I have learned a bit about the UE4 editor and am having a good experience moving through the various tutorials. One of the first places I got stuck was when I started looking at how to edit basic meshes. I found a few tutorials and it looks like for other than placing objects, you use an external mesh editor ( I am using blender currently ) or using this plugin: mesh tool.
Is this plugin as useful as it looks? Are there other ways to edit the mesh that I am not seeing in the UE4 interface? I found the landscape tools but I can’t figure out how to edit a basic mesh natively.
As well, working with blender. How far do you usually take the model before bringing it into UE4. For instance, do I place textures in blender or how does that work? It seems like you can both.
UE4 isn’t really designed for editing meshes, the tools there are pretty much a remnant of old level design where the vast majority of the level was built in-editor with basic tools. That plugin simply adds some extra modeling tools to the basic geometry in the editor but it can’t edit things like Static Meshes that you import from a 3D software like Blender.
Typically the process is that you block out your level with the geometry tools in UE4 and then when you have the flow of the level nailed down you import your nice detail meshes from your 3D software (Blender) and place them around the map to make it look nice and finalize everything. The static mesh would be modeled and textured in your 3D software. When you import your files to UE4 you’ll end up with a static mesh and a material along with your textures, you just have to plug your textures back into the material in the proper slots.
Making progress moving files between blender and ue4. There is a lot of files building up. I have learned how to import from a few different formats. From there, I have them in blender and found a great video relating to this:
I took notes on the process. I couldn’t follow the part about 3 minutes in about UV and lightmapping. I see that is an area I have to check in on.
A question about things like the terrain editor in UE4. I mean, that creates a mesh… I am not sure where to start in some parts of the level design. Is it going to be easier in the long run to do that part in blender? I was not sure how to export changes I make, say to a level terrain in UE4 into blender. Is there a way to do that easily?
Also my goals are very small for the starter project. Basic square level. even just a few fills and random buildings and rocks will pretty much do it.
I found a basic tank that I am going to learn how to rig up. I figure this will be a little easier to rig up than a character, as there is only a few joints. It is going to be interesting when I try and learn how to make the tracks animate and getting the tanks to move correctly. Figure that will be a good project.
The terrain system is optimized, so it will increase the level of detail of the mesh in the area closer to the player, the mesh is controlled with the height map so you can’t just export out the mesh and edit it.
This is very interesting. Is there more when I can learn about this aspect of Unreal? I have come to understand a little about occlusion culling which seems to relate to what you are talking about.
