New Unreal Wiki entry: Importing, editing and exporting a Brush with Blender

[Krull0r]

Hello

I wrote a tutorial how to use blender to modify the terrains of Unreal.

Please let me know what you think about it.


https://www.oldunreal.com/wiki/index.ph ... th_Blender

[Hellkeeper]

Perfect, it's about time we got an article on this topic, a recurring question.
It's well illustrated and easy to understand, thank you very much.

[Krull0r]

Hey Hellkeeper your welcome.

I spent many hours in creating this I also have to add more things in the "known issues part" later.

If I find the time I create more of such tutorials like editing original models, important UnrealEd tricks and and and.

[Hellkeeper]

That's very nice. I began to do exactly this years ago but my interest died out after a while and life got in the way. I hope you don't experience the same and can make a great contribution.

[Kajgue]

Good tutorial Krullor, though you can also export models to .ase then convert the .ase file to .t3d to get models into Ued for use as brushes.

Good work, glad you made this.

[Buster]

Great job. Thanks for putting in the work.

[Skywolf]

Or you can export as .DXF from Blender (With Export Mesh As set to POLYFACE). Advantage of this is that it maintains quads. ngons don't work though and get turned into invdividual triangles.

Downside is that is also keeps quads when the surface isn't perfectly flat. Which Unreal doesn't like.

[Pedi]

Hi Krull0r nice tutorial. I will try it out when I have time.

But I have noticed two points, where I'm not sure if that works:
1. As Skywolf already mentioned you should take care with the quad faces. After you snap vertices to grid they couldnt be even and cause BSP holes.
2. I dont if it is important but before you export your terrian you should do in Blender: Mesh -> Normals -> Recalculate Inside. Then you have a subtraced brush in Blender. But maybe it isnt necessary .

[Krull0r]

@pedi if you import a .obj as static meshes unreal Ed will automatically change quads to tries.

But your second point is true. I need to add this to the known problems point! I forgot to mention it. Thanks

[Kajgue]

Maybe it's worth mentioning this new tutorial in the site news? It would bring attention to the fact that Unreal modding is still relevant, aswel as help people be aware of this new tutorial.

[luke11685]

It seems I can also convert obj files of static meshes in ut4x converter however maps convertion is loading for over 4 minutes so can you tell me am I doing something wrong?

[gopostal]

Super easy tutorial to follow. I was able to export and set up several tree meshes for editing easily. Now just need to learn Blender

You might consider fleshing out your tutorial with some more "why" in each of the steps. I do the "CTRL+V" but I don't really understand why I'm doing that. A brief explanation might help so you have a base to do more research.

Thanks for your effort. I'm excited now to be able to make proper fragment classes and improved meshes.

[Krull0r]

@luke11685

This tutorial is related to Unreal Engine 1 not Unreal Engine 4.
For this long loading time issue I have no explanation. maybe the mesh has to many polygones?


@ gopostal


Strg+V removes all sharp edges. Its not really necessary to remove them I always do it to have a better view of the mesh and its edges during the editing porgress.
I also don't understand why Unreal 227 always export meshes with Sharp Edges

[Kajgue]

Its not really necessary to remove them I always do it to have a better view of the mesh and its edges during the editing porgress.
I also don't understand why Unreal 227 always export meshes with Sharp Edges

Same, honestly it gives a clearer view of the edges to remove those sharp edge indicators

[gopostal]

This is what I mean for you to consider expanding on. You said

Strg+V removes all sharp edges.

Take a moment and explain "what a 'sharp edge' is" and "why would I not want it?". That's why I've quit learning model making multiple times because every tutorial fails to spend time explaining concepts. Yeah, I can blast through exporting my model just by following your ABC's but I'm not really learning anything besides the steps.

This isn't a criticism of your work and effort so please don't take it that way. I suffer from this same problem when I explain something in that I just assume the other person knows more than they do.

[Krull0r]

Yes this tutorial is for people who know how to use blender I didn't add the basics how to use the program in the first place.

[Kajgue]

Maybe to elaborate a bit on your specific question Gopostal about what is a sharp edge, it's mainly useful when using one of the two methods of shading 'smooth shading'.

Unreal mainly uses smooth shaded models, and it's only been recently since 227 introduced the option for some meshes like crates to be able to be flat shaded. Smooth shading is basically where the lighting on the edges between verteces is interpolated, making a shading gradient between the lighting of both verteces. For example, if you have one vertex that is in shadow/darkness, while you have another vertex that is in view of the light, the edge connecting those verteces will interpolate (i think is the right word) a gradient between the lighting of both verteces; making the shading appear smooth.

But back to sharp edges, if you have a model that is set to be smooth shaded globally over the model, then you can assign sharp edges to specific edges, negating the smooth shading effect for said specific edge(s).

It's also worth mentioning on that point, that Unreal 227 currently only understands models that are 'completely smooth shaded' or 'completely flat shaded', and it will just ignore any sharp edges assigned to the model through Blender or any other modelling program.

[gopostal]

OMG thank you! Now I totally understand.

Man, it really makes you appreciate newer video games and what all is going on when they are rendering a dynamic scene.

[Kajgue]

No problem dude