I’ve been using Blender for about 2 years now. However, I have stayed put in the Blender environment. Modeling, UV unwrapping, rendering, etc. I now want to take my models to Unreal but I’m not sure where the workflow merges together.
For example, in Blender, do I need to “Model, UV unwrap, apply materials, create and apply textures, add rigging” … and THEN import to UE. Or are there steps that I should do in UE instead?
Eventually, I want to try my hand at games. But first I’m trying to make short video animations for my online courses. I guess the process would be fairly similar if not exactly the same.
Any advice or pointing me to a tutorial would be greatly appreciated. I don’t even know if I’m asking this question in the correct place. Sorry if I made a boo-boo.
Exactly the same.
With the exception that you can completely ignore the materials and just name the material slot with whatever engine convention you find to your liking.
My preferepreference is MI_materialname.
thats Material instance.⁰
in essence the workflow is, model, set shading type, triple check normals. Finalize model, uv unwrap (2 maps 1 for the material, second uv for lightmap). Export, test in engine, probly adjust and fix again.
before you start, use the plugin to import a manneqin - the blender scale will automatically be adjusted.
copy the settings it sets over to your new start file.
having a bad scale can lead to animation problems, so you want to eliminate that issue at the very start.
The materials you will need to learn in engine. Its not hard basics wise. It gets complex with skin, hair iradiance, eye geometry/translucency, etc.
out of all the engines, I like to think I get the best visual results when things are done proper…
Hi! idk if i can be of any help, but i find that the workflow is pretty much the same from every software you can use, i started blender and leaving maya just the last month so i’m still grasping some of it’s workflow, but in my experience they work more or less the same way.
I’m pretty sure there are some trick still hidden, to me at least, but searching on youtube helps a lot since there are great ppl using blender to make their games, i would suggest to start from CGgeek, Pierrick Picaut, Grant Abbitt, they all have experience and do lots of tutorials.
Hey thanks guys! ( @Mehawk and [USER=“3140864”]MostHost LA[/USER] )
I’ll try some of those ideas. and I’ll try your tool [USER=“3140864”]MostHost LA[/USER] as well.
The most confusing thing for me was not understanding enough about the material and texturing system in UE. It seems that materials is pretty advanced in UE. So, if I can save all that for UE, that’s what I want to do. Your suggestion about just naming the material slots and then applying the materials from UE after importing them is where I need to merge the workflows.
As far as texturing - should I do that in UE - or do it in Blender then import them.
I Downloaded the free content of the month, and I notice that they used one material, with one texture for all meshs. But when Im export something to blender for .FBX and import in UE the mesh and materials splits (Im nothing using textures, just flat colors). What is the name of this technique? I dont know how to search this!
I’m not sure it has a name. You just squish the UV to 0.0 size and put them over the texture color you like.
If you are OK with solid colors this works well. Its mostly used for low poly things where you do not care about a normal map adding in definition or something similar.
I color the texutres in blender. Usually exporting the file with a basic material that only contains the texture allows UE4 to import in the texture (if settings allow).
