1) 3ds Max ready: Completed mesh with bones and biped as a guide allowing for easier animations. At this stage the mesh is exported as an .fbx file ready to import to UDK.
2) Import to UDK screen/AnimSet screen
By this stage I have imported my character .fbx file as a skeletal mesh within UDK and imported the associated textures. In order for UDK to recognise the the textures, they must be linked to a new material with the texture connected to the diffuse node, similar to the slate material editor in 3ds Max.
In order to import my animations, I needed to create a new AnimSet folder beforehand. I've kept my animations in separate .fbx files.
The viewport shows the animations playing as expected, and I can toggle the bones to see if anything looks out of place.
Initially, my character was facing a different direction which isn't ideal. To fix this, head to Skeletal Mesh > Rot Origin, here it will say Pitch, Yaw and Roll.
For my character, the Yaw value was incorrect and needed changing to 180 degrees.
4) Edge detection
Keeping in mind that my influence and art style for this project is very much focused on a creating a character that looks like they've walked out of a comic book...a weird comic book but a comic book nonetheless. I wanted to emulate the "cel shaded" and very hand drawn aesthetic. Through researching, I came across various methods to achieve the outline/edge detection that I wanted.
This can be achieved in Maya via the toonshader or through duplicating and enlarging the mesh and applying a black material.
However the route that I chose was to use a post-process shader that detects the outline, in a similar fashion to the workflow used in industry.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DevelopmentKitGemsSobelEdgeDetection.html
