my god, looks amazing, good work. is there any chance you could post a comparison between UDK and SC2?
Thanks for the compliment! :D Unfortunately I cannot, because recreating it would take forever. But I can tell you why it looks the way it does. A lot of it is because UDK is designed to have static lighting systems on top of dynamic ones. SC2 engine uses all dynamic lights (and does does damn good job at it) but it can't be as good looking as static lighting that needs to be calculated. UE3 can calculate the bouncing light and such to make things look very realistic. You can control the quality and type of shadows, shadow color, all kinds of very important subtle things you cant in SC2. But SC2's global lighting system is still nice with its 3 point lighting deal. Again, its designed for a specific purpose and is a BITCH for what I want to do.
UDK also makes those light shafts super easy with a checkbox in the lighting properties for just that.
Also if you have ever worked with the fog properties in SC2 Cutscene editor you'll notice that its VERY limiting. It's designed for a specific purpose and you can't do anything to get around that fact. UDK has a height fog like sc2, but you can also have fog volumes that will only cast fog in the static mesh specified for the volumes shape. So in that image its a combo of both. White heightfog and a brown fog volume. Using the fog gives atmosphere but I also can get away with less work by obscuring objects in the distance.
Now lets talk about the engines efficiency. One thing that makes me rage is when I look at things from a less top down perspective. The engine just shits the bed. I have a 670 FTW edition and a AMD Phenom II 1055T (3.4Ghz) with 20GB of RAM. From a simple change of perspective I can go from 60+fps to like 14FPS. For whatever reason Blizz made the decision to only use 2 CPU cores. >.> So when I go to record the machinima with fraps it makes it even worse. Whereas UDK this is a non issue. I can have considerably more complex scenes with really no issues. Partially because its not out to murder my CPU.
And the workflow of Galaxy Editor is just so bad (minus the cutscene editor). Needlessly complex and even Pre UDK (Unreal 3) editor can do everything Galaxy Editor can. Easier, quicker, more intuitively. I cant wait for Unreal Engine 4. The work flow is just phenominal!!! And UDK can do even more (cause its a nearly full engine), especially for my purposes. I can go on, but it gets kinda' ranty.
Thanks for the compliment! :D Unfortunately I cannot, because recreating it would take forever. But I can tell you why it looks the way it does. A lot of it is because UDK is designed to have static lighting systems on top of dynamic ones. SC2 engine uses all dynamic lights (and does does damn good job at it) but it can't be as good looking as static lighting that needs to be calculated. UE3 can calculate the bouncing light and such to make things look very realistic. You can control the quality and type of shadows, shadow color, all kinds of very important subtle things you cant in SC2. But SC2's global lighting system is still nice with its 3 point lighting deal. Again, its designed for a specific purpose and is a BITCH for what I want to do.
UDK also makes those light shafts super easy with a checkbox in the lighting properties for just that.
Also if you have ever worked with the fog properties in SC2 Cutscene editor you'll notice that its VERY limiting. It's designed for a specific purpose and you can't do anything to get around that fact. UDK has a height fog like sc2, but you can also have fog volumes that will only cast fog in the static mesh specified for the volumes shape. So in that image its a combo of both. White heightfog and a brown fog volume. Using the fog gives atmosphere but I also can get away with less work by obscuring objects in the distance.
Now lets talk about the engines efficiency. One thing that makes me rage is when I look at things from a less top down perspective. The engine just shits the bed. I have a 670 FTW edition and a AMD Phenom II 1055T (3.4Ghz) with 20GB of RAM. From a simple change of perspective I can go from 60+fps to like 14FPS. For whatever reason Blizz made the decision to only use 2 CPU cores. >.> So when I go to record the machinima with fraps it makes it even worse. Whereas UDK this is a non issue. I can have considerably more complex scenes with really no issues. Partially because its not out to murder my CPU.
And the workflow of Galaxy Editor is just so bad (minus the cutscene editor). Needlessly complex and even Pre UDK (Unreal 3) editor can do everything Galaxy Editor can. Easier, quicker, more intuitively. I cant wait for Unreal Engine 4. The work flow is just phenominal!!! And UDK can do even more (cause its a nearly full engine), especially for my purposes. I can go on, but it gets kinda' ranty.