Hello everyone, recently I’ve been wanting to make a new game, it will have a large level/map. I want it to be a puzzle game, so walls can move & all of that, so should I build my level in UE4? Or in some 3D software? And how do I let things move in UE4 using 3D software? I’d like to build a lot of it using starter content, and then make a few other things myself (fountains, arches, etc…). Do you have any suggestions for how I should start off with building the level? This will have been my first time actually building a map rather than having it randomly generated. And speaking of random, if I want to make it so that certain rooms randomly spawn, do I need to turn the whole room into a BP? Thanks everyone, forward apologies for my lack of knowledge in this subject.
The short answer is 3d software. You build your map in 3rd party modelling software and import all the pieces into UE4. Everything will be a static mesh so creating moveable and interactive objects is very easy. It’s never a bad idea to block out a level in the editor with BSP if you’re trying to get a particular “flow” down (And BSP’s can always be converted to static mesh). But end the end it really just comes down to the detail level you’re trying to achieve mixed with the most efficient workflow and best performance, and that’s different for everyone.
I’m a bit confused, so should I build my level as 1 giant piece? Or should I build every piece that goes in my level, import all of them into UE4, and put the pieces together in UE4?
Build it as different pieces. You don’t want to have the entire level 1 mesh.
There are a lot of different ways you can go about it but just remember how you want to actually use objects in the scene and texture them etc, you don’t want a single object to be everything and have 100 materials on it. You will also probably change your mind on things once you start playing and want to add more detail and tweak things. So build objects in the 3D modelling software, export them out and then place them in UE4 back where you had them in the 3d software.
There is a good export tool somebody had posted up on here that will let you select a bunch of objects and it will zero them all out and export for you so you don’t have to manually do it. Otherwise if you just export an object out then it will be at it’s position relative to 0,0,0 when you import. Which makes it a lot easier to put the level back together, but becomes a nightmare for when you actually want to do things with the level. Handy for quick Arch Viz projects though.