]

I wish I knew man, it's been bugging me as well.

Just another one of those SDK mysteries ha. That wiki is is sore need of an update. I do appreciate the vids you put up though, have learned a couple of little tricks here and there.

If I have a room, I always go with 45 and 45 degrees. If you need perfect splatter maps you need to go to 3ds max and detach those walls like I did on my Lab X16 stalker map.

Ah, so external programs are needed? I had assumed that might be the case. That kinda sucks, you'd have thought the SDK would be able to handle such things. Or if it can, wasn't so obtuse in the way it works.

I guess I'll just stick to 45 degrees as usual then. Having 2 meshes instead of 1 for all 4 walls isn't that bad of a compromise.

 

[RockMax]

Best way is, make sure you have right UV´s and build Atlas splattermaps on channel 2. In some cases it does it´s job

 

[Rafin The Red]

I was watching Seanchaoz's video on combining static meshes and when explaining about editing the combined static mesh in the static mesh editor he mentioned the view is critical because the splatter map is based on that view. So I set up a dead end using just wall static meshes (no corners), put a wall material instance on them, and then combined them. I went into the static mesh editor and edited the mesh with the view dead on as if you were looking down the hallway parallel to the end. I followed his directions on creating the light channels. Went back to my map and rebuilt the splatter maps. Same results as what you show above. I then set up a new dead end and combined them into 1 mesh. I then went to the static mesh editor but this time I set the middle number to 45. This caused the view to turn so that I only saw 2 of the walls ( looking almost directly at the corner ). I then applied the two channels and rebuilt the splatter map. This time it looked good except for 1 corner where it was still off slightly.

I don't know if this will help you and you may already know this but I thought I would mention it anyways.

 

[RockMax]

Like I said, build Atlas uvs for Splatter maps, it will work

 

[SpoolsOfWar]

Like I said, build Atlas uvs for Splatter maps, it will work

Building with Atlas while stretching is set to 0 definitely looks better, but it still throws up funky issues like this:

Not the end of the world, but not ideal. I'll keep fiddling with settings though see what happens.

 

[RockMax]

It looks ok to me

 

[Rafin The Red]

What is Atlas?

 

[SpoolsOfWar]

What is Atlas?

It's one of the selectable options next to Planar UVs. Just click that instead and use channel 2 as usual. I'm not sure on the technical differences but it does perform better than Planar on 90 degree angles as RockMax suggested.

On more complex combinations of meshes it does seem to go a little askew though, but it is an improvement on what I was getting before.

 

[Rafin The Red]

It's one of the selectable options next to Planar UVs. Just click that instead and use channel 2 as usual. I'm not sure on the technical differences but it does perform better than Planar on 90 degree angles as RockMax suggested.

On more complex combinations of meshes it does seem to go a little askew though, but it is an improvement on what I was getting before.

Thank you.

 

[RockMax]

It unwraps the UV´s on the model

 

[Seanchaoz]

Thanks for the Atlas suggestion, I did not know of that!

SLightly skewed bloodsplatter is perfectly fine, it's the long stretched out ones that are the real problem. As long as the blood doesn't look overly out of place I wouldn't worry about it to be honest. Most players don't even notice bad splatters unless you point it out to them.