Should the floor/wall be a static mesh?

Development Asset Creation
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I’m not quite used to the fact that levels should be built primarily of static meshes nowadays. I haven’t touched 3D editors since the Source engine. Back then everything would be made out of brushes.

Anyway, I’m just wondering should floors and walls be static meshes? I heard that the built-in UE4 brushes aren’t very good with lighting and can’t really be interacted with (can’t even toggle visibility!).

For now I’m blocking my levels with brushes. Then, I’m going to find a way to convert these brushes to a static mesh, importing them into Maya so I can build more detailed static meshes for my level. Finally, I’ll convert the original brush to a blocking volume for collision and make all the static meshes have no collision.

Is this the right way to do it in next-gen level design? Should I build individual components, walls of a house for example, and clone/manipulate them in the UE4 editor or should I build the entire house in Maya and import it all as one static mesh?

Thanks!

2

That’s similar to the solution I’m using. If you prefer working with bsp brushes during block-out but want the final product to be a static mesh for performance, or lighting, or whatever reason, you could always use the “create static mesh” option on the bsp brush to create an equivalent SM (Unreal 4 - Converter Box Brush to Static Mesh - Content Creation - Unreal Engine Forums).

Of course an external modeling program is going to be a better solution for creating really detailed SMs.