Any Unreal Engine Experts Here?

Huntn said:
This is what I see:

There are nodes I can change values on. What I don't see is a way to initiate drawing and get something on the screen. There is a line which maybe the guide for trunk in the middle upper area. Need more hints. :)
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It looks like you're in Blender 2.92. I've set it up to work with Blender 3.2.
 
Renzatic said:
It looks like you're in Blender 2.92. I've set it up to work with Blender 3.2.
Click to expand...
OK, got Blender 3.2 updated and this looks pretty amazing. Tip: don't install Blender into an existing copy of blender unless you want a mess. :oops:


The movement and sway of trees/limbs is always cool. Easy to adjust parameters of the tree parts and such. I'll assume that to make multiple trees, that you'd just duplicate the existing tree and change parameters?

One thing that UE has is the ability to paint meshes onto a landscape so instead of individually placing the trees (which you could do if you wanted) would be to paint them onto the landscape using the paint tool and based on settings would determine random placement, and how much rotation to make the same tree look different. There may even be a size variation where the entire tree is scaled from one tree to the next, but I'm not sure about that.

Does Blender do that?
 
Yeah, you can do that in Blender. You use Geometry Nodes mixed with weight painting, much like everything in Blender these days. You can set it up to distribute any number of trees and shrubs you want, set their scale min and max values, and how close or far away you want the individual instances to set from each other.

Also, I've managed to solve the one problem I've been plugging away at for 3 days now. Behold! A proper upward bias! Coming in the next version of GeoTrees!

 
Huntn said:
OK, got Blender 3.2 updated and this looks pretty amazing. Tip: don't install Blender into an existing copy of blender unless you want a mess. :oops:
Click to expand...

Here's the output of the latest version of the tree generator.

The one thing I want to add is a way to produce lower poly, game ready trees. That way, you could use the generator to produce a quick tree, freeze the procedural geometry, then export it into Unreal.

GeoTree_v0.46.jpg
 
Renzatic said:
Here's the output of the latest version of the tree generator.

The one thing I want to add is a way to produce lower poly, game ready trees. That way, you could use the generator to produce a quick tree, freeze the procedural geometry, then export it into Unreal.

View attachment 15193
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That looks great. Does it have wind movement?

These days my memory is on the shaky side. I did import trees from megascans into UE, but off hand , without me reviewing it, I forget if it is texture mapping, or how to assign textures to the bark vs the leafy area, I know these are meshes, and there are textures assigned to materials assigned to these meshes. :unsure: Rhetorical, not expecting a lengthy explanation. :)
 
@Renzatic, from a layout standpoint do you think it would make sense, be easier , to layout a scene like I want to make in UE using low poly elements first to get a sense of scale, or is it just as easy to do layout in UE with the high poly count elements wyou ent for the end product? I guess I’m asking would you learn something by going through a 2 step process or no?
 
Huntn said:
@Renzatic, from a layout standpoint do you think it would make sense, be easier , to layout a scene like I want to make in UE using low poly elements first to get a sense of scale, or is it just as easy to do layout in UE with the high poly count elements wyou ent for the end product? I guess I’m asking would you learn something by going through a 2 step process or no?
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For environments, I'd start with a grid plane, get the general layout of what you want to build out, then start laying down rough textures for where you want everything to be. Like dirt for your roads, grass for your plains, rocks for your cliffs. It doesn't have to look pretty. It just needs to show you where you intend everything to eventually go. Then I'd start populating it with your foliage and rock meshes. Painting in your trees, grass, bushes, cliff faces, and whatnot. From there, it's all about refining. Bringing out the details, tweaking things to taste.

Think of it like building a model railroad.

For architectural work, I'd do a blockout with basic primitives to get the shape and scales down, and then start adding in the textures and details once that's done.
 
That video for the paid tutorial I posted earlier might be of interest to you. It's not the style you want, but the basics are the same.
 
Renzatic said:
For environments, I'd start with a grid plane, get the general layout of what you want to build out, then start laying down rough textures for where you want everything to be. Like dirt for your roads, grass for your plains, rocks for your cliffs. It doesn't have to look pretty. It just needs to show you where you intend everything to eventually go. Then I'd start populating it with your foliage and rock meshes. Painting in your trees, grass, bushes, cliff faces, and whatnot. From there, it's all about refining. Bringing out the details, tweaking things to taste.

Think of it like building a model railroad.

For architectural work, I'd do a blockout with basic primitives to get the shape and scales down, and then start adding in the textures and details once that's done.
Click to expand...
I am finishing a tutorial on UE Landscape Application with a complex Landscape material. It’s similar to, but different from Vertex Painting in UE. With this landscape material you can paint in 5 textures, but it is designed for an expansive landscap. I think for my purposes I might get away with a smaller vertex painting landscape material, but having 5 textures to choose from might be excellent even with a smaller scene.

So I‘ll be starting a layout soon. (Yes, I’ve said this before :p) Another good thing about UE is that you can create a landscape grid and after make it smaller if it is too much and possibly add to it if it turns out too small. I need to review distances.

What I like about other 3D, 2D drawing programs is that rulers are built in. But not sure that is the case for UE. If I layout a scene I want to know a distance, not just eye ball it. I especially need some mannequins in there to give it human scale.

The reason I asked is because a while back I purchased a low cost collection of low poly meshes of landscape components including cave, trees, bushes, bridge, simple buildings, river thinking there was something that might be learned examining them. And
possibly a rough special layout might be faster with low poly shapes, but I’ve not tried it.

My impression is that for low poly, materials will be minimal if any basically just applying a solid color. Something I should play with or rule out.
 
Huntn said:
What I like about other 3D, 2D drawing programs is that rulers are built in. But not sure that is the case for UE. If I layout a scene I want to know a distance, not just eye ball it. I especially need some mannequins in there to give it human scale.
Click to expand...

The nicest thing about outdoor environments is that they don't have to be 110% exact. As long as a tree that's supposed to be around 10 foot tall is roughly 300 Unreal Units + or - (or 3 Blender Units), then you're good to go. No one's gonna look at your trees, and go "THOSE ARE SUPPOSED TO BE TWO FOOT HIGHER!"

Of course this is entirely different with architectural details, where you need to be pretty well exact to real world measurements to keep things realistic.

Huntn said:
And possibly a rough special layout might be faster with low poly shapes, but I’ve not tried it.
Click to expand...

Going low poly for scale would have the advantage of being less taxing on your computer during the planning stages. But considering it'll require extra time to build those low poly assets for importing into Unreal, and you have a pretty stout machine to work with, I wouldn't worry about it too much.
 
Renzatic said:
That video for the paid tutorial I posted earlier might be of interest to you. It's not the style you want, but the basics are the same.
Click to expand...
Are you talking about the 2 Stylized Station video tutorials mentioned here?
Post in thread 'Any Unreal Engine Experts Here?'
https://talkedabout.com/threads/any-unreal-engine-experts-here.2007/post-105481
I watched the video, but glossed over the part about there being tutorials for purchase. I’ll take a another look.

I realize that Blender is very different from UE but related.
That correct me if I am wrong, UE creates dynamic 3D environments, while Blender creates more static graphic depictions. I posted this off over at the Unreal Forums and wondered what your impression is?

Lamdscape size and resolution
When laying out a landscape grid I understand the idea of project load based on resolution, but my question is, does the size and resolution of the landscape framework if out camera sight, represent a burden or is it only the areas that can be seen that present the load placed on rendering?

The purpose of LODs are to reduce load, but these are distant objects that can be seen. What about parts of a scene that can’t be seen at all, do they represent a continuous load on the project?
Thanks!
 
Huntn said:
That correct me if I am wrong, UE creates dynamic 3D environments, while Blender creates more static graphic depictions. I posted this off over at the Unreal Forums and wondered what your impression is?
Click to expand...

It's simply that UE is primarily for games, and has loads of game logic attached to it for you to tinker with, while Blender is for rendering, and tends itself more towards design and cinematics. You can make a scene as dynamic as you can in Unreal, but you can't drop a character into it to play with, and any animation you have in the scene, like trees swaying in the wind, will be tied to the timeline on a per frame basis.

Huntn said:
When laying out a landscape grid I understand the idea of project load based on resolution, but my question is, does the size and resolution of the landscape framework if out camera sight, represent a burden or is it only the areas that can be seen that present the load placed on rendering?

The purpose of LODs are to reduce load, but these are distant objects that can be seen. What about parts of a scene that can’t be seen at all, do they represent a continuous load on the project?
Click to expand...

Beyond LODs, UE can assign blocking cells to specific portions of your map, where scenes that are X amount of cells away from your character won't be drawn, or will be replaced with a lower resolution LOD.

This might help you out.

 
Renzatic said:
It's simply that UE is primarily for games, and has loads of game logic attached to it for you to tinker with, while Blender is for rendering, and tends itself more towards design and cinematics. You can make a scene as dynamic as you can in Unreal, but you can't drop a character into it to play with, and any animation you have in the scene, like trees swaying in the wind, will be tied to the timeline on a per frame basis.



Beyond LODs, UE can assign blocking cells to specific portions of your map, where scenes that are X amount of cells away from your character won't be drawn, or will be replaced with a lower resolution LOD.

This might help you out.

Click to expand...

Got an answer at the UE forums, the engine automatically culls everything out of sight of the camera, along with distance settings. This culling video is of high interest to me. Thanks!

I am starting to put together a scene while reviewing the basics of what I studied befire as a refresher. There is a lot one, I can forget. ;)
 
Huntn said:
It’s a complex shape to reproduce/render, bravo! :)
Click to expand...

I finished up the texturing, and paired it alongside my other truck. Think I might've gotten the scale a little wrong, but oh well. That's what I get for eyeballing things, and it's supposed to look sorta crafted/modelish anyway.

CaravanTrucks.jpg
 

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