Inside Unreal: Exploring Geometry Tools in UE5

[Tina_Wisdom]

WHAT
The official release of Unreal Engine 5 has brought with it a ton of incredible features and tools that we’re excited to explore, so this week we kick it off with a demo and discussion of the Geometry Tools! Between UE5’s native modeling tool suite and geometry scripting, there is a ton of information to crack into. We’ve got the experts coming on to answer your questions - so tune in live for the Q&A!

WHEN
Thursday, April 14th @ 2:00 PM ET - Countdown

WHERE
Twitch
YouTube

WHO

Russell Paul - Senior Technical Product Manager
Russell Paul is a Senior Technical Product Manager at Epic Games. Building on three decades of modeling experience he is focused on advancing modeling tools and techniques for Unreal Artists in all industries around the world. Developing a passion for 3D modeling early in his studies at ArtCenter College of Design where he was exposed to Alias Autostudio. Joining Alias Research after graduating where he continued to work with the development teams and industrial design community around the world. The California native returned to the bay area beginning a 21 year career at Industrial Light and Magic. There he supervised and developed assets on nearly 30 VFX productions, winning 2 VES awards for outstanding achievement in Models and Environments. His credits include 7 Star Wars films, attractions, an animated film and concept modeling.

Ryan Schmidt - Engineering Fellow, Geometry - @rms80
Ryan Schmidt is an Engineering Fellow and Lead of the Unreal Engine Geometry Team at Epic Games, where he works on Tools and Techniques for creating the next generation of realtime content. He previously founded Gradientspace Corp, where he wrote the open-source mesh processing library geometry3Sharp, and helped Nia Technologies bring 3D-printed prosthetics to the developing world. From 2011 to 2016 he was head of the Design & Fabrication Group at Autodesk Research, which he joined with the acquisition of his mesh modeling software Meshmixer. Meshmixer has been downloaded millions of times, by a userbase ranging from elementary school students to aerospace engineers. His academic research has focused on 3D modeling, intuitive 3D user interfaces, and geometry processing.

Tina Wisdom - Community Manager - @TheUnWiseTina

If you’re unable to make the livestream, all episodes of Inside Unreal can be viewed afterwards on-demand .

[Alexotronic]

Congratulations on what I feel like was a stable and successful launch.

I wouldn’t hesitate to call the modeling tools ‘feature complete’ but I’m hoping to hear about near-term plans/roadmap (and possibly long-term vision)

[Arkiras]

I’m really happy to see the new focus on modeling tools and I’m especially hyped for geometry scripting.

I feel like the modeling tools are quickly outgrowing the UI, currently we have to interact with them via a huge panel of rollouts and buttons. Are there any plans to improve the user experience with something like pie menus or dedicated hotkeys? I imagine this problem is just going to get worse as the toolset gets bigger.

[anon19501049]

I’ll be waiting for the stream. EDT, EST, ET… whatever. I believe I am +5 hours here in the UK.

Also thanks to uploaded recordings for further research later on.

You guys are awesome

[rmsEG (Ryan Schmidt)]

@Arkiras yes we all recognize the problem and are looking at major UX improvements in this respect

[mastercoms]

Are there plans to improve the 2D viewport experience (especially in CubeGrid)? Right now I feel like some of the gizmos/dragging and other controls are finnicky there. I think things like fuzzy dragging which are available in more traditional level editors would help a lot. I understand that sometimes levels and models are a bit complicated to manage in a 2D wireframe view, but it could go a long way in geo sublevels which are being used for blockouts/collision with simple faces.

[Pipoxo]

Is there any plans for sculpting tools (kinda like z-brush?)

[frostic]

there already is. go watch the video

[endofthehall (Russell Paul)]

Under the deform tab, there is a vSculpt and dSculpt tool. The vSculpt will sculpt the existing mesh, while the dSculpt will sculpt and dynamically change the mesh.

[Arkiras]

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

I know this may be outside of the scope of “modeling” specifically, but I hope at some point you may consider adding some tools that support some of the existing material effects that ship with Unreal. Specifically things like generating PivotPainter or StaticMeshSkeletalAnimation data. Unreal already comes with MaxScripts for these, but it would be valuable to be able to do it inside the editor, especially for those of us without access to Max.

[rmsEG (Ryan Schmidt)]

One thing we have not really talked about much yet (planning to cover this in future blogs/videos) is that Modeling Mode is extensible, ie a third party can make a plugin that adds Tools to Modeling Mode (ie to the Tool palette). We may eventually get to things like a PivotPainter replacement internally, but there isn’t anything stopping a third-party C++ developer from building a Tool like that themselves (and publishing it in the Marketplace…)

(and/or doing it with geometry script…)

[1NightVision1]

So, i’m new to UE5 and also UE4 “mindset”, and there’s this thing i don’t fully understand. On UDK (the only editor i’ve known), when you build a BSP, you can double select a face, and set parameters, also right click and set a material only on that face, do i need to work with the Geometry Tools only to do that, or there’s a quicker way to do this?

[JordanAston]

Great presentation. I have a question about geometry scripting. Is it possible to displace geometry by a materials end resulting heightmap? ie. you have a plane with a vertex paint/ height blended material applied that blends between moss and tile. Is it possible to tell the displacement to take the end result of that blend to use as displacement on the plane so you get the blended height detail of both the moss where the moss is, and the tile where the tiles is?

[Mohit_buddy1 (Mohit Chugh)]

hi, I’m using geometry scripting, the thing is I’m following the displacement + plane cut, but I’m not getting the perfect results as that Twitter guy shows us. can anyone help me in this, please

[endofthehall (Russell Paul)]

I am not familiar with UDK but you can use the geometry tools to add some attributes to the faces on a mesh. The modeling tools operate on a slightly different order then other packages so select the mesh first, then tool, then mesh component i.e. faces. So for assigning materials to a specific face use the Material Edit tool under the Attributes tab. select the faces you want, if you need to add a material slot click the plus sign next to materials, set which material you want to assign and then finally assign the material and accept.

There are also other attributes you can edit with Attribute Editor tool that is just above the Material Edit tool.

Hope that Helps,
Russell

[Redtide_Games]

Seems like a good application for this would be creating background landscape elements such as roads. Studying the City Sample from The Matrix demo, I’m not sure but it seems like the road elements (which are Nanite meshes) might have been done this way.

For example, a Nanite use case might be to create a road section, subd and deform using a Quixel road pattern, then apply the texture. Not sure about this, I think the inbuilt tools probably aren’t the best for props and hero assets, but looking for a good use case.

Thoughts?

[yoyomadafaka (yoyoslawo)]

As always complicated as quantum physics, why Blender Dev can create super easy geonodes and very powerfull but in UE you must spend one year to figure out how make box mesh

[frost_FX]

As for Bevel… To be technically more precise, it’s only implemented as a Chamfer right now. We can’t add more loops to get a soft bevel (aka Fillet) or I didn’t search well. Any plans to improve this?

In any case, the direction in which engine tools are developing will be great, i hope. Keep it up and good luck with your craft!