Training Livestream - Blender to UE4 - May 30 - Live from Epic HQ

[motorsep]

@cyaoeu @Yetta

Sorted it out. Mesh was scaled down in Blender and I was looking at units instead of absolute values. Scaled it up to be 1:1 with UE4 (100 units, not cm or meters, in Blender to show up as 100 units in UE4). Now it works fine.

[motorsep]

Another few questions just came to mind :o

1. Is there an easy way to import all LODs for BaseLOD mesh ? (Blender’s FBX has no LOD groups, so…) Also would be interesting to know why Blender’s FBX export doesn’t create LOD groups, similarly how Maya does it and why doesn’t UE4 have some sort of workaround for that (like, using naming convention for LOD’ed models and loading LODs automatically as individual FBX files)
2. Would it be possible to do quick overview of vehicle rig in Blender to match expected setup in UE4 upon import ? (since it might be a lengthy topic, maybe just do a quick overview and provide .blend file, with rig ready for export)

Thanks

[anonymous_user_20bc299e]

[question]
Can you explain how to translate the shoulder joint to get a character to work with the marketplace skeleton. The marketplace guidelines say “Make sure to not change the joint orientations.”, but that means the clavicle joint becomes misaligned with the shoulder joint.

[Aumaan_Anubis]

@JuanDAG;715337

Could you guys show us how to create UV maps for our 3D assets in blender?

This is already well covered on Youtube:

Blender UV Unwrapping Tutorial - UV Unwrap And Export The UV Texture Layout

[TommieBommie]

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes! YES!!!

[Old-Crow]

Just want to say thanks to Epic for listening to the community and putting out the information we actually need.

You guys have your finger on the pulse of the community, and I for one very much appreciate it.

[enakops]

Hi, I’ve been meaning to ask this in the forums, but this seems like an opportune moment to ask…

Full disclosure: this is not my day job, and I may be asking boneheaded questions.

I’ve been having a little difficulty getting the normal maps generated in blender to work right in ue4. I end up with seams along poly edges. They aren’t usually that noticeable, except when one gets really close in game, or if the object is shiny or transparent (such as a champagne flute or a soda pop can).

N.B.: I did find out from the forums that I need to open the normal in ue4 and click “flip green channel,” so this is a separate issue. But the “flip green channel” trick would be a useful thing to mention for noobs like me. Also, is there a setting in blender to generate the normals with the green channel flipped?

My textures and normal maps are all 2k. Does the normal map need to be higher resolution, and if so how do I use 2k base color uvs with higher resolution normal maps in my ue4 material?

Also, is there anyway to get the blender materials to look like those in ue4? It’d be useful to see if there’s a way to manipulate the nodes in blender to mimic the material expressions in ue4 for things like “metallic” and “roughness.” Right now, I generate the roughness and metallic maps in GIMP, and just figuring out what it should look like in my head. It’d be easier if there were a way to put the final touches like that in blender, then move that whole shebang into ue4.

Of course, I understand that blender and ue4 have different rendering engines. But at the level of the nodes, I hope that it is possible to at least approximate ue4 materials using blender.

Thanks for doing a blender to ue4 training stream. It’s a great idea!

[Leezle]

Aumaan,
If you go to this site you can follow along with the instructions to prevent this. There is one little block of code within one of the scripts that needs to be commented out. This has been a solution for me that has worked.

Prevent Blender FBX Exporter adding extra root bone

I hope this helps you.

[SaltShakerLive]

All of the resources are available for basic Blender things for games: Uv’s, Rigging, Modeling, Animation. The things that are most valuable for people starting out with unreal is understanding how everything works. I have had no problems going from Blender > unreal/Unity. The Fbx exporter is not broken, the way you model is in relation to the scaling of the OBJECT (You need to apply transforms for the scale to change (CTRL + A)). However, face normals and averages are what I’m struggling with. Also wouldn’t mind knowing how cloth, hair, Ik would work (Also for my sanity, make .Blend files readable in UE4+ please).

[d4rk]

Prevent Blender FBX Exporter adding extra root bone

[EtienneAndlau]

Yay !!!

[motorsep]

@d4rk;715742

Prevent Blender FBX Exporter adding extra root bone – Kris Redbeard

Bastien Montagne told me on IRC that this is not a fix - it’s a very bad workaround and he doesn’t recommend doing so.

[EtienneAndlau]

When can we start importing materials created in the Blender Cycles render engine?
Will we be able to import cloth created in Blender into Unreal at some point?

[anonymous_user_21b03158]

I just started with ue4, trying to use it as a renderer for animations and was hoping (probably for a miracle) there was a way to just create the final animation in blender, export as an alembic file, import into ue4, fiddle with materials/camera/lighting/post stuff then render out. ive been struggling to achieve this and keep receiving awful messes. hopefully someone can shine some light on this. i know there is fbx i was just hoping for i guess a faster route.

Very keen to tune in even though it will be 4am where i am in australia :].

[BhaaL]

@Aumaan Anubis;715052

Question:
How do you export characters to UE4 with collisions made IN blender.

There’s a new feature in 4.16 that allows this by giving the objects a specific name, and they’re imported into UE4 as collision objects.
Please demonstrate this!

You just have to create meshes and give them names following a pattern (such as UBX_YourMeshNameHere_01 etc. for Box collision shapes):
.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/FBX/StaticMeshes/index.html#collision
And this feature isn’t new in 4.16 (at least not the Collision prefixes), you can use that with older versions too (and any Modeling tool that supports FBX export, not limited to MAx/Maya/Blender)

[Aumaan_Anubis]

@;715784

In UE4 usually ‘X is forward’, except in situations like this found in the code:

&d=1495972838

Plus more UE4 exceptions discussed in this thread:

So can you cover Blender’s Workflow / Axis / Orientation versus UE4 versus Max/Maya etc. (Thanks)

OOOOOOH, this^^^^^^

[FirstCrimson]

Now this is my kind of stream!

[Aumaan_Anubis]

@;716060

You just have to create meshes and give them names following a pattern (such as UBX_YourMeshNameHere_01 etc. for Box collision shapes):
.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/FBX/StaticMeshes/index.html#collision
And this feature isn’t new in 4.16 (at least not the Collision prefixes), you can use that with older versions too (and any Modeling tool that supports FBX export, not limited to MAx/Maya/Blender)

Oh my GOD!
Thank you!
I spent hours searching for this a few weeks ago and gave up because I could not find that page, I couldn’t remember what it was called when I had first found it and forgot to bookmark it, and have searched for it on and off ever since!
I began to accept that I dreamed it up.

THANKS!

[AJ_Graphix (Adam Janz)]

I’d be really interested to hear if the parent-child scale issues that exist when exporting a squash and stretch rig to FBX from Blender are indeed Blender specific or occur in other animation packages too. The “false foot” solution I described in this threadworks great, but does not keep the bone hierarchy continuous for those who might re-animate inside UE4 (or for setting up IK feet directly, AFAIK?). Thanks for any insights you can share on this!

[anonymous_user_6476f099]

@enakops;715611

Hi, I’ve been meaning to ask this in the forums, but this seems like an opportune moment to ask…

Full disclosure: this is not my day job, and I may be asking boneheaded questions.

I’ve been having a little difficulty getting the normal maps generated in blender to work right in ue4. I end up with seams along poly edges. They aren’t usually that noticeable, except when one gets really close in game, or if the object is shiny or transparent (such as a champagne flute or a soda pop can).

My textures and normal maps are all 2k. Does the normal map need to be higher resolution, and if so how do I use 2k base color uvs with higher resolution normal maps in my ue4 material?

That might be your tangents/binormals. Unless Blender uses Mikktspace, not sure what if it does or not, you’ll need to make sure that your FBX contains tangents/binormals and then when importing to ue4, under the mesh settings, change the import normals settings to “import normals and tangents”.

That might solve your problem but I’m not sure. Worth trying.

Edit:

This explains it better than I can:

Substance Painter Tutorial – Model Preparation 03: Tangents & shading for Normal maps

He doesn’t cover Blender specifically but he does cover normal map seams and what can cause them and how to fix.