Ok, I plan on making Sophie Tails, my UE4 webcomic. While researching I came across many tutorials and have a number of questions. If someone or many someones could answer them I would be ever so grateful and will even credit them in the credits page
Can I use overlapping UVs with different materials? For example, I have the arms, legs, body, and face all on their own material, and all overlapping for the best textUE4 details. However, I used a character making tool for it and made sUE4 I used my own UV map when I did so, leaving the original untouched. Which one will I have to use? Mine or Original uv map? (I don’t want to textUE4 them until I know for sUE4.)
Where or how can I get a UE4 rig so that I can adapt it to my models and make use of all the animations? Is there a blender file for it?
Can I have different attachments like wings and tails? If so do you know of any tutorials that you can share with me?
I have a male and female base form that I plan to attach the character parts to, clothing, hair, tails, ect. Is this possible or must I make each character by themselves and import them in?
Poses. I will probably need custom poses, Can I make them in Blender and import them in? Do you have a tutorial link?
There will be various character changes as I expand on my story world. Does UE4 include a way to change the target character on the fly?
My basic idea for using UE4 for my webcomic is that I make the basic poses and simply play the “game,” allowing the system to take the snaps, but I might also have to get down and take a custom snap if necessary. Does UE4 give me that kind of control?
Each “level” will most likely be a different section of the comic that I can explore and tell the story as I see fit. Is there a limit the level sizes and amount?
And finally, rendering. Does anyone know of any good links on how to build a custom shader so that it can look like a cartoon yet still be 3d models? I know 3d delight can easily do this, I come from Daz3d who has PWToon, so I know it IS possible to have a very toony feel to everything. It would be awesome if I could just park everything and the shader makes everything look exactly the way I want it without too much effort. I plan on using simple, non bump and displacement map textUE4s to get a cell shaded look based on the position of the suns. (Don’t get me started on why I dropped Daz for my comic ideas, it’s not pretty.)
Cloth. How advanced is the clothing control in UE4? I dont expect dynamic cloth or anything but it would be nice if Sophie’s lab coat looks and acts like a lab coat, for instance. Or is that all animated in and attached to character movement?
Alpha maps. Does UE4 support them so I can prevent nasty poke through or must I make each model with their clothes?
That’s about it, thanks for your time and have a great day
Most people refer to it as UE4, not URE. It took a while for me to figure out what you meant. Because, there is also UE3 and UDK which are both still in use.
Everything you asked can be done and is fine in UE4. Most of it is your choice. The rigging questions for instance. You can use a provided rig or make your own. It’s your choice if you want to have wings and tails, or not, also it’s your choice if you want to have attachments or not.
I believe you are talking about animation clips when you mention poses. Yes, you can make your animations in Blender.
Limits are not hard numbers, like for number of levels, it’s up you how much resources you use. How much memory do you want to use. Same for number of AI etc. there aren’t hard numbers, like 100 AI’s and then you can’t. Test your frame rate as you add them and see how many work for you.
ToonShader is what you are asking for. Google ToonShader UE4.
In general, you will get better responses if you ask 1 question at a time and demonstrate that you have attempted to find the answer yourself.
Well, I had a number of questions that I wanted to get down so I could locate answers, but I was also hoping that someone could answer a few of them. Thank you for the toon shader suggestion. I found a number of hits, the most notable one, which I’ll probably save up for or get this Christmas is Advanced Cel Shader Essentials in Visual Effects - UE Marketplace It looks to be exactly what I want but I might be able to find something cheaper. I’m not beyond buying content for my hobby, nor am I beyond selling content for the same hobby to get stuff. It will take me a while to learn UE4, but I mastered Blender so it can’t be **that **hard
I would like to be able to use the UE4 animations, so I would need to locate a UE4 skeleton to redo my characters with. The tricky part will be the shapekeys/morphs that came with the characters. I want to be able to have them blink and other things. After all, what kind of webcomic would I be making if I didn’t have expressions. I don’t care if I have to load them in one at a time and apply them for the default characters. I want them in somehow.
Once again, thank you for your reply. Forgive the question spam, but as I said I wanted to get them down and was hoping for at least one answer.
Edit: I found UE4 Tools, so I can easily move my characters from my character creator to UR4 I tried to import directly but the editor hung at 75% and I force closed it after 20 minutes or so. I am currently posing the characters as close as I can to the rig and adjusting it to fit so I can try again. I think my first goal would be successfully getting the default characters into UE4’s 3rd person demo then packaging them as an asset so I can insert them as needed.
For the animations and skeletons, take a look at Mixamo. https://www.mixamo.com/ All their animations, skeletons, and characters are free if you sign up for an Adobe ID. If you are good with Blender, you should be able to use them as starting points for your customization.
Also, I would strongly recommend getting the lowest cost Adobe package which includes Photoshop. It’s $9.99/month, and you get a lot more than just Photoshop with it. Sometimes PS is just the right tool for the job, especially when fiddling with textures and materials.
One last thing: hardware. I started off with a quad-core AMD Phenom CPU, and I quickly ran into things which took forever to process. I bought a quad core i7 during the Black Friday sales last year, and it has made a huge difference in my workflow. Be wary of i7 laptops. Some of them have only dual core mobile versions of the i7. You really need the 4 cores plus hyperthreading for things like lighting calculations. A solid state drive is also a cheap way to improve performance too. Just be sure all of UE4 and your projects are on it. There is very good bang for your buck with an SSD. My compile times went from a minute or so to 10-15 seconds.
Last I looked at Mixamo they weren’t good with the UR4 animations, that must have changed so I will look into it. I am quite good with Blender. I might not be good with actual character creation due to topology but the CC license allows me to use other people’s work as long as I release the part that I use to the general in some shape or form so I can use it as I wish.
There are free alternatives to photoshop, paint.net and gimp comes to mind. Blender is no slacker to the image department if you know how to do it and are and willing to learn. This image was made 99% in Blender as a challenge to myself. I actually have an older photoshop that I know and love from before they did their monthly thing. 10 bucks a month quickly ads up that’s 120 a year, far more than what I paid for my version. Tack on a number of years and it’s a total ripoff.
As for computer specks here is an overview of my speccy report. (CPU)](Screenshot by Lightshot) I 3d model for a hobby so, although it’s a little old I do have enough oomph to play various games, nothing much bogs my system down, I often have Blender, Scrivener, (My writing software and worth every penny) Epic, Skype, Firefox with various tabs and even a steam game like Sonic the Hedgehog playing at times. I’m not saying that it’s impossible, for it has gotten bogged down, but it is difficult. I also make sure it’s well maintained. I will look into upgrading for hyperthreading though. Maybe I can get away with just the processor upgrade and not the motherboard, although it has been 2 years so I might go ahead and upgrade if I have it this Christmas after getting my new netbook for my books. I know it’s AMD, but it wasnt my choice. I took it into a friend with a shop and he said I would be happy with it and he was right.
I have a SSD but due to space I installed epic on a hhd, but Iim going to buy another one for the quick programs so it’s no big deal.
Thanks for answering my questions
I got Marvelous Designer for clothes and because uv unwrapping was one of my weak points I turned it into a strong point by practicing extra hard
I believe what BrUnO XaVIeR meant, was that if you want real time cloth simulation in UE4, you’d need to use APEX which is an excellent feature in UE4 that will provide just that. Marvelous Designer may be good for creating the clothing, however for actual physics simulation you’ll need to apply the Apex cloth and implement it within UE4.
AFAIK it’s either that, or you create a bone rig for your cloth mesh and simulate using Physics.
My apologies, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what Apex was I should have looked but I was pressed for time because I was off to work. I will definitely look into how it works when the time comes. If UR4 can do it all for me that would be great; all I have to do is tell my characters how they should act and boom it will save me a lot of time that I can give to my other projects
My first priority will be getting my base characters into the engine. I found unreal tools but I am wondering how close so I have to be to the actual pose in order to use all the animations. In another post I ask for help if someone could please take a look at it and offer suggestions that would be awesome
Well, I still need to get my base characters in, build the actual characters, learn how UR4 works, populate my levels/scenes and of course, finish the story. Right now it’s still in concept stage but I do know what they look like and their basic backgrounds because they are ancient characters being brought in for a new story so I need to plan their trip.
Once I get used to UR4 I might even be able to make comics quick enough to restart my main comic again. I am hoping that this will be a lot easier to do than with daz studio. A game engine that does dynamic cloth sounds awesome. Daz had that and when I decided to use it I had to learn how to animate so I’m no slacker in that department.
To see my old comic visit http://insanityofxade.com I would love to redo it but the story world evolved beyond a lot of the parts and would need rewritten anyhow so it’s best I do the middle story first.
