Ok i think we have all noticed the change in Scale for asset creation, i would personally like to know if there are any technical reasons for this, eg render times - fps - lighting - collisions - physics …
the reason i ask is that if i maintain my assets/maps at the old UDK/UE3 scale will i have problems later down the line, i’ve all ready sent a fare amount of my free time re-making some of my maps using the assets i have from my udk project, do i need to go back re-scale the assets and re-create the maps concerned.
eg have i wasted my time so far, i hope for an honest straight answer
I’ve put in a request for a scale factor field to allow FBX’s to be re-scaled on import. It’s something that Unity has. It would allow you to bring in your assets at an adjusted size… of course it’s just a request atm.
If you want your assets to use the new scale, a possible workaround without re-exporting: select your assets as you drag them in and apply a uniform scale to each instance. If I’ve done my math correctly the scale you should apply is 1.905… (or 0.525 if I have my wires crossed). When I started the project I’m on we were building the assets for both Unity and UE3, so I built the assets in Unreal scale and used a Unity import scale factor of 1.905 to bring them in correctly.
As for why, I would guess it’s because UE3’s scale was designed to work in powers of 2 (64u person, 256u wide wall, etc…) which is neat but as you count to higher numbers they aren’t quickly recognizable as powers of two, making it more difficult for designers to line things up numerically the further they get from the origin.
Most other engine’s I’ve used lean to metric measure, and tend to a 1u = 1cm scale. It’s easier to think in terms of tens, where objects placed in the world are spaced at even tens or hundreds.
Scale is completely relative though, so there’s nothing to stop you from building your UE4 game in 1u = 1/16th feet. The trick here would be to check and see if the built-in snapping tools can be adjusted for the relative difference in scale. Also apply that scale factor to your lightmass settings, since lightmass by default expects your assets to be almost twice as big.
scale is relative, try asking the blender users what problems they have had with UT3/UDK scales
UE3 didn’t have any standard scale. Most of our sample content was from UT3 which used one scale, but Gears actually used a different (but similar) scale - closer to 1uu = 1cm. As long as you are close (ie not doing something like 1uu = 1m) you should be fine. We introduced a ‘standard scale’ to encourage people to build to the same scale to enable more sharing, and to put some properties like density and mass in ‘real world’ units like kg.
I agree that an option to scale an asset on import could be useful - I’ve asked for a task to be entered for consideration.
well we all learned to set the 3d programs to generic units and a character would be ca 96 units high, yes i know this was used for UT2004/UE2 & UT3/UDK/UE3.
again the reason i ask isn’t because of cosmetics or asset sharing it’s because of the technical side as mentioned in the post ref physics/collisions/rendering.
i don’t want to carry on my project only to find later some one says my physics/cloth won’t work correctly because the scale is to small.
plus i think you should make it plain and clear in the installation pdf and on UDN that the advised scale has changed and what it is.