Any Unreal Engine Experts Here?

[Renzatic]

In the First Hour in UE Tutorial, there are square flat tile pieces of textured floor, they have been using to define the floor of a space. These meshes have thickness, but would be something you might use as the floor in a building, that serves as both floor and ceiling. In the video referenced above, the plain which the author above constructs, is a flat plain. without any perceivable depth to it. I'll assume this is something that can be made in Blender. Is it any different than one of the floor pieces with depth, or is it just, I'll assume a flat 2D mesh. Would that be defined differently than a 3D mesh?

Are you asking why it is that it looks like the flat plane has a front and back in Maya, but only the top side in Unreal? That's because Maya, Blender, etc. always display their meshes as being doublesided by default, while game engines like UE usually only show faces as single sided unless told to do otherwise. It's all about surface normals, or which side a polygon's face is pointing.

And the reason why it looks flat, without depth, is because, well, it is. That doesn't make it 2D, rather no one has added any depth to it yet.

See, modelers like Maya, Max, and Blender work with something called manifold geometry. It's like you're working on a shell that's empty inside. A sphere in one of these programs doesn't have any thickness or volume to it. Rather, it's a contiguous manifold.

And yes, Blender can do what you see in the video above. Here's a quick example I did for you. It's all loop cuts, edge bevels, a couple of scales, and moving some faces/vertices (or transforming them, per the parlance).

 

[Huntn]

Are you asking why it is that it looks like the flat plane has a front and back in Maya, but only the top side in Unreal? That's because Maya, Blender, etc. always display their meshes as being doublesided by default, while game engines like UE usually only show faces as single sided unless told to do otherwise. It's all about surface normals, or which side a polygon's face is pointing.

And the reason why it looks flat, without depth, is because, well, it is. That doesn't make it 2D, rather no one has added any depth to it yet.

See, modelers like Maya, Max, and Blender work with something called manifold geometry. It's like you're working on a shell that's empty inside. A sphere in one of these programs doesn't have any thickness or volume to it. Rather, it's a contiguous manifold.

And yes, Blender can do what you see in the video above. Here's a quick example I did for you. It's all loop cuts, edge bevels, a couple of scales, and moving some faces/vertices (or transforming them, per the parlance).

View attachment 9097

The author says he could have done this in UE, but that this method gives him for freedom. I sat. down tonight and watched that entire video and while a lot was over my head it's main value is to see how a scene like this is constructed with not that much difficulty. Although as I took notes, I had lots of questions. Here is the general sequence, but a lot of my screenshots are left out.

Questiona about Baking/Building. When you build a scene does this protect stuff already added to the scene or can it (the baked stuff) sill be edited? After a baked scene, he added some leaves, did not like them, then it looked like he used an eraser paint brush to remove them without effecting the stuff below them.

First is the starting mesh as illustrated above, the author made it with 3 pieces, center, right side, left side, exports into UE.

Adds master texture, author speaks of vertex paint, blending, and noise mask.


The road: Paints in green channel for grass along the road, and red for the dirt.​

• Right Side (the lip and above)- Looking at the screen he texurized the right side (above the ledge) and then duplicated that, roasted it 180° and used it for the left side of the road.​
• Tiles- Then he tiles this 3 piece mesh and extends the road with 6 new sections.​
• Adds rocks piles, and tree stumps along the road, meshes brought in from Megascans. The rock pile is ingenious because he would place 3 rocks piles, the same rock pile, but rotate it with each placement. Then duplicate those 3 rock piles, rotate them 180° and move to the opposite side of the road where they would look different. Used a single rock pile up and down the road.​
• Adds grass, small sticks, and leaves to road area with what sounded like a "scatter" application, just run the curser around the screen and paint objects. He did mention something about offset, I assume so if you are painting trees, they all plop down oriented differently.​

UE Landscape is added (the green mesh)
​

• Adds the UE Landscape and adjusts it down so this mesh imported to UE is sitting on the new Landscape/Terrain.​

Paints Hills
​

• Around the scene he paints significant terrain (hills) with a brush, then smoothes it out and lowers it so you can see the blue of the horizon.​

Applies same green texture to the UE terrain.


Adds trees, shrubs junipers, bigger grass.​

• Note, he did not mention where he got the trees from, Megascans or somewhere else, but at some point he said everything came from Megascans.​
• Question: I noticed when the grass was placed it was waving in a breeze. Very cool, but I have no idea what the mechanism is, if it's an UE setting or a setting associated with the vegetation, the grass actors/items brought into the scene.​

with some tweaks to lighting and post processing
Final Product​

So with the final product, I'm thinking in UE, you can just hit play and could walk about in this environment. Just don't walk off the edge.

​

 

[Renzatic]

Questiona about Baking/Building. When you build a scene does this protect stuff already added to the scene or can it (the baked stuff) sill be edited? After a baked scene, he added some leaves, did not like them, then it looked like he used an eraser paint brush to remove them without effecting the stuff below them.

Yeah, you can still edit it, since all he's doing is baking the lighting to account for any new instances or geometry added to the scene. If you remove something after baking, you'll see it's shadow still floating about in the scene, but that can be fixed with another quick bake.

• Question: I noticed when the grass was placed it was waving in a breeze. Very cool, but I have no idea what the mechanism is, if it's an UE setting or a setting associated with the vegetation, the grass actors/items brought into the scene.

It depends on the size and complexity of your objects. The trunks and branches on your trees trees will need a rig to tell the engine what parts of the geometry can be pushed by a wind effect, but grass and leaves, being alpha masked textures applied to flat planes, can be swayed about using simple vertex shaders.

So with the final product, I'm thinking in UE, you can just hit play and could walk about in this environment. Just don't walk off the edge.

Sure can. All you need to do is set up your scene with a basic first person shooter template, and place a starting point, and you can walk around in your scene without any problems whatsoever.

Though the one thing you need to keep in mind is that the way this guy is designing his scene makes for great screenshots or still scenes where the camera doesn't move around a lot, but will look weird as hell as an actual environment.

Obviously, interactive environments will need to be designed as they would exist in real life.

 

[Huntn]

Are you asking why it is that it looks like the flat plane has a front and back in Maya, but only the top side in Unreal? That's because Maya, Blender, etc. always display their meshes as being doublesided by default, while game engines like UE usually only show faces as single sided unless told to do otherwise. It's all about surface normals, or which side a polygon's face is pointing.

And the reason why it looks flat, without depth, is because, well, it is. That doesn't make it 2D, rather no one has added any depth to it yet.

See, modelers like Maya, Max, and Blender work with something called manifold geometry. It's like you're working on a shell that's empty inside. A sphere in one of these programs doesn't have any thickness or volume to it. Rather, it's a contiguous manifold.

And yes, Blender can do what you see in the video above. Here's a quick example I did for you. It's all loop cuts, edge bevels, a couple of scales, and moving some faces/vertices (or transforming them, per the parlance).

View attachment 9097

Second time I answered this post. I need to install Blender. First time I answered, I was wrapped up in that video. With Unreal Engine (I’ll refer to as UE) I have limited exposure to it. Based on my impression of what comes with UE there is a landscape/ terrain tool which can paint/create hills and mountains. Until I get into the landscape part of a tutorial, based on the Forest in 1 Hr video, when creating Landscape terrain, it creates a large flat mesh upon which terrain, hills and mountains can be painted/built.

Just a quick observation, it seems like it will be interesting to learn how in a game with a typical large, sprawling outdoor environment how these spaces can be created, and connected to each other, where you can run to the horizon and not see a screen load. I’ll set this aside as it is not my interest at this point.

The author of the Forest in 1Hr video starts in a modeling program (Maya) and creates a flat mesh and then manipulates it, the same as you illustrated in Blender. He says his project can be done in UE, but he chose Maya because it offered him some freedom.

Based on what I observed, it seems that the convienence was the ability to compose a scene on a smaller scale on a relatively flat mesh, instead of trying to work with UE terrain for this composition. I don’t know if UE has the ability to create this kind of a mesh, but I see the advantage.

So far in my limited exposer to UE, I only see a list of basic geometric shapes, including floors, that can be added to a scene. And I do knot know if the UE landscape/terrain mesh can be manipulated the same way the mesh used in the video was manipulated in Maya/Blender.

The mesh defines a primary space and focal point where design can take place, kind of like creating a building. It’s not completely unlike the UE tutorials I am looking at where the first part of creating a game project is to take floor pieces that have thickness, and lay them out to make a space that defines the space and where a character can walk. Without a space to walk on, the character falls to infinity. I don’t know if the author of the project was making a scene that he intended for a character to walk through or that it is just a technical capability demo, but it is impressive regardless.

This is part of the reason why a game engine attracted me. It is used not to create a static scene like a painting, but a living interactive scene. It includes support for the visitor and for creating a dynamic environment, where a visitor can stroll around, experience, and interact with it.This is my attraction to a game engine, a lot of the environmental work has already been programmed for you.

As my impression you are not an expert in UE, I’ll still ask, I wonder if the kind of a manipulated flat mesh can be created in UE or if this is something better suited to Blender? I won’t be surprised if Blender is the answer for this purpose.

 

[Huntn]

Yeah, you can still edit it, since all he's doing is baking the lighting to account for any new instances or geometry added to the scene. If you remove something after baking, you'll see it's shadow still floating about in the scene, but that can be fixed with another quick bake.



It depends on the size and complexity of your objects. The trunks and branches on your trees trees will need a rig to tell the engine what parts of the geometry can be pushed by a wind effect, but grass and leaves, being alpha masked textures applied to flat planes, can be swayed about using simple vertex shaders.

It was the grass I noticed blowing. One thing that opened my eyes were these logic gates that control something like character, how far it can jump, or if it can fly.
I’m assuming at this point that something like this is used to allow grasses to sway.

 

[Renzatic]

So far in my limited exposer to UE, I only see a list of basic geometric shapes, including floors, that can be added to a scene. And I do knot know if the UE landscape/terrain mesh can be manipulated the same way the mesh used in the video was manipulated in Maya/Blender.

UE is good for making basic geometry, and can whip up some simple shapes like walls, doorways, and whatnot fairly quickly. Landscapes, for example, are flat subdivided planes that can be pushed or pulled on the Z axis. That's great for making rolling hills, but if you want anything that overlaps, like cliff walls, ditches, and so on, you'll need something that can manipulate geometry at a finer scale. This is where programs like Blender and Maya come in.

Being able to mix and match these types of geometry is how you can do things quickly. You don't have to design cliff walls by hand every time you design a scene. You can take a flat plane, stretch it out, then add a few premade rocks to the flat section on the plane to give it more character.

It was the grass I noticed blowing. One thing that opened my eyes were these logic gates that control something like character, how far it can jump, or if it can fly.
I’m assuming at this point that something like this is used to allow grasses to sway.

Somewhat. Game logic is what you use to define how your character moves, what can be interacted with, and how. They're more global settings. Vertex shaders are applied at the material level on an object, telling the vertices how to move on a simple object.

I'll make a quick, sloppy video right fast illustrating what they do. Gimme a second.

 

[Renzatic]

Okay, this is really quick and sloppy, but it illustrates the point fairly well, I guess.

I found a quick grass texture on the internet, and applied it to a flat quad. This is BASICALLY how grass is made in 3D engines, since it looks grassy, but doesn't take a lot of polygons to produce. The two points I select are the vertices. A vertex shader would tell the object to move those vertices I selected in a similar way to how I transform them in the video.

So here.

 

[Renzatic]

Hey, I figured that if you want to check out a scene to see how it's done, I can upload two of my outdoor examples. My stuff is a little more stylized, but it'd give you something to pick apart, and I could easily explain the process, since it's all done by hand.

This is what they look like. If you're interested, I'll upload them. Just keep in mind that they're big ass files.

General Store

Railroad Shack

 

[Renzatic]

Here's a nice video for you, showing how it easy it is to make leafy plants.

 

[Huntn]

Hey, I figured that if you want to check out a scene to see how it's done, I can upload two of my outdoor examples. My stuff is a little more stylized, but it'd give you something to pick apart, and I could easily explain the process, since it's all done by hand.

This is what they look like. If you're interested, I'll upload them. Just keep in mind that they're big ass files.

General Store

View attachment 9129

Railroad Shack

View attachment 9134

Wow, looks great! Is everything in here an actor or for backgrounds are images ever used as wallpaper?

Is this Blender? The reason I ask is that what really appeals to me is the ability of walking though, interacting with such a scene. This is why UE is so appealing, because by default, it provides the infrastructure for interaction.

I’ll assume Blender does light and atmosphere similiar to the Unreal Engine? I’m interest to see how similar Blender is to UE.

But even if this is Blender, it‘s a related ball game, I anticipate I’ll be relying on Blender, so I’m interested in it. Yes I would be interested in both of them, but I’ll need to get up to speed with a couple of Blender tutorials before I’ll be able to do much with it, but if you want to make these projects available, I will download them. And if you want to include a simple description of how you put these together, I’d appreciate it. Thanks!

Regarding Intro to UE tutorial, I‘ve got about 6 more sections to complete. Most likely since I am enamored with the Forest scene I will dip my toes in that project and see just how hard it is to duplicate, and what I would first need to do is duplicate the starting mesh in Blender, like you illustrated. I know I need to do Blender tutorials, but can how to create that mesh, be easily described? It seems basic and does not strike me as something that is hard to accomplish.

BTW, on occasion I’ve had trouble connecting with this forum. Are you still active on MRs or did you totally abandon that? The reason I ask, is that I started a UE thread in the Graphic Design forum, but have gotten minimal response, including a comment that The Unreal Engine is not Graphic design, lol. Anyway, if I have trouble reaching this forum, and need your advice, I would PM you via MRs. When the time comes, I’ll look for or start a Blender thread there too and see if that gets more participation.

 

[Renzatic]

Blender is, by itself, a building tool, more for still images, animations, movies, and whatnot. It's primary concern is to put out a nice image. In contrast, Unreal is designed primarily to produce realtime interactive environments. There is a lot of overlap between the two, but in your case, you'll use blender to construct your assets, then pop them into Unreal to lay out in a scene.

I could go into the nitty gritty details, like how Unreal renders a scene compared to Blender, or what the differences are between Eevee and Cycles, and how those differences relate to UE, but that's a ton of info to absorb all at once. So while you can use Blender to create lighting and atmosphere in a similar fashion to Unreal, your best bet for that is to stick to Unreal exclusively for the time being so as not to overwhelm yourself.

And yeah, I can fairly easily describe the basics on how to build a mesh. I could even throw out a quick video or two for you if it'll help (wish I had a mic, though). In the end, it's not the voodoo magic a lot of people assume it is when they're first starting out, especially these days when you have all these cool tools at your disposal to make things that much easier, but there is a ton of technique and best practice stuff to come to terms with that can take awhile to get through.

As for MR, I've been banned from there for 5-6 years now. I've tried sneaking in a few times afterwards, but they always catch me.

If you can't get ahold of me here, I do post a lot on https://blenderartists.org/, which would be a good place for you to visit if you want to ask questions in general.

 

[Renzatic]

Also, this is more cool for me, but I'm gonna show it off here cuz it's so cool.

 

[MEJHarrison]

Is this Blender? The reason I ask is that what really appeals to me is the ability of walking though, interacting with such a scene. This is why UE is so appealing, because by default, it provides the infrastructure for interaction.

Sounds like you need a VR headset! Then you can really walk through the scenes.

Honestly, that's what got me into Unity. The ability to make something and actually get to walk around in it. It all started when I found Doom in VR, then found the Doom level I'd built years ago, then got to play MY level in VR. It's a magical experience.

If only I could build landscapes that were more than a simple black plane with colored blocks scattered about! At least I can make the colored blocks do interesting things. They just don't look pretty.

 

[Huntn]

Blender is, by itself, a building tool, more for still images, animations, movies, and whatnot. It's primary concern is to put out a nice image. In contrast, Unreal is designed primarily to produce realtime interactive environments. There is a lot of overlap between the two, but in your case, you'll use blender to construct your assets, then pop them into Unreal to lay out in a scene.

I could go into the nitty gritty details, like how Unreal renders a scene compared to Blender, or what the differences are between Eevee and Cycles, and how those differences relate to UE, but that's a ton of info to absorb all at once. So while you can use Blender to create lighting and atmosphere in a similar fashion to Unreal, your best bet for that is to stick to Unreal exclusively for the time being so as not to overwhelm yourself.

And yeah, I can fairly easily describe the basics on how to build a mesh. I could even throw out a quick video or two for you if it'll help (wish I had a mic, though). In the end, it's not the voodoo magic a lot of people assume it is when they're first starting out, especially these days when you have all these cool tools at your disposal to make things that much easier, but there is a ton of technique and best practice stuff to come to terms with that can take awhile to get through.

As for MR, I've been banned from there for 5-6 years now. I've tried sneaking in a few times afterwards, but they always catch me.

If you can't get ahold of me here, I do post a lot on https://blenderartists.org/, which would be a good place for you to visit if you want to ask questions in general.

Sorry to hear that about MR. I’m still there but my heart is not in it like it used to be. At blenderartists.org are you Renzatic?

I do want to do couple of complete Blender tutorials, but for the purposes of this UE Forest project, right now I just want to make that mesh, which might be as easy as pick it out, plop it down, and start pulling it into the shape I want. I don’t want to put you out with a video unless you really want to make one, if it’s not a lot of effort or maybe I can find a video tutorial online, regarding that mesh.

 

[Huntn]

Sounds like you need a VR headset! Then you can really walk through the scenes.

Honestly, that's what got me into Unity. The ability to make something and actually get to walk around in it. It all started when I found Doom in VR, then found the Doom level I'd built years ago, then got to play MY level in VR. It's a magical experience.

If only I could build landscapes that were more than a simple black plane with colored blocks scattered about! At least I can make the colored blocks do interesting things. They just don't look pretty.

Actually VR is part of the long range plan and I have an Occulus Rift I’ve not used in a year.

 

[MEJHarrison]

If only I could build landscapes that were more than a simple black plane with colored blocks scattered about! At least I can make the colored blocks do interesting things. They just don't look pretty.

I finally got around to uploading a video of some of my very early experiments.

This was one of the first things I did when I was learning Unity. One of the tutorial guys I was watching kept starting tons of videos with a black plane for a floor, a white cube as a "table" and a smaller cube sitting on it and colored.

So I built that. Then made the "table" bigger and added a couple more blocks. Then I copied the table and added colored spheres. Then I found a free car model, so I made a table for them. Then I found some other random assets to play with.

At some point I went through a hand animation tutorial, so I added those to this project. That was one of the most frustrating things I've done to date. Now that I have a real mouse, I think it would be a lot easier. I was on my MacBook with the trackpad and that wasn't fun at all. It's hard to "scroll the mouse wheel" on a trackpad for example. For the curious, the frustration thing is the tutorial I went though started you with a basic hand. And you had to animate the rest. So when the trigger is pulled, you needed to move the index finger to the final position. When meant bending each joint until things looked right. Then repeat that with the grip button, but that one controls the other three fingers and I had to do each joint on each finger.

Later I came across a "how to make a gun shoot" video, and since I already had the guns, I added that in there. Then I made a few changes like a running score and bullseye-in-a-row. It's a silly gun, but that's what the tutorial had me build.

I eventually stopped adding to this project and went on to work through lots of others. Teleporting. Building doors that can be opened. Buttons that can be pushed. Guns that shoot bullets instead of squirt guns.

One thing I had started on before getting distracted by other things is the idea of a photo gallery. Upload a ton of photos to the headset, then have some space auto-generated displaying the photos as pictures on the wall. Then you could click on the photo to see it full sized. I think it would be cool to have a museum. One room could be photos / videos of one child. I could have another room for the other child. Another room for whatever. Just stick them in their own subfolder. I think that could be super nifty. I just need to get back to that. As I recall, I was reading the photos from the folder and displaying them pretty well. Next up I need to figure out how many photos are in the folder, and construct a room of the appropriate size and stick them on the walls. I'll get back to it eventually. Nothing worth showing at this point. Just a bunch of pictures hovering a few feet off the floor.

 

[Renzatic]

Sorry to hear that about MR. I’m still there but my heart is not in it like it used to be. At blenderartists.org are you Renzatic?

Dude, you're killing me! We used to have conversations! We used to be FRIENDS!

But anyway, HORRIBLE SLIGHT aside, if you want to hit the ground running as soon as possible, I'd watch this quick 7 minute video showing off the tools you'll be most using while modelling. I'd replace Grid Fill with the Inset tool, but, eh, it's still pretty good.



But if you want to get a little more indepth with the basics, Grant Abbitt's series is solid for that.



Okay, I just realized I misread your quote.

Yes, I'm Renzatic over at Blenderartists too.

 

[Renzatic]

So Apple joined the Blender Development Fund, and is donating money and engineers to the project. A Metal backend has been in the works for awhile now, and it seems that it gives the program a MASSIVE boost to performance on those machines.

So this means that my next computer is going to be a Mac. 100%.

Apple joins Blender Development Fund — blender.org

Apple has joined the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member to support continued core development for Blender.

www.blender.org

 

[Huntn]

Sounds like you need a VR headset! Then you can really walk through the scenes.

Honestly, that's what got me into Unity. The ability to make something and actually get to walk around in it. It all started when I found Doom in VR, then found the Doom level I'd built years ago, then got to play MY level in VR. It's a magical experience.

If only I could build landscapes that were more than a simple black plane with colored blocks scattered about! At least I can make the colored blocks do interesting things. They just don't look pretty.

Look at the Make A Forest in the Unreal Engine video link posted in this thread if you have not. I find this extremely impressive, however it is in UE vs Blender which you may not want to tackle. Even though most of this video is above my level, I can see how it is structured, how easy it is to place elements, and realize how important textures and lighting is to the finished process. There are things called “texture or material instances” sometimes called Master Material (or was it texture?) where variations in texture can be created. It look easy and complicated at the same time. This is one of the things I’ll be learning Soon.

 

[Renzatic]

It look easy and complicated at the same time. This is one of the things I’ll be learning Soon.

Materials are where the real fun begins. You can do SO MUCH with them.