Any Unreal Engine Experts Here?

[Renzatic]

it looks like there is a tool like a brush that can gouge out a swath of the surface of the Cube? Is this a sculpting or reduction tool or mode in Blender? And it’s a standard part of Blender? I’m curious because I thought you need not just a standard cube made up of 8 vertices but a cube full of vertices, to manipulate it In such a manner as the sculpting that appears to be going on here.

It's the sculpting mode, which allows you to manipulate your objects more like clay, but yeah, you need to have to have high mesh density to pull it off.

There are a number of ways you can up the density of your meshes. The guy in video takes basic cubes, blocks them out, then uses voxel remesh to get more density to sculpt with. Think of it as being similar to image resolution. If you have a cube made up of a single face per side, there's not much you can do with it, but a cube made up with 6x6 faces per side gives you so much more to play with to manipulate the shape of your object.

And Zbrush? It's an amazing program. Blender is decent at sculpting, but Zbrush is built for it from the ground up, and can handle polycounts no other DCC can even come close to approaching. It's the difference between a jack of all trades, and a master of one.

The only problem with Zbrush is that it's expensive. $700 for a year license at the moment, and it's likely to become even more expensive now that Maxon, a company well known for gouging the shit out of their userbase, has bought up Pixologic.

Oh, and this is a fairly decent video on blocking out environments.

 

[B01L]

Sculpting in Blender is supposed to get a major revamp "Soon"...?

 

[Huntn]

It's the sculpting mode, which allows you to manipulate your objects more like clay, but yeah, you need to have to have high mesh density to pull it off.

There are a number of ways you can up the density of your meshes. The guy in video takes basic cubes, blocks them out, then uses voxel remesh to get more density to sculpt with. Think of it as being similar to image resolution. If you have a cube made up of a single face per side, there's not much you can do with it, but a cube made up with 6x6 faces per side gives you so much more to play with to manipulate the shape of your object.

View attachment 11291

And Zbrush? It's an amazing program. Blender is decent at sculpting, but Zbrush is built for it from the ground up, and can handle polycounts no other DCC can even come close to approaching. It's the difference between a jack of all trades, and a master of one.

The only problem with Zbrush is that it's expensive. $700 for a year license at the moment, and it's likely to become even more expensive now that Maxon, a company well known for gouging the shit out of their userbase, has bought up Pixologic.

Oh, and this is a fairly decent video on blocking out environments.

There is always pirating for a just cause… forget I said that. Sometime highway robbery get's an adverse reaction. -_-

 

[Renzatic]

There is always pirating for a just cause… forget I said that. Sometime highway robbery get's an adverse reaction. -_-

THHHIIIEEEFFFF!

 

[Renzatic]

Sculpting in Blender is supposed to get a major revamp "Soon"...?

It's already seen a number of revamps, with many more in the pipeline to come.

Thing is, Zbrush is just ridiculous. I dunno how they've managed to squeeze as much performance out of their app as they have, but they managed it. It's practically voodoo magic. No one else comes close to handling the amount of polygons Zbrush does. 3DCoat is probably its closest competitor, but it's still only half as good.

Though with that said, it's rare thing to need to sculpt with that many polys. Yeah, if you're working for a big movie studio, and you need to create characters that are finely detailed down to the pores, then yeah, your only choice is Zbrush. For anything not quite so exacting, Blender is fine.

After all, the Blender Movie Foundation did this movie entirely in Blender. Unless you can look at this, and say "yeah, it's nice, but I need more," then you don't have much to worry about.

 

[Huntn]

THHHIIIEEEFFFF!

Yeah, that Maya and Z Brush although it looks like Z Brush can be outright purchased for $800, a bargain.
Anyway in the meantime I'm now working:
Blender Day 2 Tutorial:

I'm taking some serious notes and at the end of the Day 1 tutorial, tons of notes that if not in an outline format, I simply would not retain it all, holy crap as they say. And then I think I have the majority of features recorded and on the Day 2 tutorial OMG more notes, tons more note. The nice thing is that instead of hand writing this out on a legal pad, putting into outline format using NisusWriterPro, I can just fit the new stuff in like parts of a puzzle. I started out with an Blender UI Outline, identifying where everything is, but really it is better organized as a Controls outline. Right now I have both and find for the sake of controls I'm taking pieces out of the Interface section, and moving it up into controls with keyboard shortcuts.

I don't want to sound like I'm discouraged, I'm not, just a **** ton of stuff to know, which I suppose the more you work with it, the more it gets imbedded in your head and not as hard to recall. I'm all ready seeing that to some degree.

 

[Renzatic]

Yeah, that Maya and Z Brush although it looks like Z Brush can be outright purchased for $800, a bargain.

The thing is, up to a certain level, there's really no differences between Blender and Maya for box modeling, and Blender and Zbrush for sculpting. You can argue some differences in workflow, or the way brushes feel in each program, but the fact is that unless you're working with massive data sets, and super high polycounts, you don't really need the latters.

Here's some other videos showing off what Blender can do.

I don't want to sound like I'm discouraged, I'm not, just a **** ton of stuff to know, which I suppose the more you work with it, the more it gets imbedded in your head and not as hard to recall. I'm all ready seeing that to some degree.

I remember what it was like when I first started modeling, and things that seemed like scary dark magic that was impossible to learn is fairly intuitive to me now. There are a lot of things you have to come to terms with, but like you said, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

But yeah, there is a shit ton of stuff you have to know. That's why I'm recommending you start with low poly work, so you can make something nice without being totally overwhelmed. It's a good way to build your foundational skills, because you're primarily working with shapes and colors, only dabbling in the higher end if you want to try something out.

 

[Huntn]

The thing is, up to a certain level, there's really no differences between Blender and Maya for box modeling, and Blender and Zbrush for sculpting. You can argue some differences in workflow, or the way brushes feel in each program, but the fact is that unless you're working with massive data sets, and super high polycounts, you don't really need the latters.

Here's some other videos showing off what Blender can do.







I remember what it was like when I first started modeling, and things that seemed like scary dark magic that was impossible to learn is fairly intuitive to me now. There are a lot of things you have to come to terms with, but like you said, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

But yeah, there is a shit ton of stuff you have to know. That's why I'm recommending you start with low poly work, so you can make something nice without being totally overwhelmed. It's a good way to build your foundational skills, because you're primarily working with shapes and colors, only dabbling in the higher end if you want to try something out.

So in response I’m working on both the Blender Day2 tutorial, and a UE tutorial on Environmental Art. The first part of the UE tutorial the author threw down a lot of industry terms which was very helpful like what a MIP map is (I think, I need to ref my notes. ). Anyway I’m happily forging ahead, slowly but surely.

 

[Renzatic]

So in response I’m working on both the Blender Day2 tutorial, and a UE tutorial on Environmental Art. The first part of the UE tutorial the author threw down a lot of industry terms which was very helpful like what a MIP map is (I think, I need to ref my notes. ). Anyway I’m happily forging ahead, slowly but surely.

MIPMAPS!

In short, it's another level of detail optimization. A stack of the same textures at different resolutions, like 2048x, 1024x, 512x, and 256x, with the higher resolutions being drawn the closer to the camera they are.

 

[Huntn]

@Renzatic, you know If off the top of your head if Blender uses Z or Y for it's vertical "up" dimension? Just curious, and I'm sure I can find it, somewhere in the Blender tutorial I'm doing, but tonight working on an UE tutorial. It's discussing scaling to be sure you have the proper scale when you import into UE. I think in my forest project I had a scale problem... although it was unnoticeable because there were no people running around in it.

 

[Renzatic]

@Renzatic, you know If off the top of your head if Blender uses Z or Y for it's vertical "up" dimension? Just curious, and I'm sure I can find it, somewhere in the Blender tutorial I'm doing, but tonight working on an UE tutorial. It's discussing scaling to be sure you have the proper scale when you import into UE. I think in my forest project I had a scale problem... although it was unnoticeable because there were no people running around in it.

Z is up in Blender. I think it's the same in Unreal.

And the easiest way to to test scale in UE is to drop that dummy actor into your scene.

 

[Renzatic]

I did something kinda neat today.

See, I hate UV unwrapping. It's not difficult, but it can be tedious as hell. For this reason, I spent the time when I should be unwrapping my truck model experimenting with shaders. Ended up coming up with one that looks somewhat like a pencil sketch.

So I was sitting here, looking at it, and I thought to myself "you know, I wonder what that'd look like if I just painted over it in a photo program." Sure, I could just go ahead and unwrap it, and have a texture that could work for almost every situation imaginable, but I have to UV unwrap it, and that's a good half hour worth of work I don't wanna deal with.

So I spent 3 hours painting over the truck to see what it'd look like, all to avoid something that'd take 1/6th the time to do.

 

[Huntn]

I did something kinda neat today.

See, I hate UV unwrapping. It's not difficult, but it can be tedious as hell. For this reason, I spent the time when I should be unwrapping my truck model experimenting with shaders. Ended up coming up with one that looks somewhat like a pencil sketch.


View attachment 11372

So I was sitting here, looking at it, and I thought to myself "you know, I wonder what that'd look like if I just painted over it in a photo program." Sure, I could just go ahead and unwrap it, and have a texture that could work for almost every situation imaginable, but I have to UV unwrap it, and that's a good half hour worth of work I don't wanna deal with.

So I spent 3 hours painting over the truck to see what it'd look like, all to avoid something that'd take 1/6th the time to do.

View attachment 11373

Looks atmospheric. What photo program did you use? I am in a UE Tutorial and the guy first goes to Maya (ok no problem I'll use Blender) and now he has gone to Photoshop and I'm looking at this and wondering if I should jump on the link below or go with Photoshop Elements (I had it before but don't think it has an upgrade price) or GIMP... thoughts?

Adobe Photoshop CC 2022 New Full Last Version lifetime Activation For Windows – Design FST

designfst.com

Photoshop vs Photoshop elements:

What can Photoshop do that elements can t? – Big Photography : Leading Photography Magazine, Explore, learn & Share Knowledge

big-photography.com

 

[Renzatic]

Looks atmospheric. What photo program did you use? I am in a UE Tutorial and the guy first goes to Maya (ok no problem I'll use Blender) and now he has gone to Photoshop and I'm looking at this and wondering if I should jump on the link below or go with Photoshop Elements (I had it before but don't think it has an upgrade price) or GIMP... thoughts?

I used Krita, which is pretty solid.

If I were to recommend anything, it’d be Affinity Photo. $50 up front (though it goes on sale quite a bit), no subscription, and free upgrades. It can can cover 99% of what PS can do, without the cost.

I’d use it, but it’s the only app I haven’t managed to get working in Linux, so I get by with Krita, which is more of a digital painting program, but covers some of PS’s workflow.

GIMP? Yeah, I’d stay away from it. It has its perks, sure, but mostly it just makes me mad.

 

[Huntn]

I used Krita, which is pretty solid.

If I were to recommend anything, it’d be Affinity Photo. $50 up front (though it goes on sale quite a bit), no subscription, and free upgrades. It can can cover 99% of what PS can do, without the cost.

I’d use it, but it’s the only app I haven’t managed to get working in Linux, so I get by with Krita, which is more of a digital painting program, but covers some of PS’s workflow.

GIMP? Yeah, I’d stay away from it. It has its perks, sure, but mostly it just makes me mad.

I can get Photoshop Elements for about $50, or I can get something described as Photoshop CC with no subscription for $30 something, as per the link, but I wonder about that as in, is it legit? Maybe, maybe not... Affinity Photo looks good too for about $50.

I'm working on a tutorial called "Becoming an Environmental Artist" at UE.com, described as a beginner course and has good info, but inexplicably, the author launches into Channel Packing lol. You can only access this course if you are registered on the site and logged in.

Now I did follow along for most of it, but he failed to explain what he was starting out with. I assume 5 textures, but one of these textures was already labeled RMA for Roughness, Metallic, and Ambient Occlusion, the channel packed texture and he never said anything like, here is the RMA texture I already made, and this is how I made it.

He took 3 of the textures, Roughness, Metal, and Ambient Occlusion and combined them together, in Photoshop, and although he never said it, I think he was demoing how he made the RMA texture in the first place. And before that he was in Maya, no way Jose. I'll take Blender. Anyway this is what got me thinking about Photoshop.

And there was no discussion about as a rule, should you always be channel packing a texture or when it does not matter. Nope no talky about that.

Tons more stuff this tutorial is talking about such as:
------------------------------------
MIPs mentioned, but not discussed how scaling occurs. I'm thinking this must be like LODs, maybe?
Texture Density- (Pixel or Texel Density) amount of pixel resolution applied to a mesh’s surface relative to the size of the asset’s surface. Basically if you don't keep texture density consistent, then items can look funky compared to each other. And it's not that simple a combination of how big the texture map is vs how big the asset is such as a wall vs a cup. There seems to be some unknowns here.

So far I've been doing all of my texture work in UE. Now I guess I'm supposed to open these textures in the photo program and check them out for consistency and or go there to channel pack them, and thirdly, figure out how to check texture density before bringing them into UE.

• TD should be kept consistent in project so assets will look the same. How? Maybe it will be described later.
• The program used to model should have tools to check Texture Density, but what if you are doing the textures in UE?
• What controls Texture Density?
  • How big the texture is being appiled.
  • How the UVs on mesh are sized and setup. ?
  • What size the mesh is, relative to real world scale.
• Questions proposed in tutorial:
  • What texture resolution should I use? Relative to the type of asset and type of gameplay. ?
    • First Person Shooter- higher cause you can get closer. How high?
    • Characters and Weapons given higher density.
    • Third Person or Top Down game- less. How much less?
    • In project setup up in preproduction. HOW?
  • Where do I setup texture density? Setup during the export operation from your 3D package externally. UVs set up in external package. Want a target density determined. ?
  • Can I also control the texture density in Engine? The initial density of your UVs per your mesh are setup before being imported but you are able to tile textures more or less in your material setup to alter their density? ?

 

[Renzatic]

MIPs mentioned, but not discussed how scaling occurs. I'm thinking this must be like LODs, maybe?

This does a good job of explaining what mipmaps are, and how to apply them. It's just 3 minutes, so you won't have to dedicate a ton of time to it.

Texture Density- (Pixel or Texel Density) amount of pixel resolution applied to a mesh’s surface relative to the size of the asset’s surface. Basically if you don't keep texture density consistent, then items can look funky compared to each other. And it's not that simple a combination of how big the texture map is vs how big the asset is such as a wall vs a cup. There seems to be some unknowns here.

Texel density fairly easy to explain when you're talking about bare surfaces, like what you've been working with. It's simply the resolution of your textures relative to each other. Say you have two equally sized walls segments next to each other, one has a 2048x texture, the other a 512x. Obviously, the 2048x texture will look so much sharper relative to the 512x, which has 8 times as many pixels applied to the same surface.

It gets a little more complicated when you're talking about UVs, because texel density is not only defined by the resolution of your texture, but also your unwrap. Here's a quick, simple example here...

I make a cube, give each face on the cube it's own UV island. I apply a 128x128 pixel texture to it. Now I take two of those faces, and make it so that they fill up a quarter of the UV space, which would be 64x64 pixels. The other 4, I make roughly a quarter of the size of that, or 32x32 pixels each.

My cube, has bad relative texel density, since I have 6 equally sized faces, but two different pixel resolutions being applied to these faces.

(Well, think of that 32px space as being 32px-ish. I whipped this up pretty quickly, but you should get the idea.)

Hopefully, I did a good enough job explaining it so that you get the just of what's going on. The good news is that it's primarily academic. When you UV unwrap your objects, Blender will scale all the individual islands to their relative appropriate sizes, so you don't have to worry about small details taking up as much space as your larger details. They all have even texel density on your UV space.

The challenge with UV mapping is maximizing the amount of space you have available, so that you're using your pixels more efficiently. You do this both through efficient unwrapping, and island packing (the latter of which you can use a nice little addon like UV Packmaster to automate for you). This is a subject I could fill paragraph upon paragraph with, and you will at some point have plenty of questions to ask when you start doing it yourself.

...but we'll get to that later.

When you're starting out, UVing is probably one of the most confusing things about modeling. It's really quiet simple, though it's something you need to have some hands on time with to really wrap your head around.

Now as to what size you should use for your models, well, that depends. How large is it? How close are you gonna get to it? How much detail needs to be seen? Does it look the same at 1024x as it does as 2048x? What can you get away with? Generally speaking, 1024x is fine for most largish objects, like a post box, and you want to use 4096x textures sparingly for things like houses and buildings with tons of unique surfaces, or character models that will spend a fair amount of time being close to the camera.

You can even use a single texture for multiple objects if you want. Why have 4 roughly equally sized objects with 4 sets of 512x material textures, when you could throw them all together onto a single 1024x material sheet?

Where do I setup texture density? Setup during the export operation from your 3D package externally. UVs set up in external package. Want a target density determined. ?

To get down to the bare basics, texture density is a combination of your UV island sizes, and the resolution of your textures, all of which are determined by you during the design phase before you export your objects into Unreal.

Keep in mind that this isn't something you have to be absolutely scientific about. Like if you have a 40cm object, you don't need to worry about it having X amount of pixels on its surfaces relative to other objects. It's more of a general guideline thing, with the primary goal being maximizing quality with minimal amount of resources used, and the realization that you don't need a 4096x texture for a prop bowl sitting on a shelf.

 

[Huntn]

This does a good job of explaining what mipmaps are, and how to apply them. It's just 3 minutes, so you won't have to dedicate a ton of time to it.




Texel density fairly easy to explain when you're talking about bare surfaces, like what you've been working with. It's simply the resolution of your textures relative to each other. Say you have two equally sized walls segments next to each other, one has a 2048x texture, the other a 512x. Obviously, the 2048x texture will look so much sharper relative to the 512x, which has 8 times as many pixels applied to the same surface.

It gets a little more complicated when you're talking about UVs, because texel density is not only defined by the resolution of your texture, but also your unwrap. Here's a quick, simple example here...

I make a cube, give each face on the cube it's own UV island. I apply a 128x128 pixel texture to it. Now I take two of those faces, and make it so that they fill up a quarter of the UV space, which would be 64x64 pixels. The other 4, I make roughly a quarter of the size of that, or 32x32 pixels each.

My cube, has bad relative texel density, since I have 6 equally sized faces, but two different pixel resolutions being applied to these faces.

View attachment 11390

(Well, think of that 32px space as being 32px-ish. I whipped this up pretty quickly, but you should get the idea.)

Hopefully, I did a good enough job explaining it so that you get the just of what's going on. The good news is that it's primarily academic. When you UV unwrap your objects, Blender will scale all the individual islands to their relative appropriate sizes, so you don't have to worry about small details taking up as much space as your larger details. They all have even texel density on your UV space.

The challenge with UV mapping is maximizing the amount of space you have available, so that you're using your pixels more efficiently. You do this both through efficient unwrapping, and island packing (the latter of which you can use a nice little addon like UV Packmaster to automate for you). This is a subject I could fill paragraph upon paragraph with, and you will at some point have plenty of questions to ask when you start doing it yourself.

...but we'll get to that later.

When you're starting out, UVing is probably one of the most confusing things about modeling. It's really quiet simple, though it's something you need to have some hands on time with to really wrap your head around.

Now as to what size you should use for your models, well, that depends. How large is it? How close are you gonna get to it? How much detail needs to be seen? Does it look the same at 1024x as it does as 2048x? What can you get away with? Generally speaking, 1024x is fine for most largish objects, like a post box, and you want to use 4096x textures sparingly for things like houses and buildings with tons of unique surfaces, or character models that will spend a fair amount of time being close to the camera.

You can even use a single texture for multiple objects if you want. Why have 4 roughly equally sized objects with 4 sets of 512x material textures, when you could throw them all together onto a single 1024x material sheet?



To get down to the bare basics, texture density is a combination of your UV island sizes, and the resolution of your textures, all of which are determined by you during the design phase before you export your objects into Unreal.

Keep in mind that this isn't something you have to be absolutely scientific about. Like if you have a 40cm object, you don't need to worry about it having X amount of pixels on its surfaces relative to other objects. It's more of a general guideline thing, with the primary goal being maximizing quality with minimal amount of resources used, and the realization that you don't need a 4096x texture for a prop bowl sitting on a shelf.

I need to digest this, thanks! In the tutorial it seemed to be saying on a small object use less resolution cause it’s smaller and the same amount of detail won’t be visible than say a wall.

i need to figure out how UE handles mips, if you have to set it up or UE will do it for you just it handles LODs,

 

[Renzatic]

I need to digest this. In the tutorial it seemed to be saying on a small object use less resolution cause it’s smaller and the same amount of detail won’t be visible than say a wall.

That's sound advice.

Really, the best way to learn this is to experiment. Grab a couple of similar looking models off of Bridge, one at 2048x, the other at 1024x. If they both look about the same in your scene, then that extra resolution isn't paying off for you, and you can get by with the smaller texture. If it looks blurry and chunky, then go with the larger of the two.

 

[Huntn]

That's sound advice.

Really, the best way to learn this is to experiment. Grab a couple of similar looking models off of Bridge, one at 2048x, the other at 1024x. If they both look about the same in your scene, then that extra resolution isn't paying off for you, and you can get by with the smaller texture. If it looks blurry and chunky, then go with the larger of the two.

As initially described it‘s like a somewhat vague formula to determine texture density… I think the next tutorial will get into it more. And I have to decide which photo program to get.

 

[Renzatic]

As initially described it‘s like a somewhat vague formula to determine texture density… I think the next tutorial will get into it more. And I have to decide which photo program to get.

Get Affinity Photo, you goobus! Don't even argue with me. Just get it. Now. Go!