I’m very new to game creation, and i had a question about creating the levels.
It seems everyone has their preferences, but what is (or is there) the best way to create levels for 3d games ?
Create the “basic” rooms (walls, floors,…) in UE, then include all the static meshes (+ their collision mesh) modeled in a modeling software
Create the whole level with collision meshes in a modeling software, then import this in UE
Any other way ?
My questions are :
what is the best in terms of performance (ie occuling algorithms/number of meshes) ?
what is the most convenient process, considering there might/will be editings to the level and static meshes ?
what kind of work is it “good” to do in UE, and what should be left to do in a modeling software ?
For example, what would be the best way to model a room such as this :
://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Domica_Cave_18.jpg (sorry, img is too big to display inline)
with complex walls and floors collisions, all of that would be very tedious to model in UE4. So what part of it would be made in UE, and what part in Blender ?
I personally model everything in 3ds , bsp brushes in unreal engine i use just for blocking out rough level design then replace them with meshes as you dont need to rebuild the level to see their new position, they also are better for memory and because they can be scaled & rotated they save the need to model more walls,floors etc. It really depends on your preference and what detail is required also what are these rooms used for? game environments?, renders?.
I personally would create the meshes in your 3d program and then put everything together in the UE4 -> e.g create a cliff/rock set and build the real cliff in the UE4 (you can use those assets again at different places)
rough overview:
Materials/level creating process/light -> in the UE4
meshes/textures/collisions (depends on the complexity of your mesh)/lightmaps -> in blender
Hey Lionhart, thanks for your answer.
I’m talking about game levels yes, so a good detail level is required.
In your way of doing it, do you model the level “as a whole” in 3dsmax, or do you create “parts” like room by room and export each one to a different fbx ?
And how do you handle large UV maps when your static mesh contains lots of textures and materials ?
I don’t understand in which cases i should use UE4 brushes and texturing tools, besides prototyping.
Sorry if these are newbie questions, but i’ve been looking and don’t find satisfying answers about the global process of creating levels.
Just use brushes for protoyping and replace them with meshes during the development process. In the UE4 you cant find any texturing tools -> just the material editor. The ME is here to assign your texture, that you have created outside of the UE4, to your mesh + you can make changes/improvements/…
Hey , thanks. That’s the way i would go “naturally”.
In this case, do you use UE4 tools to model & texture “simpler” environments such as this : (foreground only : it’s composed basically of blocks)
://www.gameblog.fr/images/blogs/17690/191040.jpg
or should you still model/texture in Blender ?
Speaking of this screenshot, the castle at the background, can be entered partly and you can see it remotely. How should you do it :
A single 3d model with all the rooms inside, or
one low poly model for the outside, and the inside is modeled separately
I would still create it in blender, but in this case you can also do it with the BSP brush -> but after you are finished, convert them to a mesh (better performance) + probably you will have to export it into a 3d program to create the lightmap.
You could do that with LOD’s ->
LOD0 = the entire building will be displayed
LOD1 = just the entrance and the outside of the castle
LOD2 = just the outside of the castle
