Hi there, I recently got Unreal Engine 4 and think it’s awesome. I’ve completed a couple tutorials (like the small office space one from the Unreal Engine youtube). I had a lot of fun with it, but am not sure where to go from there. I am very much interested in level design, especially creating buildings, whether it be commercial, residential etc.
My problem now is I’m not sure where to start. I see videos of people creating insanely impressive interiors of buildings to the point where it nearly looks real. Are these people just creating a bunch of props/static meshes in something like Maya then exporting them into Unreal Engine 4 as an FBX? Does this mean if I wanted to get into more detailed level design and creation that I’d need to be proficient in modeling in something like Maya or 3DS ?
Any general advice is appreciated as well, I’ve had a lot of fun so far and want to see what’s recommended to keep going further.
Yes, all the videos where they create full scenes are done by either purchasing assets on the Marketplace and using those, or by creating your own assets from a 3d modeling program such as Maya, and importing them as FBX. Also there is a lot of free content/assets to use from things like the Kite Demo (Open World Demo Collection) and now the Infinity Blade packs, and a few others but I haven’t looked into all of them and I’m not sure if any of them contain much interior-related assets. As far as where you should go next, I can only say what I’ve been told and what I see being answered all the time, and that is to just “start a project and dive in” basically. I’d let someone else answer that question in a more in-depth manner, though, since I’ve only really just started myself.
I been working with unreal for a few years now. Right now my strong point is level design over the blueprints. And like Ashern said just jump in. If you have something in mind they making it. If you can get any asset packs from the market try those. If you want to make something custom then yes you will have to start using another program. 3DS is spendy and I’m not sure on Maya. But you can also use Blender 3D. It’s free and does what the other 2 can. As to making a scene it’s usually best to start with the terrain if making an outside scene or make the building for an indoor scene. And adjust the lighting as needed.
start learning a 3d program so that you can use your own assets -> a good free program is “blender”. When you tell us which tool you would like to use, I can post you some good beginner tutorials.
after that learn how to create good materials for your meshes
now you will have to learn how to create realistic lightning and how to place the assets (so that it looks good -> always take the real world as a reference)
Download the Sample Packs, they’re free! Then load them into the Editor, and just start clicking on things and moving it around. See how those high-quality packs are put together and it’ll help give you a sense of what the flow is a little in a very fun, dynamic approach. Then just start adding to the scene, expand. This will save you a lot of the frustration of learning a new program like Blender/Maya/ before you get to have fun (which is a killer). You can even combine sample packs together, and have more fun.
Then you can download a 3D program and start making your own stuff, and add it to your scene already made from all the sample stuff. I always like the approach of creating a boxed-out version of my model, importing it into UE4 and seeing how it looks size wise, if I’m happy. I then add details and go back and forth from my 3D Program (Maya in this case) and UE4 and using the Reimport button to automatically update the mesh in the scene, and I do that continuously with multiple models as I go along.
That’s my personal recommendation. Learning a 3D program is great, it’s a good way to become a level designer. Buuuuuuut it’s also extremely tedious to get into for some people, so the best motivator is having fun. The more fun you have (by playing with high-quality sample packs) the easier it’ll be to go through the rough-stuff of learning a new program (or if you’re new to 3D graphics in general, an entirely new world). And while you’re making levels, pickup Blueprints a little. Learning how to make doors open using just Blueprints is pretty easy, and it’s a great way to expand your knowledge of the the whole 360-cycle of level design without being too overwhelming.
Thanks for all the responses everyone, I appreciate them all :)! I am sorry for the late response I got a bit confused when I first submitted the thread as I didn’t realize it needs to be mod approved and figured it just never posted.
The general consensus seems to be to try to get my hands on some packs/collections whether free or through marketplace, as well as learn to use a 3D modeling program which will be fun for me.
I have done some really beginner/basic stuff in Blender, like making an alarm clock, a tea cup etc. Just very small easy things.
However I also recently downloaded Maya as I found out I get the student version free since I am in college currently. In Maya so far I’ve made basic things as well, like a sofa, a wine bottle, and a small table with a table cloth. Between the two so far I don’t have much of a preference, although more recently I’ve used Maya since when I was reading through one of the UE4 tutorials it described how easy it was to export things from Maya to UE4. I tried it myself and ran into some issues with the things I made in Maya being WAY WAY too small when I imported them into UE4.
You have to make sure that you export your mesh in the right scale -> 1uu = 1 cm (choose “cm” in your export settings)
When you want to work in the game industry, I personally would recommend you to use maya or , otherwise go with blender (free and as good as the other tools)
Yeah I have centimeters when I export but it still doesn’t appear to match :/, even when I try and do the whole grid size in Maya. What does appear to work is when I’m importing it if I change the uniform import scale anywhere from 30-50 (from 1 originally) then I start to get the size that I’d imagined something to be. If I use the uniform import scale will it affect textures and materials on the object? I google’d a bit and saw some people had some size problems and regular scaling would cause their textures to be extremely stretched and low quality.
