Tech Art

(The example above uses default UDK vehicles for demoing purposes.)

The Simple Vehicle Generator creates simple vehicle scripts for UDK, allowing for artists or anyone without programming knowledge to get a working vehicle in game. The user fills out and adjusts values in the different categories, adding their mesh and tweaking how it will handle. Upon clicking "Generate Scripts", the appropriate scripts will be created that just need to be placed into the UDK Mod folder for use. It also has the functionality to Save and Load templates from previous working sessions.

This was created to help fellow students get their modeled vehicles in game for a class assignment racing game. The only things needed for the application is a rigged vehicle and an Unreal Package.

The Unreal Script Editor is a simple way to edit Unreal Scripts. It breaks them down into their default properties and types and creates a dynamic layout based on them. The user can then search for and change values to save back out to the current script or to a new one. This is derived from the UDK Simple Script Generators I have built and is a general, simple interface for Unreal Script editing instead of using an IDE.

The UDK Simple Weapon Generator was created to give users the ability to script weapons for use in UDK without an prior programming knowledge. The user simply plugs in their mesh and values to generate the scripts. It allows for the creation of a weapon with two projectile types with different forms of fire. Each can be tweaked independently. It also has the functionality to Save and Load templates from previous working sessions.

A class of 25 students used this tool to get working weapons in game with ease, as well as providing feedback for its growth and functionality throughout the process. 

This tool was created for the purpose of easing up the amount of prep work needed to get an asset from Maya and into UDK. The normal process would be:

 

Doing this for a multitude of assets can be a hassle though, but with this, a user simply specifies the directory to save the fbx or obj files to and then gives it a name.Export selected items or an entire scene, all objects are given a naming prefix or suffix if chosen. It will also create a meta data file on export called exportName.xml which contains information on the file it is exported from, when it was exported, type, tri count and if it has a lightmap. 

UDK Aggro is a tool created for pulling UDK files from a team share, it was made to simplify the process of getting the latest files from the share. It will copy any of the checked files in the UDK Pull files list to the target location, creating a new folder with the date, time and custom suffix depending on the option. 

Sort options allowed for either a "Flat" or normal pull of the files, ie. both upk and udk files would exist in the same folder or a Separate Structure Pull which divides them into Packages and Map files.

The options shown above will create a new folder in E: called Year-Month-Day Hour-Minute_Raunchy and separate the files into a Maps subfolder and Packages subfolder.

This was created for the purpose of making a computer animators lighting job a bit easier. It will create color spheres attached to all lights in the scene giving a visible representation of the light color and its intensity. This cuts down on the time flipping through lights in the scene to see that information. The spheres are also parented to the lights allowing for them to move with the light if need be. These can also be shown and hidden from the 2 buttons on the layout for rendering shots. A simple utility tool to help speed up renders. 

A tool for the computer animators for when they render out scenes. This will batch process all of their shaders open in a scene and add a gamma correction node to any that need it. If a shader has a file texture assigned to it, this will change it to sRGB Linear and if it has no texture file it will assign it a gamma correction node. These nodes also retain the color and information of what they are attached to so when/if they are removed with the Remove Gamma Correct button, they will go back to their normal colors with no harm done to the scene. 

Texture Path Check is a simple tool to check file texture paths in a Maya scene. Useful for computer animators that are working on a large team. If a files texture path is broken it will warn the user. Clicking on any of the file textures in the scroll box will provide its status and path where it is located.

This tool does exactly what it says, it mirrors an object via pivot instead of face like Mirror Geometry in Maya does. Simple, yet very effective and time saving for a few of my teammate when creating some assets on a project.

Picture 1: Shows object and Pivot

Picture 2: Show Mirror Geometry option from Maya

Picture 3: Show Mirror On Pivot tool, x axis

Texture limits. After long projects (6 weeks) texture space can be hard to keep track of due to the large amount of assets we usually create. I created this tool to quickly and effortlessly count how many of each texture size is being used and provide a list that can be viewed.


What this does: Count texture sizes so you don't have to (because if you're like me counting things is lame). It also gives the user the ability to re-size textures on the fly without having to open Photoshop or any other image editing software.

To use this, simply:

• Run the program
• File Load... and point it towards the folder with your textures in it
• Click Calculate and review your results

You can then click the corresponding buttons (4096,2048,1024,512) to view lists of those texture maps in a separate window. From this window you can then select a texture from the list and re-size it by clicking on one of the 4 buttons. 4096 will re-size the map to a 4096x4096 and so on for the others. When you do it will prompt the user for the new name of the texture (assuming you wouldn't want to overwrite the original one).

Bake all bones was a quick fix to a problem that was occurring when attempting to bake animations down to bones for use in UDK. Normal processes were not working and to get it all to work each individual bone had to be baked down, which was a problem because going through each bone and running the bake animation was taking longer than it should. This tool simply selects all bones and bakes the animations to them between the specified keys.