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Léna Piquet
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OMBRE
Articles
Technical articles and other thoughts I wrote over the years.
2024
Dec 3
Refracting Pixels
Taking at look at how games and engines render refractive surfaces
What started this article is that I wanted to support refraction in my realtime game engine (which you can learn more about here). I didn't find a lot of clear documentation on the subject, so I went...
Nov 5
OMBRE Dev-Blog Year 2
Transparency, anti-aliasing, physics and many more little things
I have been working on my own game engine for a while now and since today is November 5 (the anniversary date of my engine), it means it is time to post a new yearly recap. If you are interested, you...
Jan 31
Breakdown: Syndicate (2012)
The greasy bloom finally demystified
Syndicate is a little guilty pleasure of mine. It is a game that came out in 2012 as a reboot of another game released in 1993 sharing the same name. It is a fun FPS with a great feel, far from...
2023
Dec 31
OMBRE Dev-Blog Year 1
A recap of 12 month of development on a home made game engine
In 2022 I finally decided to build my own engine. I spent years working with Unreal Engine (started with UDK, then moved on to UE4 and then barely touched UE5), and grew tired of how complicated it...
2021
Dec 2
Custom Bloom Post-Process in Unreal Engine
Making things shine the right way.
I wanted to see if I could modify the unreal engine bloom effect following my article on making custom lens-flare. This is because the default one can sometimes look disapointing and doesn't always...
Sep 15
Custom Lens-Flare Post-Process in Unreal Engine
Reworking and improving the native post-process effect.
This article shows how to modify the default Unreal Engine lens-flare post-process, from code to shaders. I always wanted to change the default Unreal Engine 4 lens-flares because it never felt good...
Apr 28
Fixing Unreal Engine 4 Lens-Flare Settings
They are broken. Nobody can use them. Until today.
If you are a user of UE4, especially recent versions, you may have stumbled upon an issue regarding its lens-flare post-process: you cannot tweak the flare colors properly and they have no effect....
2020
Jun 29
Fast Render Target Rendering in Unreal Engine 4
Overview of how Canvas system work and alternatives to improve performances.
I spent quite a bit of time working with Render Targets in Unreal Engine 4. Mostly to do some effects for my UI. One of the main example is the use of a Jump Flood algorithm to render a Distance...
2019
Mar 28
Creating Seamless Portals in Unreal Engine 4
"Now you are thinking with portals", or how to build a portal system.
In this article I cover how to create Portals in Unreal Engine 4. As I did not find any write-up that would provide enough details to explain how to create such system (viewing but also crossing the...
2018
Nov 10
Realtime Distance Field Textures in Unreal Engine 4
Generate distance field textures at runtime with the Jump Flood algorithm.
For a long time I wanted to be able to generate Distance Field textures on the fly to create various visual effects. Lately I needed this effect to replicate the Photoshop "glow" filter that you can...
Sep 16
Setting Up Perforce with Docker for Unreal Engine 4
Running a Perforce server on your NAS to version your UE4 projects easily.
This guide explains how to setup a Perforce server on a Synology NAS via Docker to be used with Unreal Engine 4. That’s something I wanted to do for a while and I finally took the time for it. I’m...
Jun 19
True First Person Camera in Unreal Engine 4
Overview of a first person fullbody awareness camera and animation system.
I decided to share the method I use in my current project to handle my true first person camera. There is little to no documentation on this specific type of first person view, so after looking into...
Jan 21
UE4 : Specify Default Monitor Location at Launch
Engine source code modification to control the default window position.
As I recently moved from a two screens to three screens setup for my desktop computer I met a little annoyance in the way the Unreal Engine 4 create its game window (everything is fine with the...
2017
May 21
Anamorphic Bloom with Unreal Engine 4
How to modify UE4 source code to change the bloom shape.
The goal of this blog post is to describe how to modify the UE4 default bloom shape. This is possible with a specific console command but also by modifying the source of the engine. Usually a bloom...
Mar 18
Stop Using the If() Node
Actually you can still use it in your UE4 materials, but beware !
Old article starts below. I admit, that title is a bit misleading. Too many time I see people using the "if()" node in UDK/UE4 for some specific use case while there are other way to avoid the if()...
2016
Dec 18
Making Maya Faster Again to Exit/Quit
Turns out you can override lots of things via scripting.
As a long time user of Maya 2013 it pains me to see that while Maya 2015 (but also 2016/2017) looks great on the feature list, it is bothered with a lot of little lags or big slowdowns. One of the...
Jul 3
Face Skin in Substance Painter
Step by step process to create realistic skin details.
I wanted to share my method for painting somewhat realistic skin in Substance Painter. It’s far from perfect but it gives good result when rendered in Real-time with the Unreal Engine 4. Following is...
2015
Dec 5
[Breakdown] Assassin's Creed II
Overview of texture atlases, LODs and lighting
The following breakdown is based on my own guesses and how I understand the game from the textures and meshes I have watched. I can’t tell you exactly if I’m right or wrong since I’m not a developer...
Nov 30
Summary of 2015
From GDC to VR prototype and updates on EXIL
I have been more busy that I would have thought in the first place. I’m a bit sad that my blog is so slow currently, I always enjoyed posting my current progress. Anyway, this post today will present...
Jan 6
UE4 : My Engine/C++ Modifications
A list of various modifications I made in the engine source code to simplify my...
I did several changes in the UE4 engine, mostly personal changes. Some choices made by Epic doesn’t always fit my needs. I believe some people would also be interested those. Also this post will be...
2014
Apr 12
Exil Dev-Blog 9 : Going to the Unreal Engine 4
UE4 beta overview and updates on Lena
A bit of time passed since my last dev-blog post (I feel like I’m coming back from the graveyard, my last dev-blog was one year ago). It’s not that I didn’t wanted to give more updates, unfortunately...
2013
Apr 29
Logo and a Skeleton
Exil Dev-Blog 8
Dev-blog of April, it will be short unfortunately (next month will probably be a small update too), mostly because of the FBX bug I meet these last days. It slowed down a lot my "production". If you...
Apr 21
Custom Gravity on Props (Kactor)
UDK Tutorial
Some people ask me often how I released this effect : I use a inherited class from kActors to achieve this. Then inside a custom tick you simply push a props with a gravity effect. That’s why in the...
Mar 31
Ghost, Camera and Beam Jump
Exil Dev-Blog 7
Here we go, dev-blog of March ! What’s new since February ? I’m starting to have a lot of gameplay features and a time will come when I will have to make an introduction inside the game. I have a...
Feb 27
Cleaning, Beams and Post-Process
Exil Dev-Blog 6
A new month means an new dev-blog. So what is new since January ? (A lot of chat and not many images this time, sorry.) A spend a bit of time cleaning and rewriting some code of the core gameplay....
Jan 9
Lena, Tattoos and Colossus Climbing
Exil Dev-Blog 5
Six month already passed since the previous blog-post, it’s time to talk again a bit about EXIl. The major change since the previous blog-post is the addition of a true character. I finally did a...
2012
Oct 7
[Breakdown] Shadow of the Colossus (PAL - PS2)
I’m a big fan of the game Shadow of the Colossus. It’s an important influence for my own projects today. I’m still amazed about how they were able to handle so impressive Colossi and environments on...
Sep 21
[Breakdown] Batman : Arkham City
The last days I spent quite of time playing to Batman AC made by Rocksteady. It’s a really good game and I was intrigued sometimes on how they managed to create the content of the game. So the...
Jul 1
Roll, Jump and Menu
Exil Dev-Blog 4
I’m still working on my game for the moment. After fixing a lot a bugs/strange behaviors in the player movements (not everything is clean, but it’s better) I’m testing some new thing for making a...
Jun 28
[Code] Add Feedback (Rumble) to Your Xbox Controller
So, I just found how to enable the force feedback on an xbox controller. I’m surprised that by default it’s not enabled with the UDK. The solution works in 2 times : your config file and the call of...
Jun 25
[Code] Batch File to Backup Your UDK Data
Here is a little batch file that I use to make a copy of my current work with the UDK. Nothing special but i’m sure that some people would find this usefull. This script copy your data in two...
Jun 22
Movable Ledges and Specific AO Maps
Exil Dev-Blog 3
Part 3, yeah ! I have finally managed how to stuck the player while he is climbing a ledge to move them together. It took me a while to figure out how to solve a teleport problem when I was trying...
Mar 14
Physics and Concept Art
Exil Dev-Blog 2
Second dev-blog, back to you with some news. Environment test for the climbing Yeah, I will talk again about the physics on the colossus. I have made on new discover on the physics in UDK,...
Feb 27
Physics in UDK and Colossus
Exil Dev-Blog 1
I will try to make updates of my project more often now. Here the first "true" dev-blog post on the project. I will try to talk about my design, problems, and solutions. This time I’m working on the...
2011
Sep 10
Zbrush Test and Exil with Procedural ?
Okay, I don’t have worked a lot on EXIL these last days because I have token some time to learn and test zBrush. So, zBrush is a big and very famous high poly sculpting program. I used a lot Mudbox...
Aug 29
Exil : Climbing and Inspiration
These last days I have created the code which allow the player to climb ledges. Currently it’s not finished of course, I need to tweak a little more the code and improve the animations (but I will do...
Aug 8
Exil : Lena
Since a few days I’m working on the main character of my game EXIL. Her name is "Lena". I have already done a long time ago a first version of the character, but it was not very good and not adapted...
Jun 23
[Code] Exil : Wall Jump
Today we gonna discuss about the walljump function that I used in my project. First, I’m not the original creator of this code, I found it on the official UDK forum, here :...
Jun 18
[Code] Exil : Change Material Ingame
Hello ! I want to share with you some code that I have founded/coded by myself. It’s the best way for me to share and keep alive my different tests. So with unrealscript in the UDK I have managed how...
Jun 16
Exil : Walking on Wall
Hello again ! Since a long time now, I develop my own game which is called "EXIL". It’s an acrobatic game in the way of Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider and Mirror’s Edge. I plan a fight system like in...
