Any Unreal Engine Experts Here?

[diamond.g]

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.

When using Nanite are mipmaps still needed?

 

[Renzatic]

When using Nanite are mipmaps still needed?

I'd imagine so, since distance rendering is still a factor. Though depending on the detail of the model, it probably isn't as important.

 

[Huntn]

@Renzatic, do you remember telling me where Blender is the place where individual props are made to be brought into UE and be put together there?

Of interest I am going though the Becoming an Environmental Artist Tutorial at UE.com and in the section referencing Block out meshes, the rough meshes used to initially put together a scene, there is a lot of emphasis on modularity, scaling, scaling everything in your external 3D modeling program so it all fits together there. In the example they were making the enterior of a subway train (so everything needs to be precise) and virtually had the entire thing was constructed in (in their case) Maya before it ever saw UE. So these were just the basic shapes of the pieces and that is all, there were doorways, windows, and recesses for those areas, but nothing beyond the main basic shape. This is a case where just the size of a subway car is being modeled. I want to layout an entire scene with rough pieces and have to figure out if it would be UE or Blender for this purpose.

So I like the idea of putting together a scene with just blockout meshes, basically just the outline and few details of pieces, but I need to read more about level design in UE and find out if I want to make a specific scene with a specific layout, if I should be putting this together with rough pieces in Blender? The more advanced Environmental Artist tutorial at UE may shed more light on this. Yes the blockout meshes are brought into UE and placed, and the example was a small specific architectural type layout. But I don't know how much level layout info was made available to the environmental artist at that point.

The other answer I'm looking for (not from you as this is a UE question), is just how convenient the terrain tool is in UE for creating a natural scene like I want to make. Hell, when I'm watching a UE Tutorial and they jump to Maya to show all the modeling they did, I think I can assume that not only is UE not the place to be doing modeling, but that for scene layout where you want. some specific dimensions, from what I saw on the forest project using Blender making the initial mesh, that appears to be very precise. While the terrain tool in UE seems imprecise. Sure it's fine for sculpting in the distance hills, but for something like a close up scene in a natural environment, you might be better off laying this out in Blender, because there you can play with flat meshes, you can manipulate them so are not perfectly flat, but they are much better defined than the big marshmallows you create in UE using the terrain tool.

The building pieces I've seen in UE are standard shapes cubes, floors, ceilings, walls, etc. Besides the UE terrain tool that initially makes a flat plain, I have to figure out what is best for rough layout and if that would be in UE or in Blender. I remember from the forest scene project the author started with a flat mesh and then manipulated it in height for something that looked more natural. I need to verify if this capability is available in UE, or would it be a matter of making a flat mesh in blender, manipulating it to create a more natural looking surface, not perfectly flat, do that before importing it into UE.

Of further note I've found several tutorials on creating a cave in UE, but I won't be surprised if this does not involve the "3rd party modeling tool" in some shape or form. You know that Blender donut shape? I could easily imagine stretching that out into a cave in Blender. In UE, I don't know yet.

 

[Huntn]

@Renzatic I finished up the Becoming an Environmental Artist tutorial at UE.com. Good info. Then I started Blender Day 2 and quickly decided at this point, I need to make some direct steps towards at least starting the UE Project I want to make, The Secret Spot, so I temporarily set aside Blender Day 2 and started a third party Landscape Tutorial.

Big squares seen are Components.
With default settings each component has 1 section
which is composed of 63x63 Quads.​

Do you know if Blender handles landscape grids the same way as UE?
Here are some notes I jotted down:
UE Landscape Settings

• Layers
• Location- leave at 0,0,0 so at center of level.
• Rotation- don’t change 0,0,0
• Scale- don’t change 100, 100, 100
• Overall Resolution- default is 505x505.-
• Note- Use Sections, Components, and Resolution numbers to change quality for LODs I think.
• Total Components- Default 8x8 components.
  • Are the largest square defined.
  • Change number of components and grid size changes.
• Section Size-Either 1x1 or 2x2 per Component.
  • Sections per Component- change the number of sections per component also changes landscape size.
  • Default section size. 63x63 Quads
  • Author suggests using smaller sections lets UE have more control over LODs, good for small worlds.
  • Larger World use large Sections (smaller number of sections 1x1) ) will reduce performance impact.
• Quads-smallest square defined on the grid. These do not appear to change size
  • So reduce the number of quads in a section and this reduces Section size, which also reduces landscape size.

Question- What I’m not clear about is if the terrain map looks bigger in relation to the premade room you see in the default game display setup, does this mean that assets placed in the landscape are bigger or that the landscape is actually bigger but just less delineation for scaling? I'm thinking the latter. The premade room you get in the engine when you select third person game, does not react to grid size.

 

[diamond.g]

@Renzatic I finished up the Becoming an Environmental Artist tutorial at UE.com. Good info. Then I started Blender Day 2 and quickly decided at this point, I need to make some direct steps towards at least starting the UE Project I want to make, The Secret Spot, so I temporarily set aside Blender Day 2 and started a third party Landscape Tutorial.

View attachment 11542
Big squares seen are Components.
With default settings each component has 1 section
which is composed of 63x63 Quads.​

Do you know if Blender handles landscape grids the same way as UE?
Here are some notes I jotted down:
UE Landscape Settings

• Layers
• Location- leave at 0,0,0 so at center of level.
• Rotation- don’t change 0,0,0
• Scale- don’t change 100, 100, 100
• Overall Resolution- default is 505x505.-
• Note- Use Sections, Components, and Resolution numbers to change quality for LODs I think.
• Total Components- Default 8x8 components.
  • Are the largest square defined.
  • Change number of components and grid size changes.
• Section Size-Either 1x1 or 2x2 per Component.
  • Sections per Component- change the number of sections per component also changes landscape size.
  • Default section size. 63x63 Quads
  • Author suggests using smaller sections lets UE have more control over LODs, good for small worlds.
  • Larger World use large Sections (smaller number of sections 1x1) ) will reduce performance impact.
• Quads-smallest square defined on the grid. These do not appear to change size
  • So reduce the number of quads in a section and this reduces Section size, which also reduces landscape size.

Question- What I’m not clear about is if the terrain map looks bigger in relation to the premade room you see in the default game display setup, does this mean that assets placed in the landscape are bigger or that the landscape is actually bigger but just less delineation for scaling? I'm thinking the latter. The premade room you get in the engine when you select third person game, does not react to grid size.

I wonder how much of this changes when you switch to using World Partition (I am assuming this is exclusive to UE5).

 

[Huntn]

I wonder how much of this changes when you switch to using World Partition (I am assuming this is exclusive to UE5).

I’m not sure what you are asking. Is World Partition a new feature in UE5? So far I’ve been sticking to UE4 while learning because it was already established. I wonder how different it is from UE5?

Btw are you actively working/playing with Unreal Engine?

 

[Renzatic]

What I’m not clear about is if the terrain map looks bigger in relation to the premade room you see in the default game display setup, does this mean that assets placed in the landscape are bigger or that the landscape is actually bigger but just less delineation for scaling? I'm thinking the latter. The premade room you get in the engine when you select third person game, does not react to grid size.

Everything generated by UE should be sized accordingly.

You may be getting confused by The Grid, which is primarily a guide used to determine scale, but otherwise doesn't have anything to do with your meshes, and the grid on a landscape mesh, which is simply the underlying resolution of said mesh. The issue here MIGHT be due to UE enforcing a certain grid resolution, so you only have X amount of subdivisions per square meter, meaning that if you want more resolution, it's going to scale the mesh to maintain that density across your entire scene.

It's probably doing this because the landscape meshes in UE aren't meant to be highly detailed. They're the base you build upon. If you want to add in fine details, you do that with the objects you import in from Blender.

So far I’ve been sticking to UE4 while learning because it was already established. I wonder how different it is from UE5?

From what I understand, there aren't too many differences between UE4 and UE5. Everything you learned in one can be carried over to the other with a minimal amount of fuss.

The biggest changes are the additions of Nanite and Lumen.

Nanite is, from what I've seen, voodoo cult devil blood juju magic, allowing you do use as many polygons as you want, so long as they're applied to static, non-moving meshes. You can have a landscape made up of literally billions of polygons with almost no hit to performance. You don't have to deal with normalmaps or heightmaps, since you can just use raw geometry for the fine details, and you don't have to use LODs, because Nanite automatically tesselates your static meshes on the fly.

Lumen is realtime global illumination, which provides you all that nice lighting you get from baking without the baking.

The downside to all of this? It takes a damn powerful computer to use it. If you're not using a later gen i7 or Ryzen equivalent, a 20xx Geforce, and 32GB of RAM, I wouldn't touch it.

Also, I found this video, which shows you what you really should be doing for determining scale.

 

[Huntn]

Everything generated by UE should be sized accordingly.

You may be getting confused by The Grid, which is primarily a guide used to determine scale, but otherwise doesn't have anything to do with your meshes, and the grid on a landscape mesh, which is simply the underlying resolution of said mesh. The issue here MIGHT be due to UE enforcing a certain grid resolution, so you only have X amount of subdivisions per square meter, meaning that if you want more resolution, it's going to scale the mesh to maintain that density across your entire scene.

It's probably doing this because the landscape meshes in UE aren't meant to be highly detailed. They're the base you build upon. If you want to add in fine details, you do that with the objects you import in from Blender.



From what I understand, there aren't too many differences between UE4 and UE5. Everything you learned in one can be carried over to the other with a minimal amount of fuss.

The biggest changes are the additions of Nanite and Lumen.

Nanite is, from what I've seen, voodoo cult devil blood juju magic, allowing you do use as many polygons as you want, so long as they're applied to static, non-moving meshes. You can have a landscape made up of literally billions of polygons with almost no hit to performance. You don't have to deal with normalmaps or heightmaps, since you can just use raw geometry for the fine details, and you don't have to use LODs, because Nanite automatically tesselates your static meshes on the fly.

Lumen is realtime global illumination, which provides you all that nice lighting you get from baking without the baking.

The downside to all of this? It takes a damn powerful computer to use it. If you're not using a later gen i7 or Ryzen equivalent, a 20xx Geforce, and 32GB of RAM, I wouldn't touch it.

Also, I found this video, which shows you what you really should be doing for determining scale.

My impression is that the grid dictates distance based LOD shifts, maybe not. At least the author said something like that.

Ok, I think I see it’s just a guide to lock to that it does not effect meshes, just gives meshes something to lock on to. However, when the landscape/plain (a mesh of it’s own?) is actually created it fills the space outlined by the grid size.
Or is the landescape not a grid? In Blender, you create a flat mesh to act as a terrain, yes?

What confuses me regarding the grid is that it appears as you change the gradiations, but the smallest size of the grid, “quads“ stay the same, so it appears the end result is that you’ve just made the grid upon which you will create a landscape, bigger or smaller, not add more divisions as if you were adding vertices. Bottom line, because of these visual changes, I am questioning if you are actually giving yourself more divisions or expanding or contracting the size of the plain you want to create?

Regarding Nanites, that is incredible a future with the potential of photo realism visually indistinguishable from reality.

Regarding Lumen- In UE lighting is currently baked into textures via static lights to save on processing. Dynamic lights, moving objects cast live shadows, are the most expensive. I’ll assume that Lumin claims to provide dynamic lighting at a lower cost that what UE 4 does.

 

[Renzatic]

What confuses me regarding the grid is that it appears as you change the gradiations, but the smallest size of the grid, “quads“ stay the same, so it appears the end result is that you’ve just made the grid upon which you will create a landscape, bigger or smaller, not add more divisions as if you were adding vertices. Bottom line, because of these visual changes, I am questioning if you are actually giving yourself more divisions or expanding or contracting the size of the plain you want to create?

I watched this video to see exactly what you're talking about...



I can understand why it's a little confusing, because of the way things are named. A Section Size seems to be one subdivision on your mesh, which contains X by Y amount of quads. Then you get to Sections Per Component, which defaults to 1x1, so you'd think that a component is the overall landscape tile.

...but no, because Number of Components determines the amount of subdivisions. Overall resolution seems to override the settings in the Section Size, and Total Components overrides the amount of components in the scene.

It's weird, but not too difficult to wrap your head around. It seems that UE wants to enforce size by quads, rather than your quads being a separate setting that determines the resolution of your mesh, but not it's size.. It'd be easier to understand if a component was, say, 1m x 1m, but that's not the way it's doing things, so...

Check this link out.

Calculate the Size of Unreal Engine Landscapes - Motion Forge Pictures

The real world equivalent sizes of the default landscapes in Unreal Engine

www.motionforgepictures.com

 

[Huntn]

I watched this video to see exactly what you're talking about...



I can understand why it's a little confusing, because of the way things are named. A Section Size seems to be one subdivision on your mesh, which contains X by Y amount of quads. Then you get to Sections Per Component, which defaults to 1x1, so you'd think that a component is the overall landscape tile.

...but no, because Number of Components determines the amount of subdivisions. Overall resolution seems to override the settings in the Section Size, and Total Components overrides the amount of components in the scene.

It's weird, but not too difficult to wrap your head around. It seems that UE wants to enforce size by quads, rather than your quads being a separate setting that determines the resolution of your mesh, but not it's size.. It'd be easier to understand if a component was, say, 1m x 1m, but that's not the way it's doing things, so...

Check this link out.

Calculate the Size of Unreal Engine Landscapes - Motion Forge Pictures

The real world equivalent sizes of the default landscapes in Unreal Engine

www.motionforgepictures.com

Have not watched this yet. My problem seems to be visually looking at the grid in the view port if you change the number of components, sections, or quads, the grid size visually changes growing larger or smaller. That appears to be adding or subtracting territory, without changing density.

Logically if the landscape size was dictated by a defined dimension and the changes of say the number of quads, changes grid density but not change the overall dimension of the terrain stayed the same, but that does not seem to be the case.

Section size changes based on the number of quads you put in it, and components change size based on the number of sections. So I have to wonder am I changing size or density or both?

 

[Renzatic]

Have not watched this yet. My problem seems to be visually looking at the grid in the view port if you change the number of components, sections, or quads, the grid size visually changes growing larger or smaller. That appears to be adding or subtracting territory, without changing density.

Logically if the landscape size was dictated by a defined dimension and the changes of say the number of quads, changes grid density but not change the overall dimension of the terrain stayed the same, but that does not seem to be the case.

Section size changes based on the number of quads you put in it, and components change size based on the number of sections. So I have to wonder am I changing size or density or both?

You could try to use the Override Resolution entry, see what that does. Though if that ends up making the mesh larger, then I'd say you're probably stuck with the default density.

Though really, that isn't THAT big of a deal. The resolution of the plain is pretty good, given what you're meant to use it for.

 

[diamond.g]

I’m not sure what you are asking. Is World Partition a new feature in UE5? So far I’ve been sticking to UE4 while learning because it was already established. I wonder how different it is from UE5?

Btw are you actively working/playing with Unreal Engine?

i am just an avid follower of what you guys are going. From the demos I have seen of UE5 it looks like a huge leap (when using all the new stuff) and was curious about the differences in workflow.

 

[Huntn]

i am just an avid follower of what you guys are going. From the demos I have seen of UE5 it looks like a huge leap (when using all the new stuff) and was curious about the differences in workflow.

I am not yet the person who can answer this, just learning and I started in Oct or so. I can say that Unreal Engine is pretty incredible, and as said before the more I know the more I realize I don't know, lol.

 

[Huntn]

You could try to use the Override Resolution entry, see what that does. Though if that ends up making the mesh larger, then I'd say you're probably stuck with the default density.

Though really, that isn't THAT big of a deal. The resolution of the plain is pretty good, given what you're meant to use it for

Thanks!

Does Blender have a terrain tool or for terrain, are you always working with flat meshes that you manipulate? I'm debating that if I want to make a cliff like structure with a cave in the face of it, I'm thinking this is not something I could easily do in UE with the terrain tool. It seems more likely that you'd want to sculpt it in Blender and import it in. Thoughts?

 

[Renzatic]

Thanks!

Does Blender have a terrain tool or are you always working with flat meshes that you manipulate? I'm debating that if I want to make a cliff like structure with a cave in the face of it, I'm thinking this is not something I could easily do in UE with the terrain tool. It seems more likely that you'd want to sculpt it in Blender and import it in. Thoughts?

Yup, you can use the sculpt tools on a low res mesh. It'll act fairly similarly to what you're already used to with Unreal's landscaper.

The grab and inflate brushes will probably work best for you here.

 

[Huntn]

Yup, you can use the sculpt tools on a low res mesh. It'll act fairly similarly to what you're already used to with Unreal's landscaper.

The grab and inflate brushes will probably work best for you here.

Thanks. Actually I'm not yet sure what the full capabities of the terrain tool in UE is. It seems like it's a separate beast, you can sculpt it but I don't think you can go in with a manipulate tool and grab vertices and pull them around...

 

[Renzatic]

Thanks. Actually I'm not yet sure what the full capabities of the terrain tool in UE is. It seems like it's a separate beast, you can sculpt it but I don't think you can go in with a manipulate tool and grab vertices and pull them around...

As far as I know, the terrain tool can only raise and lower geometry on the Z axis. That’s fine for gulleys, creek beds, and trails, but it’s weak when it comes to anything overlapping.

 

[Huntn]

UE Level Design- When I look for a video on the basics of level design for UE, the pickings are slim. I see something in older tutorials called BSP and blocking out levels and it makes sense to block out a level with rough shapes, but in the latest UE documentation it’s offered with caveats.

Plus I tried to follow along an older tutorial (2015 I think) and the specifics the author mentioned where not in the latest version 4 of UE. At least they were not were his version of the engine showed them to be.

Geometry Brush Actors

Guide to using Brushes to create level geometry in Unreal Editor.

docs.unrealengine.com

This 4.27 UE documentation says:
Warning: Geometry Brushes are not recommended as a final method of level design. It is not required, but can be useful at the early stages of creation.

Geometry Brushes are the most basic tool for level construction in Unreal. Conceptually, it is best to think of a Geometry Brush as filling in and carving out volumes of space in your level. Previously, Geometry Brushes were used as the primary building block in level design. Now, however, that role has been passed on to Static Meshes, which are far more efficient. However, Geometry Brushes can still be useful in the early stages of a product for rapid prototyping of levels and objects, as well as for level construction by those who do not have access to 3D modeling tools. This document goes over the use of Geometry Brushes and how they can utilized in your levels.

In general, you can think of Geometry Brushes as a way to create basic shapes for use in your level design process, either as permanent fixtures or as something temporary to test with while your artists finish creating final meshes.
———————

What this says to me is that geometry brushes are are a remnants of a time before static meshes, and it might just be as easy to just place rough meshes around to determine the dimensions and layout of the level I want to develop.

So for Blender have you ever created a scene large enough that you’d want to lay it out in advance or is it just as easy to just start placing meshes and adjusting them as you go?

For myself and the type of level I am imagining, which is not a large level in the spectrum of levels, but, it would be nice to be able to lay out a floor plan for it in advance. Or maybe it’s just so easy to move static meshes around, just start placing and adjusting them as needed?

UE has this nice little 3rd person game setup which provides you with a basically a room and a character all ready to walk around, and as see it I could either take down the walls of the room and build off that for a floor plan, using mesh floor sections or build a terrain space and just wing it filling it with place meshes defining a space and then walking my character around in it.

Considerations:

• If I don’t want a perfectly flat level, this where I might want UE terrain or build a manipulated flat mesh in Blender and import it.
• And then there is the matter of the cave, there is an exterior made of rock that I don’t want it to look like bolders stacked on each other, but slabs, a face of rock, including a shear vertical face.
• There is the entrance to the cave.
• And there is the interior which could have a clean architectural space as is if a building was built inside it, or have rough rock walls and ceilings as if it’s a natural space, that has been turned into a livable space.

Terrain by itself is not hard, it’s just a matter of determining if I would be better served by creating a UE terrain, or just use slanted meshes like the mesh I created for the Forest Road in Blender. So I am faced with the choice of creating a floor in Blender and importing it or a combination of UE floor meshes and terrain. Frankly I see creating the floor in Blender as more difficult from a level planning aspect.

Also from the Forest Road project, I discovered that the UE terrain is not held back by meshes, that meshes do not provide a barrier, and that the terrain can easily swallow up any mesh you’ve place in the scene. So trying to surround and interior cave space created with meshes with a UE terrain, might not be practical because the terrain represents a single manipulated plain. Yes, you can gouge out a hole in UE terrain, but I don’t think this will mesh well with my cave Idea.

I’m thinking that the entire cliff/cave area would be better as a mesh. Which means I think, that I am modeling this in Blender. In essence having to go back and forth between Blender and UE for level layout. Of interest, that Low Poly Forrest Project for purchase you linked to includes a cave and it is cheap $14 or so. I might just buy that to see how it is put together. It might be easier to build the cave and the cliff in Blender and import that in as an anchor for the UE project,

Also at this point I might be served by studying Blender rock sculpting and doing some creating a cave in UE tutorials, and I have not forgotten your suggestion of doing low poly modeling In Blender. As I said, I started up the Blender Day 2 tutorial, but I just want to advance on both fronts alternating as I go.

Thoughts?

 

[Huntn]

After watching 2 videos about making a cave in UE, it appears that modeling these space with meshes in the third party program is the way to go. Here is one of the UE tutorials:

​

 

[Huntn]

This is showing a lot of promise as far as fancy caves go, in Blender:

​

However I am not looking to create a deep long fancy cave, just basically one or 2 connected rooms so @Renzatic, a Blender question.

I assume can you create a hollow cube in blender with the textures on the inside, add a bunch of vertices, round the edges, make it slightly irregular, possibilty sculpt the surface into a rock like stratus and make an interior “cave room”.

This seems less complicated than what I am seeing in the above tutorial, but that above is great stuff to know like UV unpacking I think that is the term he uses (maybe not ) to make the vertices more uniform for the purpose of making an applied texture look good as I recall.

I’d also to like an underground lake. After creating a somewhat largish cave room (separate from the first cave room) can you deform the bottom of it into a depression and add water?

As the cave seems to be the primary challenge in this project, maybe I should get back to Blender sooner than later.