I am an artist

and I’ve already tried modelling with blender… i’ve currently made only one character and have some question after i saw the unreal engine 4 features…

I’m a noob at this part so…

Question 1
I’ve seen how you can make one character and then mark some parts with colours so you’ll know what material will be on which part. Can you do this normally? Or you need to completely split the character into more parts so you can have each material for each part?

Question 2
I saw that many models are made of a lot of faces that all are same sized squares. Are they for easier texturing?

Question 3
Is blender okay to work with? Or does unreal engine give you other tools to help yourself with modelling?

Question 4
Can you do realistic animations with tools that unreal engine offers you?

If my question isn’t clear enough then tell me.
Thanks for your time!

  1. I would switch to 3d or maya, because there you get some features like the animation tool. But blender is ok to use, it just can get a little bit tricky when you have to export - import stuff into the UE4

hi,
how can i import upk files in my content browser with unreal 4?
I remember that in the older version was a option called fully load, but i couldnt found the option in unreal 4.

Yuu **cant **use your upk files in the UE4 -> it uses another file type (uproject)

ok thanks for your help

But you can easily just export your stuff from UDK as .fbx/.obj/.png and import it into the UE4 and of course you will have to recreate all your materials and particle systems

by recreate do you mean to just import the character textures and place them on or mean basically from scratch again?

Q.1 - I think i remember them saying they created alpha maps that they could use to separate the different material types, this way the model doesn’t need to be broken up. Not 100% sure though

Q.2 - It probably does make texturing easier. I know that it definitely helps with animations as it reduces bad stretching.

With recreating I mean, that you have to create all materials/particle systems again -> so you have to place/connect all nodes (constant vectors, multiply, add,…) again

I really, really no really LOVE when the answer is “Spend $800 and call me in the morning”! Obviously, like most of us, he DOES want to use Blender because…
It’s NOT $800. Sorry if this gets under anyone’s skin but I have spent countless hours scouring the internet looking for answers to questions just like OP’s.
Epic has made this engine $20 a month for a very good reason, small indie game makers are not made of money. As a matter of fact it is the most scarce
resource we have. And it is small indie game makers who are beginning to re-open the game world after years of same old same old.
Blender is all we have. Photoshop, Maya, 3Ds is NOT an option when someone is talking BLENDER. Thx, rant out.

Where have you read that answer? :slight_smile: But yeah, you are right, exactly because of that reason I’m also using blender beside my 3d student version.

I see it alot on way too many threads. When someone asks a question about using Blender, the answer is get Maya or 3DS because they are better.
Another way this conversation goes is…The brakes on my bicycle…GET A CADILAC it’s better.

In this thread the Maya, 3DS answer was given by someone who may have actually thought he/she was helping. And I really do not care, but it brings
up many traumatic hours searching for (anything game engine) and Blender. “Spend thousands of dollars and call me in the morning” is usually the standard
fix.

Hehehe, I think I was the guy that gave the maya, 3d answer but I also said that blender is nearly as good as those two (just some few import-export problems). :slight_smile: Why shouldn’t it be helpful when you say that 3d /maya is a little bit better? You can always go for a testing version or the student version of them, so that you can try it out what is more suitable for you (everybody has to choose by themselfes what they will use -> we can just give some advices/suggestions)

The impossibly obvious answer to this is $$$$$. I do not enjoy teasing myself with a program that is without a doubt better,
only to have to settle for the Blenders of the world. And i do not qualify as a student.

Sorry, but I don’t get what you mean… :stuck_out_tongue:

Not to get into your guys little tussle I get where the guy is coming from. Indie Devs IE small groups with an even smaller budget that want to do things legit and actually release a final product. Tinkering around with whatever is outstandingly fun but if you really want to make something you have to set your pipelines and budgets etc. I use blender why because I don’t want to dump 3k on some software. With that being said it seems as if are almost paid to not support it or give it the attention that or Maya get, why well because those generate money to kick back. Trying out some temp software that you cant commercially use isn’t viable for a lot of teams.

So back to the OP’s question

Q1 = This is entirely done in blender and translates to UE4 - there are pros and cons each material color represents another UV Wrapper. Pro you can add more detail and break say a head detail away from the body. Con’s typically this mean your rendering the model twice so instead of having a 7k player model you now have a 14k model or 21k model and so on.

Q2= No this is about poly flow for mesh weight painting and animation, but it does help break up the texture seams or layouts.

Q3= Blender is just fine for UE4 = However UE4 doesn’t give you any modeling tools or such to work with

Q4 = Ties into Q3 UE4 is not a modeling or animation software package. All it does is put together everything you made in blender you could say.

Piece of advice, I think you need to spend some time in the community just learning about everything so you have a broader understanding and then your questions will be more to the point and make more sense or just focus on being an artist as you put it no shame in being a good graphic artist they are always in demand. No offense intended, and I hope I didn’t break any forum rules linking that.

GL Sir

?v=knbZ_g8Hgvk&list=UUBobmJyzsJ6Ll7UbfhI4iwQ
About animating i’m talking about this…
and in description they said: " …and now Unreal Engine licensees and subscribers can have it too!"

I’ve also heard that subscribers get some tools or assets for free… but the program name is “Autodesk Maya 2014”.

If anyone here is subscriber. could you tell me if its true?

Ya I saw that as well and was scratching my head. Looks like a Plugin for Maya, I have yet to see any plugins for and I highly doubt the plugin will work with Blender. In fact its probably coded for each individual program. I just don’t get why? Why not just make a stand-alone tool? Why have it at all, everything that it does can already be done in all the above mentioned programs and you don’t have to have it. Maybe it makes life easier but only if you have Maya…

I just don’t get it…