Various questions about the engine

Development World Creation
1

Hi,

I’m thinking of moving to UE4 from CryEngine, basically because the two look just as capable but the support and documentation seem much, much better with UE4. I have a few random questions if anyone could help.

  1. I dabbled with UE3 for a while and abandoned it because I found that creating good lightmaps was A. difficult and B. a real chore. I understand UE4 has an automatic lightmap generation tool. How good is it? Do you find yourself having to create them in your DCC very often?

  2. Since UE4 uses physically based shading why is there a need for a light map at all?

  3. Have you often thought of a question that can’t be answered by reading through the documentation or watching the tutorials?

  4. What’s the learning curve like, assuming your familiar with the basics of a few engines & are willing to RTFM?

  5. I read a forum post complaining that meshes can not be re-imported, so if you need to edit a mesh in your DCC then export it again the changes don’t show up. Is this still an issue?

  6. Any other thoughts or tips for a newbie?

Many thanks

2

welcome to the forum:)

  1. the automatic lightmap generator is ok but no automatic systems are perfect so you will probably have to do some of them yourself.

  2. baked good res shadows have much better performance then fully dynamic good res shadows, although if your using fully dynamic lighting you don’t need lightmaps.

  3. sometimes but they are adding new features to UE4 all the time so there isn’t always a document or video about it but there is always the documentation feedback forum if you think they need to add info abut something, plus there is always the forum;).

  4. not too bad but as it varies for everyone there is only one way to find out.

  5. not sure because I haven’t checked but bugs like that are usually fixed pretty quick and then they release a hotfix.

  6. download all the free example/sample stuff from the launcher and see how those things were done, read the documentation and check out the unreal engine youtube channel.

hope that helps:)

3
  1. better do it like that:
  2. mostly you will have questions, but then you can ask them here in the forum -> we are always here to help :slight_smile:
  3. also make sure to take a look at the wiki tutorials: https://wiki.unrealengine/Main_Page + join a skype group: + ask/read questions here in the forum -> easy way to learn
4

Thanks both, I’ll have a good play around. I’m trying to get some inpressions before I spend another six months learning… would like to get a game out before I die :smiley:

5

I assume using fully dynamic lighting on everything in a large level isn’t really an option framerate wise?

6

It’s not so good for the performance, but especially for large levels you should use it, because it could take days till the light gets build :slight_smile: