I am new to UE, and doing lots of tutorials. So much to learn.
I’m starting with a game I’ve written in several languages and frameworks already, so I can concentrate on learning the UE way of doing things.
Model-wise the assets are pretty straight forward, a chess board, 5 different chess pieces, and the ability to place a number over any square.
I am not a modeler, so I am currently reliant on importing free 3d assets, for now. These assets usually contain both a board and pieces in one single fbx model and more than I require, e.g. an entire chess scene.
I’m looking for some advice on how best to get to a point where I can use the model/s. I suspect I need separate models for each of, the board, and playing pieces, as I couldn’t figure out how in UE to point at the separate parts inside the model.
Do I need to edit the one entire scene model so that I only have the parts I need (remove superfluous pieces) and also have individual references/tags to them to access them in UE? (I have no idea about models, clearly)
or
Do I need to edit the chess scene model and export each piece and board separately, then import each of them into UE?
or
Is there a way of accessing those individual chess pieces inside the original chess model I have from within this one model? IF I click edit on that model inside UE, there are no obvious references to chess piece names or the board.
(P.s. I really can’t use blender, it makes my head explode. I have managed to import a model and export as fbx though.)
Depending on the software you use you can split any part of a mesh into separate objects. For instance, in 3ds you can select a chess piece as an element(or polygons) and then hit Detach button and it will detach that piece from the rest of the set. Later on you need to set the pivot of every piece and set their location at 0,0,0 before you export(and, of course, unwrap the UV’s if they arent unwrapped already)
There are Blender users in the forum who can give more information on this, or you can head to Google to find out how to detach polygons from a mesh in Blender and start from there. This all may sound painful but it is not a huge deal considering you’ll only need to modify an already modeled object.
Edit: Or… just download one of the sets here: ://www.blendswap/blends/search?keywords=chess&s%5Bblend_license%5D=&s%5Bblender_version%5D=0 unless the chess set you want is anything specific. Those should appear as seperate meshes inside Blender i believe.
I really can’t use any modeling software, hence the thought of separating out models scares me lol. I did try blender ages ago and it just never worked out for me.
At least I understand what is needed now.
And thank you also for those blender models, I have done searches for chess related models many times over the years and those have never popped into the search results.
That might be my best option for now
Oh and one had a chess scene where the pieces have movable arms etc, which is exactly what I want in the longer term. If only I can use that scene. I will give them ago. many thanks.
[edit: I can’t find all of the individual pieces I need in blendswap, so I am probably back to square one of working out how to separate them.]
I haven’t been able to download anything yet, as I am still waiting for the login email.
What I need is either completely separate models for a chess board, a queen, king, knight, rook and bishop so I can import each one separately into UE, and hang blueprints off each one (I imagine). I need just one of each of those above pieces in my game, total of 5 pieces.
If it is a complete chess set, imported as a whole into UE, I need a way of moving the above pieces to different positions on the board (and remove the unneeded pieces).
With the existing model I had imported into UE I saw no way of referencing individual chess pieces in the single scene, hence believing I needed individually imported models for every piece, but maybe I am wrong.
Failing all that I will either try learn how to separate the models and individually export them, or ask someone to do it for me at some point, and temporarily use place models for now.
I don’t actually know the answer to it though, . If they are all in scale to the board (and preferably follow the same style as each other piece) I think that is all that is required.
(I loved the idea of the rigged version of them on BlendSwap, but beyond my knowledge at the moment how I would implement rigging. Down the track I guess.)
It’s not perfect but this should get you going until you figure out how to do it yourself. Dont enable Combine Meshes while importing and you’ll have every piece and the board as separate pieces(and the board has separate material ID’s for tiles and the board frame)
I had a go at it last night, initially had various lightmapping issues, went searching for the fixes, didn’t work at first, overlapping UVs, created 2nd UV thingies, one piece still didn’t work, was about to give up, just before closing down UE, I clicked play again to see the error pop up, and it was gone.
So I now have a scene with all the necessary models, and looking quite nice.
Thank you again .
p.s. Still no BlendSwap confirmation email, yet if I try new rego, says it is in use, try reset password link, nothing, no email lol. (yes i look in junk)
Oh, i didnt think you were going to use them as static meshes so i didnt bother with lightmap UV’s. Glad you sorted it out though!
No idea what may be wrong with BlendSwap, btw. But you can find free/paid models all over the net in .obj and .fbx formats so it’s not a big deal i guess.
It takes some time until you can download stuff from blendswap (account has to be activated -> it’s like in the UDK forum) but here is another good site for assets: :///
Still getting my head around the jargon/terminology of 3d stuff.
If by ‘static mesh’ you mean I won’t be moving my chess piece models, actually I will be moving them around, a little. I did notice something that suggested ‘click this, if your model stays still, for better performance’ versus ’ click this if your models need to be moved’, and so far only clicked the static option. I will try the non-static option next.
I assume it doesn’t stop me from moving the piece, just doesn’t alter the lighting appropriately, if I move them?
Thanks @ for the turbosquid reference, that is where I have been going for my models previously, and very limited in free ones that I could use, for this project anyway. Maybe, if/when I feel the need to spruce it up more later I may consider purchasing something.
You should make them Movable then. When those meshes are static and you build the lights the lighting and shadow information is baked onto those meshes where they are located, but when they are set to Movable they are lit dynamically so you can manipulate them in any way you want.
