I’m going to build a big house 1x1km with a lot of rooms.
I can really fast build my house in another program, export it to 3DS and import to UE4. But then it will be one huge object that will be difficuelt to change if I later found out that something have to be changed.
It will take som time to build the hourse with box brush and - I think - performance expensive.
What is the right thing to do - what is best practise?
Neither of the above. Build your house in Max as parts as ryanjon said. Modular is the way to save on all fronts. 1 wall used however many times you need it. 1 staircase, 1 door (most houses have the same door on every room). Then import the parts and put them together in UE4. Using the box brush is wasteful, it’s just for blocking things out and not very efficient. Using a giant mesh will result in a mess as UE4 won’t be able to figure out things like collision properly (Is the entire house a collision object? Are the separate parts collision objects? you get the idea) - then there’s texturing, I can’t imagine the pain it would be to try and texture an entire house for a game engine. You would need like a dozen material slots. And that’s even with no furniture! LOL No just build a floor, or a floor segment (with a few materials), a wall segment, a few doors, a few windows, some steps. Bring them in and start making like it’s a lego kit. It’ll always work right because a wall segment is just a box, etc.
Problem solved
Thanks a lot. Both reply was exactly what I was looking for.
One supplementary. Why use boxes made in another program (f.eks. Sketch) instead of using the Box brush which can add or sub each other. All I want to do is make simple walls with identical looks?
What is best when I want to build a house to walk around in with my oculus?
Thanks for the other answer - that helped a lot.
Creating your assets (walls,doors,floors) etc is better in a dedicated modeling programme as using the box brush in UE4 uses more of your computer resources than they would in say 3ds Max, because these are static meshes which use less, also you wont have to rebuild your level every time you make a change when using static mesh as you would with UE4 box brush also you can make far more complex models than in UE4.
Thanks for the reply
I have to make approx. 352 walls with 186 doors - all with different size and place of doors. Do I have to make every wall and door in 3DS Max or is there a more simple way?
if every door is the same exact shape*, you only need to make one. you’ll need to paint different textures, and have different height maps for grooves, but you’re pretty much only going to need to make the number of doors as are different shapes. you can also scale doors to make them bigger or smaller. So, if every door is rectangular, you’ve only got to make one.
walls are much simpler, you really only need to make one wall for all flat walls. then you’ll need to make custom walls for curves, or for connecting diagonal pieces with straight pieces. But there are “brush settings” called “additive” and “subtractive” in which you can cut out a piece of another object, and then say for windows, insert the glass and window pane and decorations separately. So, 1 window, per shape, then use different textures. you likely wont even have to paint glass, you can just use drop in textures for most of them, then paint a few for some added spicy flavors to your 5 year old project.
i wish i would have known these things a year ago. I wouldn’t have wasted 6 months trying to build something that I could’ve done in half the time or less. ****… good luck if you plan on reviving the project.