Hi all,
Sorry if this is the wrong sections. I am not sure where it should go. Anyway I am very new to game design but have been working with unity for a couple months as well as blender. UE4 as addressed a lot of things I would have liked them to do with unity in order to give it an easier GUI to work with. Anyway I am looking to create my own “props” if you will, I believe they are just referred to as assets in unity. I am talking about things like “skins” for vehicles, characters, environmental decor, etc. to change the way it looks.
I would like to know what is recommended to be used with UE4. What will be most compatible with the engine? Blender, Maya, etc.
Also are there certain formats that it will interact with better. As I know in unity certain files must be saved differently in order for the engine to interact with it. Im wondering what we should be looking for over here.
Much appreciated.
Here’s a link to a sticky in this form: https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?57471-Community-List-Free-Software-Tools-amp-Resources-List
There’s a lot of choice and in the end it comes down to cost and personal preference.
I personally would recommend you blender, because it’s free, but it’s all about your personal preferences -> just download all of them and test it (you can get student versions)
The file format which you should use is fbx/obj and png/jpg/tga 
UE4 works with FBX, so as long as your 3D app exports FBX type files, you’re golden. That said, now all FBX exporters are written equal. For example, I know for a fact that the Maya FBX exporter works very well with UE4, while the Modo FBX exporter has some issues with exporting meshes correctly. It’s up to each company to write their version of the FBX exporter for their program, so some exporters might have bugs.
Personally I have used Maya, 3dsMax, and Softimage with Unreal 3 and Unreal 4- those 3 programs I can tell you from experience work great with UE4.
Good luck!
Maya is what Epic uses (I think) but Blender is a solid choice. All 3D apps have pluses and minuses. You need to look around a figure out what you think will work best for you. I use Blender and have had very few problems. As far as ‘skins’ are concerned, I think you’re talking materials and that only requires an image editing program like Photoshop or GIMP. Just keep in mind that anything you recycle will likely be recycled by someone else as well. So long as you don’t mind the fact that there may be a lot of games made using the same models it’s fine but I’d go the whole hog and make original content before I tried modifying or using pre-made content.