Hello. I am new to UE, but I have already made a 2d game on Unity.
After that experience, I decided to make a 3d game on UE. So I started to learn 3d modeling on 3ds Max (mainly beacuse I like to make my own assets, as I did on my first game on Unity).
I am doing pretty well so far. I have learned the basics of modeling and I’m looking forward to more advanced things. But I was wondering, it is necesary that I learn things like texturing, rendering and animation on 3ds max? Or it would be unuseful regarding my goal? Because at least in Unity, what I recall for 3d game development is that everything that is not a 3d model (textures, render and animations) was made in the game engine. Therefore why I would learn to do those things on the 3d program if I will need to do it on the game engine.
I really don’t know, it ocurred to me you can simply make the model and then importing it into an UE project and then continue with the animations, etc. But perhaps is it more easy and convenient to make the model, to texture it and animate it in 3ds Max and the export it to UE.
You would need to learn how to create textures and animations. 3ds Max has a number of animation tools like basic bones and things like Biped and CAT (Character Animation Toolset). Each 3D program like Blender or Maya has their own tools for creating animation. You would then export that animation to UE4.
For textures, you would first need to create your texture mapping in 3ds Max (UVW coordinates) and then you could texture within 3ds Max or use other texturing tools like Substance, DDO, or even a photo editor like Photoshop
All that stuff you would export to UE4.
I recommand to dive into 3d software such as 3dsmax or maya and learn about modeling, animation and texturing, first before you continue in a game engine. Just to get an understanding of 3d in general.
This question is so large, because it al depends on what you want to do.
E.g. if you animatie a character, you would do the animation loops in 3d software and then stick the animations in a game engine together by code or whatever.
Texturing and all is done in 3d software unless you have found some super advanced automatic uv unwrap shader code that does all that stuff in realtime in a game engine. (triplanar for example)
Also, I recommand to understand normals maps, albedo maps, specs, heightmaps, bumps etc…(difference bump <=> normals maps)
Learn what a material is, what a shader is, what is PBR? Etc etc etc
If you completly new to 3d animation, perhaps the best thing to do is, create a basic scene in 3dsmax / maya / fill in, then do a export and setup the shaders in unreal, setup lights.
Speaking of lights, I personally skip the light part in 3d software, I just do the modeling and texturing and then export these assets to unreal and then setup the lightning and shader stuff.
Hope this helps.
Regards! Tom