So first off, I’m very new to both blender and UE4 and I’m sure this isn’t an uncommon question. I’ve looked around the internet and found all sorts of confusing tutorials on this but I can’t get them to work.
I’ve been working through XRG81’s excellent texture painting tutorial Found here, and everything seems to be going fine.
I can export the fbx file and re-import it back into blender with no problems.
However nothing ever works right when I try to import into UE4. I’ve tried lots and lots of things and gotten all kinds of strange results. Sometimes the model comes and and turns all black when I rebuild lighting. Sometimes the model comes in and it just stays grey. Sometimes some color comes with it, but it’s not mapped correctly. Sometimes I get errors in UE4 saying that UV maps are overlapping… but it NEVER looks right. I’m really frustrated and I’ve been struggling with this for a couple of days now.
I think it would be very helpful if I had a step-by-step checklist, let’s say, for exporting a simple textured cube from blender to UE4.
uv map it: or when you use a simple model (e.g a cube with just a rock texture) just unwrap it (select everything in the edit mode -> U -> Unwrap)
create a lightmap: (this will avoid shadow problems e.g the black mesh after building will be solved) -> here you can find more information about lightmaps:
**not necessary:
create a collision -> choose one of the three ways:
I hope to play around with this a bit more later tonight.
Also, I think part of what might have been giving me fits was that I had the materials checkbox clicked when importing into UE4. It seems like that when UE4 attempts to import the material from the fbx, if there is a naming conflict (which happened to me because I was just accepting the default material name in my blender files) then it has issues.
EDIT: Yeah, so my problems were absolutely with the materials that were coming from blender. Ever since I’ve unchecked importing the material and just created it in ue4 everything has been working as expected.
One question, however. I have not been going out of my way to make a second UV lightmap, but I’m no longer seeing the “black mesh” problem either. Is there something I should check in UE4 to make sure that this wont cause me problems down the road?
Either follow TeotiGraphix suggestion (which is the easy way :)) or post your steps how you create the material in blender + how you import it -> I tested it with 2.72b and 4.43 and it should work
Interestingly enough, I am using Blender 2.72 and UE 4.6 and I did a quick test. I get the material imported that I named in Blender but it does not assign the color selected in Blender, in my case I selected green and the baseColor in UE was just plain white.
Although, as we are saying @neighborlee, the only thing you need to concern yourself in Blender is just assigning your materials to faces, other than that you will need to setup you materials in UE.
Really its not worth the headache to even think you can set up anything complex in Blender. There are no cheap modeling programs that will have the PBR workflow, only the pricey ones.
Its not that much leg work to make your materials in the Texture Editor in UE. I use Blender just fine with UE but I also use Substance Designer and Painter for the PBR textures.
Wow, I am no spring chicken with modeling and such but my workflow/test was exactly what you did and I get white. I cannot for the life of me see any differences in what you did then I did.
Not that I am worried because I use substance and setup my own textures but this is odd.
You said you are using 2.72b ? Maybe there is something different with the FBX exporter they fixed… I am using straight 2.72.
,
If you had gone a titch slower, it would have been easier to see after watching it, ok ya I did EVERYTHING he did so I have no excuse if mine isn’t working. It’s difficult to be ‘sure’ since there is no audio, and you go too fast for those who aren’t getting it to work quite right ;0
Honestly, I couldn’t get it to work either but I didn’t keep trying since I set my materials up in Unreal or use Substance.
About your other question, Maya LT looks very viable, I am probably going that route later this year, just to get something that has a better workflow and more familiar drafting type tools.
EDIT EDIT : see later post, this is not the case actually , not coming in with material on it.
Ok I did get it to work straight out of blender 2.72b into 4.4.3 at least ( only one I have atm ) and while I only tested a material, it did come in with material on it with no extra work from me, but it did take its sweet time in showing up in the content browser. Until it computes whatever it computes <shaders I guess> its white, after several seconds it turned the aqua color I gave it in blender.
https://www.dropbox/s/x8us1px8cwy5ghm/Screenshot%202014-12-31%2014.54.24.png?dl=0 , yes this is a WIP, but what you see is just a rough placement of a very alpha object, coming in as colored in blender. Im not sure why it wasn’t working last night but there it is. I’ve not tried importing animations or anything else just objects simple or not or having a simple material.
later
nl
Just tested it with 2.72 and I get the same result as with 2.72b