I’m really really new to Blender… So I created a mesh, combined everything and exported using .fbx 6.1 ASCII… Selected “Tangent Space” as told in some video tutorial…
Right after I import mesh into UE4 it looks like this:
Now, I’ve read somewhere that I need to do UV mapping inside Blender… Now, I never did UV in my entire life… Is there an easy way to do that?
Side, but really important question… How should I like texture this? Is a good idea (seems tedious) to separate different subobjects I want to have different material, then import inside UE4 as a bunch of different meshes and then try to somehow stack them together to look like building again and then apply material to each one separately and like group it and I’m done? There must be a quicker/better way…
as you haven’t done UV’s before I guess you don’t have a lightmap UV witch is why it goes black when you build the lighting. the quickest way to do the UV’s is to use the “smart UV” option, it wont be perfect but will be usable.
to texture it you either need to load an image into blender and the unwrap the UV to fit the image or unwrap the UV and then either make a texture or edit one to fit. There is no need to separate subobjects into individual objects, instead you can apply multiple materials to different parts of your mesh and import it as one mesh.
your mesh looks a little messed up, can you post a pic of it in wireframe?
yeah, probably shouldn’t have said messed up, I meant it looks unoptimized, you should be able to lower the tri count quite a bit especially if you just want it flat shaded. the reason I asked about the smoothing is because you can see the triangulation, although It could be caused by something else.
not really but to get the basics you could check out and Fighter’s youtube channels, they both have tutorials for blender to UE4, if you need more advanced tutorials there are plenty on youtube
Oh alright, well I did bevel those edges that sticks out the most, maybe that? but I guess it’s all pretty regular stuff… BTW, do you have any ideas on how many polycounts I should aim for when creating RTS buildings?
The triangulation you’re seeing in the walls is the result of the engine triangulating your mesh when imported. Looking at the front wall where the doorway is cut in and the extended structure on the top of the wall I can see that there are no cuts to triangulate or quad the geometry. Relying on the engine to do so can produce unexpected results like you’re seeing.
Doing a quick search on YouTube I found this Blender Unwrap tutorial that seems good. It covers multiple object types for a broader overview.
If you have any questions with the UVs or geometry feel free to ask!
I am talking about the topology of the flat faces, I made a quick version of part of your mesh (the little door/opening and wall above it) to show what I mean.
I tried to approximate the triangulation based on your images (left side), the one on the right will still look the same in game because its flat shaded but has a lower polycount, if you did that with all your meshes there could be a quite noticeable difference in performance (depending on how much there is in your scene).
well every game will require different polycounts so I wouldn’t like to guess but as you would probably have quite a few meshes on screen just make them as optimal as possible.
Hey Tim, thank you for replying… I’m however, still not understanding one thing… So, those triangles I’m getting has nothing to do with UV, correct? UV is for textures/materials/lighting, those triangles are the engine’s way of triangulating polygons using their inner diagonals?
I just did a quick test… I modeled this… Seems really clean to me, all I can see are quads (polygons) except a few bevel here and there…
Hey, first off thank you for really getting there to help me. I’m basically practicing for modeling objects for RTS game… Both community project and my own at some point down the road… Guess I should stop with beveling then (but it looks so adorable)…
That flat shaded you keep mentioning, how can I enable it? Sorry if I’m asking really dumb questions, this is what you get when “programmer” installs Blender and wants to learn it
You are correct that the triangles aren’t directly related in this instance to the UV. The material will be directly affected by the UV layout which the video I linked in the previous post should help in that regard.
Let me know how it goes and we’ll definitely help!
Hi,
Another thing that you can do within Blender is you can set each face to either flat or smooth shading. I use this a bunch on tube shaped surfaces.
UE4 automatically triangulates on import, quick way to fix: before you export switch to edit mode, select all and then press CTRL+T and blender will triangulate it, there are also a few options to choose from to give you the best results.
no problem:), bevelling is fine (I do it quite often), the trick is to find a balance between looks and polycount to get the best graphics and performance, you should try to reduce the number of tris that are not adding anything to the look (like I did in the pic) so your levels can run as well as they possibly can.
while in object mode if you look at the toolbar on the left side of blender there is bit that says “Shading” with “smooth” and “flat” options, just click flat. if you want to use demolitions mans way you do the same but in edit mode by selecting the faces and clicking the smooth or flat buttons. the edge split modifier can do it as well, you can also use proper smoothing groups but you probably wouldn’t find much if any info on that:p.
there not dumb questions, I asked similar questions when I first started using it;)
the first material you create is applied to the whole model, to add another to a different part of a model you need to create the second material, go into edit mode and select the faces you want, then select the second material and click the “assign” button.
In order to have multiple material IDs like you want there is a couple of ways to do this.
1 you could set this up via your UV and use a single UV texture that is painted via a image editing software like Photoshop or you can use multiple material slots as demonstrated in Fighters video below.
