UDK Wind Shader Tutorial

You can find the full tutorial here: http://www.minifloppy.it/tutorials/7/udk-wind-vertex-shader

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In this tutorial we'll take a look at how to implement a complete wind animation vertex shader inside UDK based on the Crysis wind animation shader. The implementation described in this tutorial allows for a much more realistic and believable wind animation compared to the one available in the UDK Foliage Demo, while improving at the same time the amount of possible material-based tweaking (using parameters) and enhancing performances: based on material settings this shader uses 71 to 95 instructions, opposed to the 130 instructions used by the demo shader.

Please note: this is by no mean the "definitive" wind vertex shader, just my try at implementing a slightly more realistic and optimized shader than the one included in the UDK Foliage Demo. Please contact me if you find errors or have suggestions or comments.

Video song: "Above", by Blue Man Group.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Wind
• Tutorial
• UDK
• Crysis
• Shader
• unreal development kit

[arcaneminded]

Really good tutorial, it saved a lot of headaches. Thank you.

[minifloppyit]

@arcaneminded Glad it helped. :)

[seetherlee]

Wow looking good. Alpha textures on the geometry or is it all mesh?

[minifloppyit]

@seetherlee Thanks! Opacity maps were used to keep polygon count low, but geometry was built to follow the leaf shape as much as possible to cut down overdraw and improve performances.

[BritishAirwaycaptain]

@minifloppyit I have a tree that uses opacity maps. In 3ds max I can see it and it looks great but when I import the model into udk the opacity map is not there and you can see the parts of the model where the opacity map is suppose to be. So how would I get an opacity texture to appear on my model?

[minifloppyit]

@BritishAirwaycaptain You need to use a masked material inside UDK. You can find more info on how to do this in the official documentation on the Unreal Development Network (UDN), just Google for it. Hope this helps.

[EdwardLDavies]

AMAZING! =)

[kadeschui]

wow. many many thanks!

[minifloppyit]

@BritishAirwaycaptain Before importing the model in UDK, you will need some vertex color setup on your model as specified in the "Modeling Tips" section of the tutorial. Once you have your mesh inside UDK you can just plug your textures inside the provided example materials and you should be ready to go. :)