Hammer editor vs. UDK; lighting and color.

[Bellz]

Hello there.

I've noticed that unreal games seem to do tonemapping and color correction quite differently, and, in my opinion, better than most source games.

A direct comparison is possible between two very similar games, Age of Chivalry and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare.
The latter just seems to be "smoother" with the visuals.

Now, I wonder if it's possible to do the same kind of visual style with the Hammer editor, as it does also support alien swarm, which is based on an older version of the unreal engine, and perhaps utilize the developer kit for that game to improve maps for other games.

[Armageddon]

Age of Chivalry had awful artists, it was a mod team, Chivalry they hired some pros and it looks decent. Also Age of Chivalry was made on the 2004 engine so the max AA value is 6x which looks very jaggy. Unreal 3 has some of the worst AA for any game engine, it just blurs way too much.

Look at Dear Esther, you can make Source look really nice. Also Hammer Editor is not based on UnrealEd that's thee dumbest thing I've ever heard, Hammer is based on WorldCraft which I think was made for Quake 1/2 editing and Valve bought it and used it for HL1. Source and Unreal are not even close, Source is based on the Quake 1 engine. It makes no sense at all to use level editors for different engines to change maps from other engines. It's impossible.

UDK has a thing called Color Grading which is very different from Source's generic screen color distortion, Color Grading can look really good (Mirror's Edge) or really awful and bleaching (Bulletstorm). You could write a Color Grading shader for Source, it's not that complicated.

[jimonions]

Source's lighting and colours are more saturated and better looking imo

just my 2 cents

[Gary]

Source is cool and all. But UDK is likely the winner since last I checked it's a lot easier to do just about anything in it.

But what exactly are we doing?

[ScarT]

Alien Swarm used to be a Unreal (2?) mod so I can see why someone would get the impressed that the ASW branch is based on UDK.

[ErikKiller]

Alien Swarm used to be a Unreal (2?) mod so I can see why someone would get the impressed that the ASW branch is based on UDK.

I think it was originally based on Unreal Tournament 2004? Too lazy to Google it.

[ScarT]

Ah, yes that's sounds correct (I don't care enough to look it up).

[Bellz]

Also Hammer Editor is not based on UnrealEd

I never said it was? I war referring to Alien Swarm, which used to be a UT mod. So I was wondering if, and to what a degree, those two are comparable, and if there's any good method to give source games some more UDK-esque visuals.

But thanks for the suggestions.

[c0ldpr0xy]

Source is cool and all. But UDK is likely the winner since last I checked it's a lot easier to do just about anything in it.

But what exactly are we doing?

Ermm... UDK is 90% prop-based and 10% brush-based. If you're not a modeller, I think you have a long way to go before you can start making some good maps on UDK.

Source on the other hand...

[Gary]

I suppose you're right there. Although, learning how to model is probably a few hundred times more useful than knowing how to manipulate brushes. Modeling isn't terribly difficult, I still have yet to learn how to UV map or use a real program(Blender/3ds/etc) to do it. Though, that's more due to my laziness than my lack of ability or understanding.