What is the best software package to complement UE4?

Development World Creation
21

cyaoeu - Modo indie 11 is coming very soon, confirmed by the foundry.

As far as modeling softwares go I love both Blender and Maya LT. Maya is the industry standard so learning it is a very good idea. All of the modeling tools are there, most animation and rigging tools too (except delta mush, anim layers and maybe a few other things but nothing drastic). At $35 a month it’s a great deal. Since Maya 2018 came out a few days ago I suppose LT 2018 is out too. Maya is also very easy to use, it’s very easy to find what you’re looking for and the pie menus are super useful for people who hate/can’t remember many keyboard shortcuts.

22

It’s on steam. I just subscribed for the single month to check it out, and I am looking at buying the bundle. MODO indie on Steam
I’ve been “Extremely” frustrated (Other F words apply) with maya as of late, and need to get away from Maya for a minute, and then @KVogler pointed me to this.
I am checking it out now in hopes that this isn’t one of those “Anything will work for a week.” type of deals.
If it can just make up for the areas that maya lacks. I’ll be happy.
Some of the reviews were pre update. I wish they had a non steam version things would be easier.

23

Dont worry. :slight_smile:

I once skyped with Andy Brown from the foundry. According to him this is Modo Indie in a nutshell:

  • EULA : Commercial for-profit use allowed for individual use, or individuals of a sole-proprietorship organization where only one license of each variant is allowed
    (So you can use it commercially. No ties to the steam world needed)

  • OBJ and FBX export limit expanded to 100k polys
    (which is ok for most assets, even characters…)

Limited Bake and Render resolution to 4k
(4k textures are also fine by me. I rarely use 8k textures…)

-Command eval options in the system menu disabled
-Remove Commands, Scripts and results from Command History panel removed except Undo and History
(Its not that super critical to the workflow. More a convienience thing)

-Python editor and third-party script loading disabled
(Hmm. I never have felt the need for scripting in modo. The built in tools always did the job so far.)

-Third-party plugin loading disabled
(again. modo has so many built in tools and poular scripts are integrated in the engine. There used to be a script for aligning verts in a a circle. “Seneca’s perfect circle script”. Now its part of the deform tools.
The same with mesh fracturing. Built in, no script needed.)

-Kit management options from the system menu disabled
(there are still many good ways to organize and manage assets)

-Export is FBX and OBJ only
(Well, FBX is what UE wants… So no real issue at all. And with the new Live Bridge, all the sweeter)

-Can only save in .lxf format, although can still import all formats.
(means it will work fullly together with all installations of modo indie. And you can import work from the “full” modo. You just cant make something in modo indie and then open it with a full version of modo, but if you have access to a full version, you dont the indie in the first place…)

-Image save formats limited to .png and .jpg, .tiff and .exr
(also not that big of an issue. Since texturing and material assembly is so much more pleasent in MARI, all I ususally export for initial work, are the UV maps, which can be exported as EPS)

Network Rendering is disabled
(I use it to model assets for UE and not to create stunning still images with VRay, so not a big issue)

24

Check out world generation in Houdini… Might need to spend for the extra cash… it does a lot.

teak

25

I seen a lot of this on the site, and just went through with picking up a one month sub. to look at it. It has modo indie 10, and modo indie + mori.
I would hope they would release this as a standalone bundle, and not steam only. So that I dont have to go through steam, and online in order to use it. I think thats where people have bugs. launching a program like this through steam client is going to get annoying. I don’t mind buying the bundle, but I don’t want to buy it to have to use it through steam, or have steam stats tied to a software package. That’s just a stupid feeling for a dev. If I buy a perpetual license. Why would I need to load it through steam? It also keeps telling me it cant import fbx from maya. too new of an sdk? So I export from unreal, and it works. The movement is not smooth annoyingly, and they don’t use open subdiv. So everything is old jagged un smoothed polygons. I don’t feel like it’s worth learning this. Nothing makes sense. Especially not the viewport and move tools. I’ll spend a few days in here, and then Idk.

26

If you have questions about it, just ask :slight_smile:

If you go for the non-indie version, that can also be purchased from the website directly.
Although comes with a different price tag…

27

I’m talking about buying a perpetual license that must be used through steam. The subscription is okay, but I don’t think a perpetual license is worth getting if it has to be used through a client. If it’s a license it’s a license. I can’t see this being worth almost 2k with all features. I don’t think this could replace maya, or blender for me.

28

That was a pretty huge list of restrictions. Restrictions like that just seems so greedy to me, and some in particular just seem like they’re screwing you for no apparent reason like the 100k poly limit which to me says “NOPE, you’re not exporting a high poly mesh for baking”.

No scripting/plugins is pretty huge too, both for Maya LT and Modo indie, you can’t use Art tools/whatever rig you really would want to use for UE4. For Blender there’s UE4 Tools which works great and is free too. Houdini Indie is way nicer to users in terms of restrictions and honestly more useful in a game pipeline than the rest. It’s the only other 3d modeling software I would consider except Blender.

29

Definitely could use a better texturing application, like Substance or DDO.

30

I would change, in my opinion:

Animation and rigging – Maya

Painting/Texturing/Texture creation – Substances

UV Map/ID Map creation – 3D Coat

Hard Surface Modelling - MODO

Sculpting - ZBrush

Terrain generation – Houdini FX

Assets – Kinect scans(?) (never made megascans) and various stores like Unreal Marketplace

Procedurals and FX - Houdini

31

World Machine
iClone/Character Creator
Maya (Animation / Character stuff)
3dsMax (Non-people stuff, architecture)
Photoshop
After Effects <---- This makes for great looking flipbooks!, oh, and intro movie/sequences as well I guess
Audition
Substance
Spacescape

Some other “out there” things I use:

yEd Graph Editor: This is my “White board” type thing, I also use it for generic room layouts
articyDraft: Storyboarding
Scapple: Mindmapping

32

Personally my selection is pretty tight, not too crazy;

3D Modelling Software (animation, etc. included): Blender
Texture Editing and UI Design: Photoshop
Texturing: Substance Painter (and/or Designer)

I’ve been looking at MODO though, just need to save up a good chunk of money for it.

33

You can get a 30 days trial of the full version for evaluation.

For texturing, I recommend Mari.

34

I see Modo is doing subscriptions too. Full Modo 11 for $59 a month.
Modo Creative 3D Modeling Software | Foundry.

35

Now the question is. Is the full version of Modo 11 for $59/month better the Maya Lt @ $30/month?

36

And are either Modo or Maya LT better than Blender?

37

In my opinion, blender has a “weird” UI :stuck_out_tongue:
I personally like Modo a lot.
Since the newest version has an Unreal Engine Live bridge, Modelling and creating whole scenes has become even easier and faster :smiley:

38

@cyaoeu That is a good question too especially with Blender 2.8 coming out. How is Blender when it comes to animation?

39

Do you have any specific examples? In 2.4 (years ago) it was kind of weird but it’s way better now. The only things I can think of is that right click select is the default option (you can change it to left click select in settings) and the default keymap isn’t really optimized, but it’s not too hard to set up your own keys.

I think Blender is pretty known for animated shorts like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN0zPOpADL4 and the animation tools are strong in general (with constraints, in-betweening tools, pose library and more). I haven’t worked with mocap though, only keyed animation but it works great for that. Especially when using the addon/branch that gives smoother interpolation between keyframes:

real smooth auto beziers for animators - Latest News - Blender Artists Community (addon version)

New F-Curve Smoothing mode in review for 2.8 (with 2.79 RC test build) - Blender and CG Discussions - Blender Artists Community (branch version)
There’s a picture here real smooth auto beziers for animators - Latest News - Blender Artists Community that compares Blender (using the addon), Maya, Max and Modo, without manually editing the curves.

The only thing you need to keep in mind for using Blender with UE4 is that there’s an UE4 bug that requires you to use 0.01 unit scene scale to not mess up the scaling of animations.