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The intersection of UE4 and a modeling program

How do you decide which to use for what?

#1 User is offline   KroniK Icon

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Posted 03 February 2016 - 11:40 PM

Hello,

This question is mainly directed at FrankieV and HappyDay as they are the main level designers and mappers for UrTHD.

The question I have is this:

How do I decide what to make in a 3D modeling program like Blender or 3ds Max and what to make using the UE4 modeling tools?




I have been wanting to get my hands dirty with the Unreal 4 editor and Blender and start working on learning how to use them both for creating a map. My first barrier though is trying to decide where to start. Once I have a general layout, should I block everything out using the Unreal Editor or use Blender? At what level of detail should I start modeling things in blender rather than modeling things in the Unreal Editor?

I know this is a complex question and can be very opinion based. However the both of you have the most experience of anyone around here and I would like to know your thoughts on your workflow regarding this matter. I have watched most of Frankie's videos and while they are very useful for level details, and conversion from the GTK Radiant, they have yet to provide any substance regarding how to get started from scratch when creating a level in the new engine.

Part of the process is going to have to be my journey as I learn how to use the UE4 Editor and learn its limitations, However it would be simpler and faster to learn by starting out using someone else's workflow and building my own from that perspective.

Any help and advice in this regard is very much welcome. Overall I would love to see another working with power tools video which kinda goes over some of the processes in blocking out an initial level design, and then deciding what buildings and structures need to be modeled in another program based on levels of complexity etc. The actual modeling and importing does not need to be shown as that is much lower level technical stuff, but going over the process for deciding how you want to create a structure of some sort would provide a lot of help for people like me wanting to learn the process.

This post has been edited by KroniK: 03 February 2016 - 11:40 PM





#5 User is offline   KroniK Icon

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Posted 04 February 2016 - 11:44 PM

All of these are great answers. Thanks for the info. I feel a lot more comfortable attempting to build something with this input :D

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#6 User is offline   killspree Icon

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Posted 05 February 2016 - 04:33 AM

Yeah that video zenity posted i've watched it about a year agoo and making bsp brushes to block things out in unreal 4 and exporting them and importing directly into blender helps a lot when you want to get a good idea how the lay out looks and play's without havind to make to much detail.

Some things I also found usefull are the unreal video tutorial series and third party programs like substance painter.

My pipeline would look something like this:
Blender=>SubstancePainter=>Unreal4
But you can go back and forwards to photoshop maya zbrush or any other aplications that suits your needs.

Here is the link:

Tutorials

Some random props I made:




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This one is from this picture:

Phitos

I used it as a background in blender to build the geometry (this is just a low poly and can be made higher poly when you are close up in this case only the textures are made nice for close up.)

You can also scale blender to unreal 4 and make a 2d level layout in photoshop and use it as a guideline to start mapping for example make paths spawns and flag positions.

This post has been edited by killspree: 05 February 2016 - 05:47 AM


#7 User is offline   KroniK Icon

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Posted 05 February 2016 - 07:33 AM

is there a texturing pipeline between blender and UE4? I have become pretty decent at creating materials in blender's cycles engine. Is there a way to push those through or do I need to just UV unwrap and send it all over to be textured in UE4?


#9 User is offline   killspree Icon

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Posted 05 February 2016 - 09:18 PM

About cycles render I don't think everything will work like happy day say's but a decent pipeline can be made using only blender render and ue4 just uv unwrap (make sure there are no overlapping uv!)


Normals facing outside and simply export as fbx there select mesh and in the geometrie tab select smoothing: Face and select tangent space.
If your model is complex you might want add a modifier triangulate.

You can export the uv layout in the uv tab choose at the top export uv layout.

Also setting your blender scene to metric and scale 0.01 and the camera view distance 500 meter.



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This post has been edited by killspree: 06 February 2016 - 07:04 AM


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