Hey there, it’s been a long time since I’ve asked a question on these forums, but right now I have a question to which the answer would determine how I unwrap my models.
So… Is it possible in UE4 to use multiple UV Sets for one Model? So say I have my mesh and I want a part of it to have a higher resolution texture than the rest of the mesh. Can I use a UV set for that specific part? I know I can make it like that in Maya, but is it possible to import that into Unreal and use some material settings for that? I don’t have much experience in the material system that UE4 uses so this question might sound a little noobish, which it probably is anyway.
Thanks in advance for any answers!
Cheers,
Hi ,
Yes you can do this. This is referred to as a Multi-Sub-Object.
It’s not using multiple UVs though. It’s still using a single UV for the texture but you can layout your UVs to overlap but they’ll use a different texture and not be affected by the other UVs with different textures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiGmbH8nl_A
This video is a good start for Mult-Sub-Object.
While this doesn’t show how to handle the UVs overlapping I can explain it a little better with an example I did from my schools final project a while back.
In this I had the texture laid out with everything but the screen using the entire texture space (512x512). The screen was using the same texture space (essentially overlapping in the UV 1 slot), but I made it take up the entirety of the UV window to hold the entirety of the 512x512 texture space. With it being set in Max as Material ID 2 I could have it use the same texture space without needing a new UV. This is all because of how the material IDs are set up.
If you need a clearer example let me know and I’ll throw something together to explain it better. 
Tim
Thanks for the quick answer!
Yeah, I think i know how that works. It’s just a matter of picking the faces you want the material ID 2 on and assigning it, right?
Problem is, I work with maya and this isn’t supported as far as I know. I know I can pick different Faces and assign a material to them, but I doubt that works in the engine. Since I don’t use Max I’ve been looking for other options to get that exact effect in Maya, but not to render it in Maya (which would 100% work if i recall correctly) but to export it for UE4 for rendering in there.
This is kind of drifting into just talking about 3D Packages and I honestly don’t know if that’s appropriate here, but I didn’t find much information outside of this forum to be honest. What I DID find was how to get something like that to work in the 3D Package itself to render it in Maya, but that’s not what I’m looking for sadly 
Cheers!
No problem!
It would be the case for assigning a material to ID 2 in 3ds Max. Looking at forums and what others have said it’s much different in Maya.
It would appear that your thought to assign different faces a material is essentially how Maya sees a Multi-sub-object. This post on the Epic forums for UDK (same process for import and seeing the materials) may have some suggestions to help you get this working.
Take a look at that and let me know. One of my colleagues in our room has Maya so if it comes down to it I can have him see how to do it and if it’ll work out.
This is fine to talk about 3D packaging and modeling techniques. This is the content creation section which is perfectly suited to any form of content creation. There are a lot of new users using modeling programs for the first time. I’ve gone through and handled a lot of request for information.
Let me know how it turns out. I’m always curious to learn new things because there are a lot of users using Max, Maya, and Blender. I’m really only comfortable with Max but am slowly picking up Blender and some things from Maya.
Tim
It actually does seem to be almost the same. Assigning different faces a material seems to work fine and the engine is supposed to work just fine with that. I found an article in the Documentation that confirms what you just said. Riiight here!
Googling Multi Sub Objects, Maya and Unreal 4 did the trick, hah. Well that would definitely help me out.
So If i understood correctly, I can just have the objects in a mesh that I want to give higher resolution textures in the whole UV-Space, overlapping the rest of the things and I can assign the objects their respective textures. That’s what I understood from what you explained to me. As it seems to work perfectly fine with Unreal, I can then just Export the FBX, Import it into the Engine properly and the mesh I imported has different slots (material ID’s if I’m correct) for the right textures. Seems simple enough. If I understood it correctly, that is.
Again, thanks for the quick replies, Tim!
Cheers!
Seems like you got it!
If you run into any issues just let me know and I’ll take a look and see what we can get resolved!
Tim
Definitely! Thanks~