im a graphic design student who uses ue4 in his spare time between looking for a job and everything else, I’m not good at modeling using 3D apps, and don’t want to spend the next 50 years of my life learning yet another program, I love doing little arch Viz stuff and if I could do that in the engine that would be awesome not to mention get even more people to use ue4.
why the pro builder people can’t get their **** together and release it UE4 is just beyond me.
Good for you jojo, this is a side thing for you. Keep in mind for some of us ,the tools we ask for are NOT for fun but ARE our bread and butter and livelihood. So while i understand you like a feature, this is not a reason enough for Epic to give you that feature to play around with because you don’t feel like learning an actual modeling app, at the cost of others. I’m saying this as it is a very good example of so many users in these forums who take the engine up for grabs and just ask for features just to have fun with because it may look cool for 10 mins (nothing wrong with that) but some of us are busting our butts to reach deadlines…
The above note is only intended if Epic is involved i could care less if a third party gets a plugin up and running as long as it not at the expense of what is mentioned.
Engine dilution, AKA ‘What Adobe & Autodesk Do’, is when you take a basic function, over-complicate it and then create multiple functions on top to simplify them. Take Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere Pro. These three products have massive overlaps and multiple add-ons and plugins for no reason at all. Dilution of function, that leads to ‘feature-creep’ as we have seen over the last 25 years of Adobe, where an almost insignificant feature is introduced when it should not have needed to exist in the first place if the original toolset didn’t have a fundamental flaw.
Instead of removing the flaw, they add more features (dilution) to overcome it, but that have the inherent problem of being flawed themselves.
This has the potential to convolute that which does not need to be, and require or necessitate the introduction of *additional *products, features, plugins, add-ons and licensing. If anyone can explain the need for Adobe and Autodesk to have 257 products between them (I may be missing a few!) please tell me. Yes, they do have core products, but these are the total(s).
My concern is when a software company begins to break out its range, which is what this potentially is about. I want there to be an awesome level design tool, not some half-hearted attempt at being a modelling tool that ultimately fails at what a game engine needs: a level design tool.
Something that allows for extremely rapid, iterative designs in real-time - not some backward modelling tool that a level designer will never ever ever ever ever ever ever use, because the only people (in a games environment) that use modelling tools are environment artists, and they are using any number of the 257 products provided for by Adobe or Autodesk! In fact, they could be using Blender, or Modo, or…you get the point!
Give level designers the best possible tool in the games industry for designing levels and stop trying to push them into being 3D modellers, because they are not and never will be.
Just to understand you guys a bit better, maybe I’m still missing a point. When you say level designer tools (assuming level designers are not 3d modelers which in my book i will not hire any level designer who doesn’t have at least a medium skilled knowledge on how to do environment modeling by himself/herself), I just want to understand, how do we expect the level designer to design a level whether in UE or outside then? At the end of the day the person has to take up some boxes or chairs or whatever and put them around and say this is supposed to be an elevator which is 3 m by 3, these stairs start here… and then we walk in this corridor push X button here etc… I mean if he doesn’t know how to model with the basic poly tools how is he going to achieve in sending the message across? The person needs to understadn the tools in order to create the skeleton of a level, how is he supposed to do this by sitting with a 3d modeler and ‘guiding him’ or showing him some blueprints on a paper? That is done at brainstorming stage when any number of people involved are drafting things on paper, for a level designer to do this as a final stage would be a total waste of time (especially in a medium or small team size).
Even architects have to learn Autocad these days and draw the blueprints in 3d. Or Engineers use solidworks etc… So I expect a level designer to have a good knowledge of space, scale and aesthetics, all of which require a 3 dimensional approach which they must possess as a skill set. It will make everyone’s life better. Especially the 3d modelers who will take the base layout and start detailing them into the final assets.
So whether or not this procedure is done in UE or in a 3d app what difference does it make? the clearer the basic 3d layout model of a designer, the better the direction would be understood by everyone on the team.
Lastly the 3d modeling tools in UE of course (supposing they are fully implemented and working) will never be the final assets correct? I hope you guys don’t mean that the level designer uses these tools in UE to extrude a few polys about and then call it a day and texture and release? levels are more complicated than that in most games today. and to make them detailed brings us back to the same point of having to turn UE into a Zbrush modeler or a modo/3ds max full poly tool with full unwrap features etc… which will never happen, and if effort is put to make it happen by Epic, it will again bring us back to the same argument.
I hope this is clear so far.
Tested, Proven, and Much-Loved
4 years of continuous, real-world use by game developers of all types and skill levels. Proudly used in major games including Tinertia, SUPERHOT, Republique, STRAFE and many more.
Prototype Rapidly
Build basic or advanced geometry, right in Unity, with zero creative barriers. Devs agree, ProBuilder is wicked fast and incredibly easy to use- even Collision and UVs are automatically generated. Just build, and have fun!
What about Blender/Max/Maya/etc?
Those tools are great, and you should keep using them for small or highly-detailed objects. However, ProBuilder’s unique ability to build directly in the editor, makes it perfect for level creation, large objects, or simply prototyping. You can instantly edit and playtest geometry, textures, lighting, collision, rooms, or structures- it is true creative freedom. Also, we have made great efforts to ensure ProBuilder is extremely simple and intuitive- nearly zero learning curve!
We need something like this in the engine
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/11919
It’s not an argument, designing levels should be done by level designers using a (singular) level design tool. Interior, exterior & landscape.
You want a house, fine. One cube with an extruded top. Brush-cut the extrusion diagonally and drop the edges equally. Boom. ALT-Drag the cube to make a sub of the hierarchy, do this you got a few houses, maybe a village.
Need some trees nearby? Fine. One cylinder with 2-3 cones on top. Paint the cones green and the cylinders brown. Boom.
What about a pond? You got it. One shallow cylinder with a water material. Duplicate it twice. Once for the physics volume, a second for the post processing volume in case a character falls in. Convert the original cylinder into a static mesh.
Get it so you got the semblance of a level and, that you got something you can infinitely amend and alter at the speed of light when testing.
Anything which slows this process down (like trying to force level designers to do modelling beyond basic geometry) is frankly, a big fat waste of time.
Dilution and overlap.
You **MUST **put lines in the sand, otherwise your staff meetings and discussions will require football stadiums…and hundreds and thousands of hours lost just having everyone talking.
*"**You **design the geometric boundaries of the level - **you **design the environment. **You **go in that room and build, **you *go in that room and wait to be told what to model".
These two rooms should be separate and have Gandalf outside each of them, telling the other they shall not pass! Think I’m mad? Well, the level designers want to design levels and the environment artists want to model stuff. Trying to force one to do the others’ job is an insult to either side of the equation.
Ok agreed to an extend on the things you mentioned, but here are a few points to consider.
1 - I mentioned about modeling in response to a previous post which I got the impression of it stating that designers don’t have to have to model at all, which is not productive or true.
Also I got the impression that this thread is asking for a full fledged modeling tool that would replace actual full detailed modeling of assets done outside the engine (this was my specific problem).
2 - So you are are saying that just give a basic poly modeling tool for designer so they can layout the level roughly as fast as possible before the modelers step in. Which also goes well with my point that designers have to know at the very least basic modeling. BUT in the age and production of an indie studio the point of having just designers and just 3d modelers is very blurry.
I would much prefer to get one strong generalist who is good at designing and modeling (potentially with a good 2d concept artist) than have the departments separated like a large studio, because A) as an indie studio you can’t just afford having one person doing only one thing (unless you got tons of budget) B) By experience I can tell having few but more senior generalists on board on higher positions has been far more productive than having many specialists on board on higher positions, even in medium to large productions.
3 - I would argue that having experienced good designers who have a good grasp of 3d software would hesitate using just the engine tools to initially design their levels because they would require more tools than just that to achieve their goals. Everything from animating rough characters to simulating wall collapsing all these things can be done better and faster outside the engine and these are the deisgner’s requirements as well, they will usually sit down with art directors and directors to make sure all this fits, in best case scenarios the art director and director themselves are the designers and work with the tools to accomplish and translate their vision to the team.
In conclusion the points i’m making is this:
1 - Epic has tons to do that are far more important than the tool in question (unless its a third party then its fine), in other words a good designer will accomplish the design regardless if UE has tools or not, because third party 3d tools are widely available to do the same job and more for free. But If I need a dmn good IK system then i have to hire a very senior person(s), RnD the damn thing for at least a year (if it works) pay tons and tons of money before I could even begin the other tasks (that’s one example) that’s the level of importance i’m speaking of, one project doesn’t get made because of a missing/broken feature, the other does by installing Blender and asking the person to cope with the imports and exports for a while.
2 - Any good designer will not mind working in other 3d tools for reasons stated above.
3 - Sure its faster in UE IF you are doing a very basic layout for a basic game and you have certain expectations that could be all accomplished there.
Your opening points:
-
Understood, and productivity depends on who you hire, what the genre is and how you have setup your studio to make maximum use of time and; too not stifle creativity.
-
No. I am saying do not have a modelling tool inside the UE4 engine at all because it does not belong. Epic have spent great pains to make the transposition from third party software to UE4, exceptional. Level designers do not have to know anything about modelling, at all. Level designers work in a physical real-world. They are the architects for the players who will buy your game. They are not 3D modellers. They deal with traverse times, jump heights, lines-of-sight, steps, ladders, water depths - and all of the game mechanics contained within the physical world of the game. They make thousands of iterations per level/map, and forcing them to use a half-baked modelling tool, or forcing them to get involved in basic modelling is analogous to telling a 100m sprinter they must wade through water…with sharks…at night…with an open wound…naked…with clowns…and if they make it to the other side, that you will force them to swim back and ‘do it better’ except this time, it’s not water but OIL and children will be on the side lighting matches and throwing them onto the slick, black abyss of doom…laughing.
I can’t comment on how your studio does things, but it sounds like you have matched staff to workflow, not workflow to staff. Plenty of seminars on that, cross-industry. Not going to debate that.
- That comment largely depends on the analogous line in the sand I spoke of. Having someone able to communicate in modelling terms I can agree with, but not have a studio full of generalists. That does nothing but lengthen build times and reduces testing…which reduces building…that reduces testing…and so on. It’s a loop, not a workflow.
If you will humour me on this a little bit:-
Artistic workflow begins with sketches, correct? This then leads to initial artwork, followed by some proofs, and maybe then colouring can begin before moving into actual production of assets. It’s a step process, and other than a few alternate routes, is largely linear.
Level design is nothing like that at all. It is not modelling. It is mechanical. It is engineering. It is based on appropriation of the physical laws of the game world. No one can ever disagree (that in a game world) form does not follow function, because it does. If we agree that, then surely, surely…the best tool is one that allows the fastest and purest form (level design) to be created, to follow the function (physical laws/game mechanics) of the game.
If you want to remove level designers and replace them with 3D modellers to create levels ab initio, that’s fine, but it will lead to extremely long development time whilst you battle with this equation.
Your closing points:
- No. Their brush tool has required significant attention for a long time now, going back almost 2 generations. Suggesting that a level designer can use 3rd party tools is offensive…Epic (should) understand they have one of the worst level design tools on the market - and this new tool they are brandishing seems like they are diluting their engine for…reasons?
What is the goal?
What is it meant to do?
What is it going to be used for?
Who is involved and why?
Where are the minutes of the meeting which dictated its conception?
Were any level designers in the industry asked about this? If yes, who? What did they say?
-
Yes they will, because you cannot test something in real-time if you level design pari passu in another application…it’s impossible.
-
Again, level design is not part of the artistic process - it is a completely separate and independent discipline.