Hey guys, I’m new to game development. Matter of fact, I’m on disability, stuck at home with one working hand so I’ve been messing with Unreal. My question is, I’m pretty good with creating in Blender, but when it comes to developing, say a town. Is it better to create everything in Blender (or any other 3d software) and Import it to Unreal, or do you try and build everything using the Unreal engine? Please keep in mind, I have ZERO program development skills, and I’m merely just tooling around with this stuff. It’s pretty fun. "Thanks!
welcome to UE4 and the forum:).
I make my models in blender then import them into the engine, UE4 cant make models at the same level as a proper 3D app so you wouldn’t get as good results.
The Blender -> UE workflow is a fine way to build game assets. Don’t go overboard building the entire city in Blender, though. Just build bits and pieces. How small should those bits and pieces be? That depends entirely on the game, and the scale of your game world. As an example, if you’re never going to enter a building, and are using them as scenery, then build several buildings in Blender (one at a time), and import them into Unreal. You then arrange them into a city in Unreal by duplicating/rotating/scaling/changing materials to make it look like you have more buildings than you actually do.
Many games use a mixture of external assets and in-game assets.
In fact, assets are often sourced from a variety of places: the Unreal asset store, external 3D programs like Blender, and of course the UE4 editor itself.
And that’s not even including other sources such as procedurally generating geometry, or the terrain system, for example.
Welcome to UE4 and to game development in general!
Welcome to UE4! Always nice to see a new face around here!
Regarding the assets: If you check out the Unreal Engine 4 youtube channel, they have a series about level designing. In this series, they place small assets to make a bigger house (support struts, floors, etc.).
What i tend to do is the opposite of that. I don’t like to design a house in UE4, instead, I design everything in Blender, then import into UE4.
A typical example of a house workflow for me:
In blender:
House (1 object): Walls, floors, roof
Separate objects in Blender:
Door
Window glass
Chairs
Tables
Lamps
In Unreal:
Combine the separate objects with the house object.
The reason for me to not place the door, windows, chairs, etc. in the house that I’ve made in Blender, it because I might need some functionality on these, like the door opening, the windows breaking when shooting them, the chairs moving around when pushing them (physics).
This is how I tend to do things at least, instead of making the house within UE4 using small assets (walls for themselves, floors for themselves, etc.).
Again, welcome to UE4!
You are correct it what you’re saying. This is simply my workflow as I’d rather have a complete house with floors etc. and not bits and pieces, as I don’t tend to reuse walls, floors and roofs within UE4. The preferences are very individual.
Exactly. Just felt like telling my workflow ^^
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. “Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 12)
My process is
-
first do a quick placeholder map of just plain boxes in the editor.
I use just either a plain box or BSP if it is a more complex shape. (Enterable Building, Hallway, Etc) -
Then get the gameplay to work like you want it. In the empty level. Don’t bother with artistic assets
until you get the game to behave as you want.
My idea is to keep at that greybox stage until the game is relatively fun without any actual assets.
If it is fun to play with just greyboxes, it should be even better with some custom assets. -
Once the gameplay is done. Back to whatever 3d program you like to use. (Blender in your case)
DEFINITELY take the suggestions above about modularity. Study up on building custom modular assets that will snap to the grid.
Think like you are building a small lego set that allows you to make a huge world. -
Then Photoshop for the first texture pass.
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Then to Quixel Suite or Substance to PBR the textures
-
Then back to UE (to snap together your lego set)