When is the new mesh tool/editor coming out?

Development Asset Creation FX
1

I thought I made a thread about this but for some reason it did not appear :confused:

Anyway I have a couple of questions about the tool this guy is using: UE4's Fancy New Geo Tools - March 2017 - YouTube

  1. When is it coming out?

  2. Is it possible to use it to make some prefabs (like a room, hallway, walls etc) and then export them into other programs like substance painter for texturing, before then importing them back into Unreal?

2

  1. Maybe in 4.18 as experimental feature. There are separeted in Mesh, Subd and Baking tools i remember from the old Trello.

  2. Would possible, but theres no info how UWā€™s are handled, maybe auto generated. This only makes sense if the baking and subd tools are provided for baking normal and ao, not only mesh editing tools. Then you can texturing inside UE4 or export to substance or whatever you want.

3

Iā€™m sorry for the late reply. I had forgotten about this thread lol.

Anyway, I would like to update my question number 2. Basically my plan now is this:

  1. Use unreal to create the basic level layout pieces (I am going to build a modular level design kit) to make sure they can easily be snapped together.
  2. Then import said pieces as obj files (this is possible correct?) into a modeling program such as C4D and create the complex parts of the pieces there rather than in unreal.
  3. Then export said piece into a program like substance painter and texture it there (I assume I will have already created the UV map in C4D)
  4. Then import the model back into Unreal 4 as a model with textures and everything and then use said models to piece together the level.

Is my plan logically sound or am I missing something? A big part of the reason I created this thread originally is because I kinda want proper tools inside of unreal to create the basic layout of the pieces before I do more advanced work on them in C4D.

4

Can anyone confirm this is coming in 4.18 as an experimental feature as I have been waiting years for this :smiley:

5

6

Lmao that doesnā€™t help me at all, itā€™s listed under future releases which 4.18 is because itā€™s not out yet, sighā€¦ if only the pro builder people hadnā€™t screw everyone over and not finish what they said they were gonna do, we would probably have an awesome ego editor in the engine by now

7

I do not know why that was a ā€œLMAOā€ commentā€¦Trello accounts mean one can sign up for notifications when particular cards have activity or changes to them.

1: Sign up
2: Tick the cards you are interested in
3: Receive notifications on their progress
4: Be informed, add comments
5: Reduce forum clutter

As an aside,

http://graphics.pixar.com/opensubdiv/docs/intro.html = very exciting
Niagara = very exciting
Advanced Programmatic Mesh Creation = Even Hammer users are jealous
Editor Scriptability = Even God is jealous

And then there is this:

/Back on point:

The only thing that will make this junk, is if Epic do not have a decent UI/UX team to make the tools for level design/static mesh manipulation total pwnage. In essence, I want them to create a level design tool for level designers, who deal in thousands of iterations per day and build to a grid, instead of static mesh editors who deal with esoteric abstractions and infinite pull-down menus to create a 3D model.

Level designing is not modelling - modelling is not level design.

Flying an aeroplane at Mach 3 is not about making eggs and bacon for prisoners - making eggs and bacon for prisoners is not flying an aeroplane at Mach 3.

As far as I know, those who make eggs and bacon want to bring pilots flying planes at Mach 3 down into the kitchen and FORCE them to make eggs and bacon for prisoners, itā€™s not gonna happen, ever, so stop trying to force level designers to use 3D modelling tools at speeds that equate to wading through treacleā€¦and give us a level design tool that is worthy of our attention and can take us across the earth at Mach 3.

Get discussion going, get feedback on what the UX/UI for ā€œitā€ is going to be.

DO NOT LISTEN TO MODELLERS, listen to LEVEL DESIGNERS.

At the end of the day, a modeller has got the entirety of 3D computer modelling tools at their disposal, all level designer have got is what Epic Games ship with the engine.

Level designers, purely by design of the engine are SIGNIFICANTLY MORE IMPORTANT THAN MODELLERS.

/out

8

Ok well what I would like to see in 4.18 is an extra option in the Data Table editor allowing you to type in a row start and end range, when inserting in new rows, say insert row 5000 to 5300 and it insert those new rows into the data table, saving you having to click endlessly on Inserting each new Row in one by one at a time for at the moment it just only lets me insert one row at a time which is no good and very time consuming when trying to do mass data entry for data tablesā€¦ I need the rows already in the table, or they pop in when hitting enter and automatically numberā€¦ For at the moment the data entry is too slow because you can only insert one row in at a time in that editorā€¦

Now regarding the mesh tools and level design, Thereā€™s not much that really comes with the engine. Options are limited. libraries are scarce,
I noticed thereā€™s no widget resource graphic libraries, Even the tools avaliable for level design are limited. Most of it depends on other 3d Programs to prepare the meshes. The BSP is not particuarly good at all since it dosenā€™t always convert to static meshes properlyā€¦

9

use this right now: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/mesh-tool

10

True,

But if the new ā€œthingā€ they are creating is designed for 3D modellers and NOT for level designers, then you got issues with development testing and the whole world that centres around the most basic design of your game.

Whatever the 3D modellers need to do their job prior to insertion into the Unreal Engine, I think they have already got. Once the meshes are in the engine, the tools are getting better for sure, but itā€™s mostly middleware and plugins they use, not the tools of Unreal Engine, even if they are available to them; most donā€™t.

This new tool needs so much love - because the other white box tools from other engines still are better at handling basic BSPā€™s and 3D shapes, like tubes, cones, pillars, spheres etc.

Roll on devs, give them feedback and hopefully this new tool will not be some esoteric modelling tool and a *real *Level Design Tool that has the power to wield magic.

11

UT seems to have a pretty solid level design tool - itā€™s too bad they didnā€™t make that for UE too. I donā€™t know how weā€™re expected to make a game that isnā€™t landscape-based currently. And I havenā€™t really seen anyone do it either!

12

UT has the same level design tool as UE, doesnā€™t it?

13

I wholeheartedly agree that an intuitive level design tool for creating meshes would be the best addition to the engine at this point. I miss the days of BSP editors. There are a lot of people out there in the Half-Life community that still prefer the BSP level design pipeline even in 2017.

I included some photos of the older BSP editors I used in the past for nostalgia purposes. Maybe it will inspire some of the developers to take this request into fruition.

JED Editor for Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

Worldcraft Editor for Half-Life

Hammer Editor for Half-Life 2

14

hello
its june 2018 but there are still no signs of the programmatic mesh creation feature
Anybody got any idea when its going to come out

15

bump bump bump

16

The mesh stuff they were working on in the past has been merged into the 4.20 version, so there is an expectation that it will be included in 4.20, albeit as experimental.

However, Iā€™ve never seen much information about the programmatic mesh creation side of this stuff, so I dont know how far they actually got with developing that side of things (as opposed to underlying mesh system and geometry editing tools which we saw previewed in the past, especially in the context of the VR editor - the mesh editor is certainly in 4.20), and Iā€™ve never seen any documentation about it either. If I had time I could probably try to find evidence that it exists myself in a 4.20 preview but sadly I dont.

17

I would also like to know when it is coming out & a demo of the features

18

Actually, Iā€™m pretty sure the programmatic mesh creation feature is also in 4.20 alongside the mesh editor. I have no idea how it works, or if itā€™s even usable at the moment. However, thereā€™s a ton of functions available in blueprints under ā€œEditable Meshā€ which appear to be the programmatic mesh creation stuff.

Hereā€™s all the ā€œEditable Meshā€ functions currently in Blueprints in the 4.20 previews:

https://i.imgur.com/ueDRGKK.png

19

I just want a better PMC, or new release of RMC. :frowning:

I want to procedurally generate a huge world but PMC is slow. I wish it worked just like a tiled terrain.

Sidenote: I did a lot of work in hammer, I much prefer having the versatility of blueprints in exchange for doing the extra work building the environments. Anything in hammer that was actually made in hammer looked like garbage anyway. The only thing you could do to round out geometry was slice it. Donā€™t get me wrong at the time its was so easy to use and powerful, but weā€™ve been spoiled with UE4, Cryengine and numerous other sdks. Thereā€™s no going back now.