Material for generated icon doesn't show
Coming back to this after the weekend, when using Beaver's icons generator, whether in batch mode or in raw scene mode, it doesn't show the material. I initially thought it was because Unreal isn't aware of the textures but after changing the placeholders with the real ones, it still doesn't show up
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I tried with Kyrium’s icon generator and I got the same result but that's probably normal I suppose
Has anyone successfully made icons for foundations using one of the generators?
My material previewer in Th3SMBuilder also broke. I think something about the scene capture got broken (e.g. alpha channel)? I haven't investigated
I mean it was already the case before the patch
It broke in 1.0
Aaaah
:thonk:
Actually I remembered the missing link in MM_BakedStencil_01 and reconnecting them made that kinda work
but the lighting is wrong
And there seems to be a random white artifact at the bottom
Ah the material doesn't reflect properly I think, even increasing the light power is kinda the same
There might be more bad links
Try changing the material to worldgrid (or something that's known to work) and see if it shows up properly
I can't find the world grid material, here are my links, I didn't add too much
I guess those are missing but I don't know where to link them
Not necessarily
Try with another material
I think they are the same, can't find any material that look right
Or it's like stuff like this
With LOD0
It uses MM_FactoryBaked
By "look right" I mean something like a solid colour
A solid colour? I don't see how that would help
To see if the capture works, at least that's what I thought the problem was
Oh, but it's the same thing in the scene, I'm not sure it's the capturing that doesn't work
If I increase the light intensity, I get something like that even in the scene
The middle part doesn't reflect anything
I don't know if that's the issue but there are a bunch of unlinked nodes down there
That's why I said this. Use a material where you know very well what it should look like
Even if it's not the "right" one
I see, though I'm not sure how I can do that, there are no materials with solid colour, do you mean creating a simple one?
Yes
Just for testing
New material, add a constant float3, set its RGB colour to something like
#840000 sRGB and wire it to Base ColourOkaaaay x)
It seems normal
Does the icon capture work?
Also I think you're shining a lot of light on that. The colour should look like this
It looks really bright even in here
The icon captures outputs this
Ah, because that's supposed to be 0 to 1 range. Click on the colour square to open the colour picker
Oooh lmao
If you want to see something silly, wire this node to the Emissive Colour pin :wonke:
This feels like a flashbang xD
Better
It seems to work
When I shine light it seems to have some issues though
That's reasonable, yes
I don't think it needs extra light
Not sure I understood the point of this
Sorry, re-reading the whole thing, looks like I misinterpreted something.
I thought the problem was that the icon generator didn't work, but the actual issue is that the material in the editor doesn't work properly
Yep, dw it's fine :wonke:
So anyone got an idea?
Which master material is this
MM_BakedStencil? If that's what you mean
it is
did you export valid versions of all the textures it uses? like the stencil?
I think I did
This is on MI_Foundation_FicsitSet
that looks right, did you disable SRGB on everything but the Albedo?
I don't remember doing this, where is it?
on the individual texture assets
Is it this?
there should also be a
[ ] sRGB IIRCAh yes
Everything looks correct
I'll have to dig into this cause there's no reason it shouldn't work but I haven't tested
I mean it seems to kinda work, just the reflexion of the lighting seems off
well there's going to be slight problems with the reflection not being perfect because what does it have to reflect?
I had to inject a fake cubemap into the scene so it wasn't relying on void which looked even worse
Yeah I understand but the middle part doesn't even get reflected at all
What does it look like in-game?
Compared to this
Try setting the colour swatches to pure black, in-game
Custom swatch defaults to that
You think it's not that it's not reflecting but rather that it uses the custom swatch?
I mean looking at it with different angles in the mesh viewer it looks like that's the case
it's mroe that you need to set colours for the material to pick up
Ah ok
you can set defaults for viewing in editor on the buildable
there was a regression with the enw materials I have yet to patch in SML which would give better defaults
but that wouldn't hlep ehre as those foundations use a apsecial grey... maybe... did they clean it up. I can't remember
There were some disconnected pins in one of the materials
But yes, the thing defaults to black unless you set per instance floats or change
MF_Get{Primary/Secondary}Color to return a different colour (which is a crude hack)and you can set per instance values on static mesh components. so the onbly time you have to see black is the model viewer
I think I found it, it only affects the mesh placed in the scene correct? If I wanna do that for all my meshes it's gonna take a while, isn't there a way to set it globally? I found these in the material itself but it doesn't seem to affect the color
or change MF_Get{Primary/Secondary}Color to return a different colour (which is a crude hack)That's global
Aaah ok
I inputted the color but it seems too bright :thonk:
In game it's #5D5D5D
Which I converted to the RGB value 0.364706 (x3)
Did you input it as linear or sRGB?
Like this
I'd guess linear
Huh, I thought you did the global approach
Oh yeah, this was just a test
I didn't do the global thing yet
I don't know the conversion, I just use UE's colour picker to translate Linear <---> sRGB
I'll try it
Yeah, looks like you want to convert the values
Aaaah ok
The numbers you have are for a linear colour
That makes sense
Does it look a bit off or is it just me?
That's the kind off I expect
if the icons had a consistent lighting setup I'd be working ahrder to replicate it exactly
Ok thanks
Any tips to reproduce the lighting as accurate as possible?
Replace the vanilla icons to match :wonke:
it's what I did for the pipeline cross 😄
Ah
but specifically in this case you can get closer by brightening up the cubemap included in the icon generator, and then ramping up the brightness of the lights
Will try, thanks
Thanks for shining some light on what can be adjusted!
yeah a lot of their icons are kinda over exposed, and what I have now is a little dark and flat
but some of those icons are still like from Update 3 ish. and the lighting engine has undergone so many changes you can see the difference between their own icons
Yeah
It's so hard to get close :NOOOO: Why is the outer ring so bright compared to the rest
The color doesn't even look right
because there's like a 100 factors that go into making a shiny metal look exactly right sorry 😄
Yeah I know it's such a headache
-cough- might have something to do with why I haven't put a lot of effort into tryint to perfect my lighting setup as I know how much time and frustration it'll take
and U 1.0 dashed my hopes of having a universal icon style
I should just make a mod that takes pictures of the buildables and replaces all the icons
Like in game directly?
Understandable xD
If I manage to find something that works I'll share the settings if you want
Yes, I can do cursed things
I love cursed things
I mean it's not that cursed xD It's actually a really great idea
I mean implementation-wise
Aah yeah
The only pieces I'm missing are "spawning and destroying buildables without a build gun" and "scaling buildables to be of roughly the same size"
I tried doing some weird stuff with rectangular lights to lighten up the rectangular grids on the sides to make it more similar to the base game icon but it's nowhere near 🤣
Side to side comparison
I think it's slightly better than my other iterations but still, it's pretty bad
I'm more concerned about the pixels than anything else
It's just an in game screenshot I took and resized it to the same size x)
It was just to see the colors comparison mainly
Do your icons have mipmaps?
I've already heard this term but I don't know what it means
Out of curiosity, what are the texture settings you use for your icons?
You mean this?
Open the texture asset, show the details panel
The asset you have for this in the mod files
On the base color texture
I mean the item icon
Uh
It's just a png file
Oh, you didn't import it into UE again
Ah my bad
Honestly, I'm not even sure if the icon even matches the foundations as they currently look in-game
Pretty sure they don't
But I really wanna match the other icons colors (idc if it's not perfect I just need a "close enough")
It's easier to replace the base game icons
I guess so, but there are a lot of foundations and as I mentionned in the past, I want my mod to feel as vanilla as possible, so I'm not too keen on changing the base icons (even though that's what I might end up with)
Okay, that has 10 mips which means it's using mipmaps. I'd suggest setting the texture group to the same one that base game icons use for consistency
So if vanilla reuses icons taken before the beginning of time, would you be willing to do the same? I mean, you can try messing with the exposure in the scene capture settings, but it's not something I'd spend a lot of time on
I know that's not the logical thing to do but I probably have OCD so my mind wants the same as the base game even though it's dumb 🤣
Though thinking logically you're absolutely right
Messing with exposure settings of the scene capture is worth a shot, but getting the perfect would likely involve acquiring a time machine to re-do the mod in Update 3 or something
Fair enough
I guess I won't have a choice
But that's a bit infuriating x)
If only I could just yoink the light setup they used for making the foundation icons (even just for stairs since they were made for 1.0)
You may want to go to the Satisfactory QA and open an issue about icon inconsistency, maybe it'll become a FICSMAS gift
This game used to use UE4 until Early Access Update 8, I remember lighting changed quite a bit
Yeah but surely they did the icons for the foundations stairs in UE5 right?
It looks close enough I think
Yes, but I don't remember what stair icons look like
They bearly peek out of the screenshot I took (don't wanna reopen the game xD)
They're a bit different but that's near-enough
One of the things I noticed is the size difference, and the fact that the base game icon is rather blurry
It looks a bit more blueish as well
https://questions.satisfactorygame.com/post/672d1167c11fcb08da7cafe8 👀
It's probably not the best way to phrase it but I couldn't be bothered and I'm tired
There's a tag about mods too
Didn't see it thanks
Btw, forgot to ask but which texture group is that?
I don't know, let me check. I mean,
World would work, even if not absolutely perfectly
"LODGroup": "TEXTUREGROUP_Project01" I think that's UI StreamableI don't see the difference :thonk:
It's probably not noticeable in the editor
But it would probably avoid getting blurry icons at first if running low on VRAM
Ah ok
I think changing the temperature to a more blueish light was a good idea
It looks much better
With more lighting on the grates rectangles, I'm not sure which is best
Maybe halfway through?
Something like this?
Too bright?
I just reloaded the editor from the latest picture to this xD
But it might not be that bad
Oh it updated nvm
The camera must have glitched
Btw I don't think the Batch mode is working, or maybe I'm doing something wrong. It just takes what's on the scene
I just tested and it works fine
the scene should be empty, baring lights and such the things should be added to a batch and the capture mode set to that batch
When it's empty, I get this output
which batch are you running?
ClassBatch?
place a foundation in your scene, sekect the cam data like you haveabd oress Load, then is the thumbnail right?
Yes
then it should be working because it places the listed buildable, snaps a picture, removes it, places the build and so on.
:thonk:
By thumbnail you mean the top left image right?
yup, that's what it should be writing out
wait a second
do you actually have a visible instance of the mesh in the buildable?
with the lightweights you don't actually have a static mesh component present do you
in U8 there used to be a lightweight instance manager that would sort of self pop into existence that handled that. I haven't tried lgihtweight buildables in 1.0
What do you mean?
Like in the scene?
My buildable does have a visible mesh, I'm not sure I understand what you mean
I'll have to investigaate
Hmm alright
Encountered a weird bug @AngryBeaver
When using the name replace, if I replace by
Desc_ it works properly
But if I replace with IconDesc_ instead, the first time it works, but all the other times it adds an additional Icon prefix
Each of those rules are run in order. I don't have a way to run them simultaneously.
Aaah
Got it thanks
What do you think?
I've made them manually since I couldn't figure out the batch thing
:launch:
I might have messed up the 4m one
The angle doesn't look the same
It's taller, that's why
Oh
I don't see the issue tbh
Yeah sometimes I forget physics
That's fine I guess
Pretty sure base game has the same thing
Yeah plus I already spent waaaay too much time on 3 icons x) I've got a lot more to do
Really thought it would take me very little time using the generators but didn't think lighting would be such an issue
It's really not that bad!
If you don't look too closely it looks just like the others
Maybe the grates are not as much highlighted as the other icons but that's fine
Using the same tricks I did with the ficsit set I can't seem to lighten up the middle part more than this on the grip metal material 🤔
This is way brighter
I guess you should place the light sources so that the light reflects more towards the camera
It just does something like this
Coming back to this, anyone got an idea? I didn't work on it since yesterday but I did try to change the primary colors but it's not affected by it
It should use the same as FICSIT
It doesn't look any different
Same colours, sorry
I know but like even if I put bright pink it still looks the same
It's not affected by colors
Oh
Does it become bright pink if doing the same in-game?
Gonna try it but I'm pretty sure it won't
I don't think it's paintable
Unless I'm wrong
I honestly don't remember, best way to know is to check
It isn't.
Well the markings change color
But then how do I make it a brighter color? Since any light I shine results in something overexposed or underexposed
Doesn't the scene capture have an exposure setting?
There's also the cubemap
Only in the lights settings I think but I played with those a lot and nothing worked
I tried this as well but increasing the brightness still doesn't give the right color
We'll it has its own color too. So if it's not the right colour you might need to change it
Where? I can't see it
Would using a different light shape help?
Idk, I already tried several but It's always way off
At this point, you know what? Make a post-process material and assign it to the scene capture 😄
You can do weird things there
What's that?
Example of a post-process material I tried to make to simulate being underwater
How would you make a post-process material? I don't really get it, what's the point?
You make a material, set the settings to be a post-process material and assign it to the scene capture
Why would you make one? You can use them to do tone mapping and similar stuff
Is that the right tool? I don't know, maybe not, but it's an option
But if it's a brand new material, it won't have the gripmetal one? Or should I duplicate it? When changing that on MM_BakedStencil it just becomes black
What about this? How do you change the cubemap's color?
It's a picture in the repo
The post-process material is applied to the scene capture, the camera taking pictures of your meshes
It's like filters but a lot more powerful
The skybox?
Hmm, it just makes my whole scene the color I chose and doesn't change anything in the capturing
points at the example picture
I don't understand how they work
Because you need to assign the post process to the camera capturing the icon too.
SceneTexture: PostProcessInput0 is the data from the cameraAnd yes there's the element in the hierarchy that substitutes a picture in for anything that needs a reflection that's pretty important and one of the 100 things that change shiny metal.
I'm completely lost
I don't understand anything x)
I could tell. But unfortunately I don't have it in me to explain every piece of everything in something this complicated today as I've got stuff happening. Hopefully you can do some googling around the terms I mentioned to get a clearer idea.
It's ok thanks anyways I appreciate your help :wonke:
I gave up on the grip metal for now. So I did the concrete, asphalt, and coated concrete in the mean time, could you give your opinions on them please?
I'm the most skeptical on the coated concrete one, I think the others look fine especially the concrete
Maybe something more like this for coated concrete?
Does it look weird?
Or this?
I managed to get really close, what do you think?
Compared to the base game icon:
