By replacing WE with I, your argument makes more sense.
There is a clear workflow that Epic has intended, but you’re going against the grain and proclaiming its a fault in the engine itself. Better tools are always great, and additions to brushes and expanding on their functionality would be fine - but there are a ton of people who haven’t run into slow prototyping, myself included. People are getting defensive because, even though brush tools could be improved upon, all things considered, they fulfill their intended purpose. I’d rather see better shading support, improvements to GI, and numerous other improvements before concentrating BSP tools.
I see argument akin to not having animation tools within UE4. Sure, it would be nice, but any standalone program is going to have infinitely better results. I haven’t seen any shortcomings of beautiful environments, indoors and outdoors, with UE4 – and most of the examples I have seen have been from indies.
Is it possible that the problem is not with the tools, but how you’re attempting to utilize them?
Also, don’t you think its a bit unfair to ask for peoples opinions, and then state that should they differ from yours, they are wrong? That’s a bit of a one sided conversation, and gives me personally little reason to contribute to dialogue further, as it seems you’ve already made up your mind.
If you’re looking for retro style graphics then you would be looking for the best performance possible, like Minecraft, BSP is not efficient for a game engine, never mind the process in making it, it actually makes the game run slower.
And for people that struggle with making good graphics then doing it with BSP isn’t going to help them at all. The only advantage is that it’s in the program, if you want something easier to use then use a 3D program. You can even learn how to do BSP style modeling pretty quickly there.
The way levels are built now is different than 15 years ago. You have so much more control and flexibility with meshes than BSP. Your city example? Make a few road pieces and city blocks in a 3D package. Now you can snap those together to make your scene. Need more detail? Modify the asset. Now every instance takes on those changes. How would you do that with BSP?
Make some building shapes. Stretch, squash, rotate. Stack them. Get creative. Write a blueprint that accesses those pieces and places them dynamically. Now your city is different each time.
BSP? Get out the caulk and hint brushes. Visibility right now- culling volume.
Some of those automated construction methods you talked about? You obviously haven’t seen the blueprint construction demo with the rail pieces. With some more effort you could probably make a whole series of blueprints that created sidewalks/windows/doors whatever.
Faster prototyping? Google Sketchup- export. It’s easy for people who don’t have time to learn an extensive 3D package.
is going to come off as harsh but I can only assume you are inexperienced with designing levels for games because you are taking the position that since it doesn’t match your expectations, it is inadequate. I’m not defending the engine either, it’s not perfect. And I have no reason to care if someone thinks it sucks or not.
I would take your assessment that the level tools were lacking more seriously if I thought you had spent more time looking into construction methods and providing creative feedback.
Instead you plainly stated that UE 4 needs better tools and if we don’t agree with you, we are wrong.
I also need to say that currently the Level Designing capability right now are far from limited. I’m not really a mapper so I find everything extremely hard myself however my friends love how much they can accomplish in only a day for detailing anything and everything.
I don’t see a problem what so ever with the editor and the recommended workflow.
BSPs works fine for what they’re intended for and I don’t see any reason to encourage outdated workflows, engine strives to be modern and teach people the current workflow and how modern games are made, why learn some pre historic way of doing it when there are better ways?
I’m not sure you are talking about blocking workflow or about “modeling” 3D assets in engine. If it’s about “modeling” then that’s true. If it’s about blocking, then you are wrong. Blocking out level is not a historic way (maybe you don’t know what blocking means?). To recommend Sketchup for prototyping (blocking?) sounds confusing. You don’t see the advantage of blocking out stuff right in the environment where the game will happen? What about level that’s work in progress and you want to do some additional blocking? Would you be exporting the already made parts to sketchup and then continue there?
I think blocking is a valid workflow, UE doesn’t have bad tools for it (even more so that they have been updated), but still they could be enhanced. Only one of the problems with BSP - long or longer undo under different circumstances, that can kill a smooth workflow. But if OP really means “modeling” of the whole level from start to finish in UE, that would be too much for these days. For AAA engine like UE it would require integrating almost maya/ level of 3D modeling tools (which of course is out of question).
Hey - the example I had in my head was the city style map suggested in the OP. If I didn’t use Maya/, Sketchup would let you quickly make a bunch of pieces to use in a blockout and then assemble them in UE 4- where you can adjust scale, squash,etc. I’d make some road pieces, ramps, bridges - things that I could test spaces with. I’d only start with a few. Once I started running around, I’d make another set of Lego type bits. Iterate again. method could also facilitate a later art pass because I see how my meshes will ultimately work together.
Well and isn’t it just easier to make the simple rough shapes to test the space/level right in UE? You then may make the detailed version in 3D app and replace the simple blocking versions.
Again, I’m not saying BSP is horrible, but they have a few problems and some modern version wouldn’t hurt and I guess would be appreciated by lot of folks.
Well. That’s the point. I just create simple shapes in external program and use them to blockout.
It have added benefit of, those predefined shapes have set scale and dimensions.
I think the point is that everyone has a different workflow. Blocking out stuff right inside the engine is common enough to be supported by good tools.
Because BSP has been enhanced between udk/ue4beta and current ue, plus the fact that roadmap has a geometry editor 2 in the backlog (which I guess is bsp replacement), it’s probably safe to say that Epic does count with blocking workflow.
I never said blocking out a draft is an outdated way of doing it. Op however seems to want to be able to create everything using brushes.
I think the current tools are more than capable of an easy and quick blocking of the map. Sure they could be improved but I see no reason to make it into some kind of level building tool where you replace static meshes with brushes.
I normally use Maya/Blender to model/uv , but I still find quite frustrating the process to import, position and add materials to the various meshes in UE4.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but I don’t see a way to just import a bunch of meshes, keep them grouped into a logical transform hierarchy (i.e. maya groups)
and move or assign materials to these groups quickly. I’m using fbx , and it creates one big mesh for each export with sub-elements (that are non movable or replaceable on the fly) that are not very easy to manage imho. Sometimes you want to assign materials to logical groups that are not based on sub-elements or single fbx imports… just as you normally do on most 3d packages…
if i’m missing some magic trick please enlighten me
You can apply your materials in Maya and they will transfer to UE4, if you want them to be separate objects when you import to UE4 make sure that you uncheck the Combine Meshes box. If you ever need to change a mesh you export to the file again from Maya and then just go to the object in the content browser and right click and select Reimport.
If you’re blocking out a level however, you probably don’t need to worry about materials
I have to say I do wish there were better tools for blocking stuff out. Ultimately what I’d want to see is a voxel based system (ala EQ Next Landmark not Minecraft). The way I envision it you’d only be using voxel rendering in the editor, and it would just build that into regular static meshes when you want.
Of course, that’s pie-in-the-sky. More realistically, it’d be nice if the BSP tools were more like other engines where the interaction is a bit faster ala Sauerbraten. There’s nothing wrong with that as a goal, even though BSP isn’t intended for building your entire game.
Especially if you are not an artist, being able to quickly build out shapes to prototype with is pretty important. Going into or Maya and just modeling everything is a slow tedious process for non-artists (slower than the current BSP tools even) so is not a good option.
Yep. Ideally, you are able to model, texture, sculpt, map, etc, all in one place. It sure was nice, when you were actually able to do everything but custom sounds/textures for a new level back in the day.
There is engine like Quake 4 , Doom 3 BSP centric, why not taking one of them if your game is BSP and retro ? UE4 has BSP , but only for prototyping not intended for level creation in the old fashion, even if i understand it’s more easy than having to learn modeling. Perhaps someday someone will create some blueprints addon for advanced BSP editing ? You can read some good article showing the benefits of using “Lego” assets instead. ://fr.slideshare.net/JoelBurgess/gdc2013-kit-buildingfinal
well I realised that if I set the grid to 100 then its alot easier to get things aligned and all that, I didn’t find it intuitive to turn that on though.
That being said though there are still those of us who think it needs improvement and no I am not interested in quake/doom or that because I came to UE4 because of its mobile support.
Maybe some of you don’t think UE4 needs better bsp tools, well I bet you dont think UE4 needs games like Tappy Chicken or Swing Ninja or anything like that, but Epic has decided to move into areas that are not games like gears of war, batman and unreal tournament so I think better bsp tools is perfectly reasonable.
Plenty of people have said they want better BSP tools , yet some people are protesting against , which I think is a total jerk thing to do, because I’m not going to go and protest against you wanting a new just because I dont need that .
Artists have blueprints, and now artists can code, but what about a move to help coders do better art. BSP is good, there are BSP-haters around for what ever reason, but if you don’t use concave shapes bsp works perfectly fine.
I strongly think that one of the reasons for the success of games like Quake are those fantastic BSP tools(where there is a 100% focus on gameplay elements, and not 100% graphics like today’s engines are pushing)…so why not try to incorporate or surpass them? I bet it would take less than a month for Epic to redo the entire BSP system… Static mesh support is easy, we’ve had it for years…but Unreal’s BSP system/tools have practically not changed since the beginning, and the only alternative we currently have for more advanced “BSP” shaping is to spend time and/or money learning/buying some external program(s) and import the un-editable results as meshes. The more integration, the better.
