Normal - Office Hours session for UE modeling tools?

General Feedback & Requests
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I would love a UE / UEFN modeling tools Office Hours!

I’ve been enjoying experimenting with 3D modeling tools in UEFN, and I can accomplish a lot intuitively. But I’m only using a small fraction of the tools because there are just so many and it’s hard for me to know which ones are most relevant for me. Also I know that my workflow could be improved. I’ve found some YouTube tutorials for Unreal 5 modeling but there just isn’t much public content out there for it yet. Personally coming from Core I’m used to creating and texturing my art assets inside of the game engine where I can immediately test how they fit into the map. I prefer to work this way, and maybe others would like this method too.

Some creators are used to other modeling programs like Blender and Maya, and others are starting from scratch, so ideally Office Hours could have tips for both types. Even creators who opt to import models from other 3D modeling platforms might benefit from an overview of UEFN’s tools for UV editing and mesh optimization. Or creators who use UEFN’s modeling tools for whiteboxing.

For example, when whiteboxing, if you create copies of the same box shaped Unreal mesh to make all of your walls, you can change scaling and rotation of the walls independently but if you make changes to one wall using the modeling tools (like to boolean out a window) the change will appear across all walls that are based on the same mesh. So first you need to deinstance that one wall by using the Mesh Duplication tool. (I don’t know if deinstance is the right word for it but that’s how I think of it.) It took me a while to discover this and until I did it was pretty frustrating.

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Well, it sounds like you are our ideal user! :slight_smile:

Here are a few youtube things you might not have found, I have a (still short) set of tutorials here: RMS's UE5 Modeling Tutorials - YouTube

In particular this one about “DynamicMeshActor” might be relevant: UE5 Modeling Mode - Dynamic Mesh Actors - YouTube

Basically this is not a type of object you can use in your published game, however you can use it in UEFN to do your modeling, and then use the ‘Convert’ or ‘Duplicate’ tools to create a static mesh once you are done. I know it’s a bit more complicated but it avoids the need to ‘deinstance’ things, each mesh will be unique (but you will have to bake them down to Static Meshes to publish them)

This is an older playlist of videos I made for UE4. Basically the UI is different but most of the Tools are still the same: RMS's UE4 Modeling Tutorials - YouTube

Please don’t hesitate to post questions and we will try to get answers!

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Oh I did not know that about Dynamic Mesh Actors! :eyes: Thanks! I like to use a bunch of copies of the same shape but I don’t want them all to change, so this is useful info. I’m going to check out these tutorials rn. :+1: