I’d like to start off by saying that I’ve been an “Idea man” for a long time. I can’t sit down and work on one thing, I always move on to new ideas and end up never accomplishing anything. This time I decided to make something simpler. UE4s vehicle integration makes it relatively easy to import vehicles and make them work. So I lowered my expectations and the scale of my project (compared to previous ones). I want to make a fun environment where I can drive a go-kart around. The long term goal would be VR but that’s for another day.
So I am making a university track (ignore the fact that pictures say office). I’ve got a little plan and a few key areas I want to cover (a class room, lecture hall, study rooms .etc)
Please be aware that I have done next to no lighting work on this yet since most areas don’t have roofs yet.
So this is my main entrance, it’s still very empty but it’s also a very large space.
Behind the tree, there is a suspended platform/restaurant area.
Reception. I used a subtractive cylinder brush to make the curve and then put a static mesh over it and turned it into glass. I plan on putting lights inside/underneath.
Next I’ve started building a lecture hall. As you can see, I’ve made 1 row of seats so far and they even have the tiny wooden tables that are too small to be useful. In the top view, you can see the shape if the area.
Lastly I’ve made study rooms. I think I probably made this the least efficient way, completely with additive brushes to make all the beams. Looking back, I probably should have made the windows with a subtractive brush. This area lags like nuts in the editor.
Shortcut through one of the rooms
The difficulties I have faced:
- Excessive lag in some areas in editor (i7-3770k @anonymous_user_cd798fa1 Ghz, EVGA GTX 680 SC, 16 GB ram, W7)
- Lack of professional 3D modeling experience
- Stuck using in engine static meshes
- Edges not being perfectly aligned together (additive brushes)
- Moving entire built areas (like the study room) around the map
- I migrated tons of stuff from different downloadable content and now my content browser is a mess. I did this before I knew better, now it’s too late.
This is a learning process and I know that I should not expect perfection (this is difficult for me). I’ve been building everything in separate spots but now I realize that was probably not a good idea since moving tons of objects, brushes .etc doesn’t really cooperate in UE4 (unless I missed something).
I’ve been building objects using mostly additive brushes, subtractive brushes, and static meshes. I realize this isn’t the most effective way but if I try to pick up a complex 3D modelling program (I used to use zmodeler back in the day), I will get discouraged trying to learn 2 programs at once.
I’m open to feedback, ideas, suggestions, different methods of doing things.
