[FEATURE REQUEST] CG Art Build Up/Tutorial Videos of Example Content Processes

[KnightTechDev]

While it’s nice to be able to download and manually tear apart content, sometimes you have to understand the mindset of the artist to understand the scope of the entire process that leads to the final result in the art pipeline, for the content such as the FPS Shooter, Elemental Demo, Reflections Subway, and Vehicle Demo, for example, I’m thinking to myself, well what did they start with first?

I don’t mean from pen and paper or the conceptual ideas to make the level, or the meshes and drag and drop items, but rather the process of when they were actually creating the content to perform the specific tasks and the tweaking to achieve the desired results (Beyond the default level creating tutorials), very much in a similar way the regular engine and feature tutorials cover things.

I’m actually interested in the step-by-step process and videos covering the build up of the levels in their natural sequence that might make things a bit more clear early on, so I can have that “ah ha!” moment and the “oh, that’s why they did that!”

Another example would be, there was a breakdown of the Mobile Temple level which made sense, but what about the other content?

On the content creation side, just how was that Vehicle Game desert rally level made?

It would be interesting to see how the content was created.

[Tim_Hobson]

Hi KnightTechDev,

As you pointed out we have the Mobile Temple level that points out how Epic typically designs and builds their games. Jim Brown, one of our senior designers, walks through the process in the Intro to Level Design Video](Intro to Level Design | Live Training | Unreal Engine - YouTube) on YouTube.

I realize this is only a small level and not on the grand scale of something like Vehicle game, but if you look at the Vehicle game you should be able to see how everything was built.

The terrain was built using our Landscape tool with the heightmap for that being created in World Machine more than likely. The roads were created using the Landscape Spline tool.

You can take a look at the twitch stream for 4.2 some more information on the landscape splines. They point out how several elements are created and work within this example as well.

Vehicles in 4.2 | Feature Highlight | Unreal Engine

The design and setup is very similar to how it was handled for Mobile Temple.

Basic blocking out of the level, in this case instead of using BSPs we are using landscape and the spline tool (which is mentioned and how easily it was the change the track, they even do this on the fly in the level creating new turns and jumps to show you!)

Once this pass is done, it’s a matter of getting assets created to create the atmosphere, then effects, then final pass on the look and feel.

It’s an iterative process as with anything.

If you have any specific questions feel free to ask. We’ll jump in and offer some help!

Tim

EDIT: adding some more information below

I forgot to mention that you can also see level design and creation taking place if you follow the Unreal Tournament GitHub branch we have. This game is being developed and is open to the public. You can test out levels, see what we’ve got thus far. At this stage everything is in BSP form for the levels, just like we show in the Mobile Temple. Later These will be more fleshed out and get to see this development happening!

[KnightTechDev]

Hey thanks so much Tim you’re right and Jim Brown did an awesome job on the video work, I watched alot of the Unreal Engine channel videos and recommend it, that’s exactly like what I was mentioning except in reference to the extra details covering the core content creation portion which wasn’t included in the videos.

Didn’t see that twitch video, glad you posted that video I’m watching it now and already just learned some new techniques.

The layout of assembly of the components in the editor is understandable for the most part. The information you just provided fills in some extra gaps so now I have a better understanding on a few more details of the process.

I postponed my own game development project recently to participate in UT and downloaded Unreal Tournament GitHub branch and just got GitHub system worked out, I’m participating in developing content at the moment so this stuff it’s an interest to me as I’m also documenting things taking notes, reviewing, and determining how to achieve different results. Already refined my own process using BSPs more, I’m wanting to make content for UT high quality while having the right balance and supportive of it’s design, if what I make doesn’t make it into the core game then perhaps eventually in Marketplace or downloadable later somehow in future, just purchased Substance Painter and got flows between Unreal, Blender, Substance Painter, and Hexagon worked out, I’m working on a level now, but trying to fill in some knowledge gaps.

Storage Area 2:

Hopefully, more video’s showing how other downloadable content demos were made will be out sometime in the future, it’s very interesting.

Thank you!