Importing, editing and exporting a Brush with Blender
This tutorial is about how to export an original terrain brush from Unreal 227 (UnrealED2.1 or higher), preparing the ability to edit it in Blender and reimport it in to Unreal 227.
For this tutorial I'm using the terrain from Dark Arena.
Part 1) Intro
Everyone is asking: "How the hell did Epic Games created such terrain brushes for Unreal?"
The answer is quite easy, they used external programs like 3dsMax during the development.
With an external 3d program you can easily create outdoor environments like Unreal has with a super fast work flow!
The sad part is most these external 3d programs like 3dsMax and Maya are super expensive and out of range for hobby mappers.
So Blender is the tool to choose.
Part 2) Converting the brush as StaticMesh and export it as .obj
Select your brush by pressing shift on your keyboard and left click with the mouse on any surface of the brush you want to export or select your brush in any viewport.
Right click on any edge of your selected brush and go to Convert/To StaticMesh.
Save the created StaticMesh temporary into MyLevel, choose any name you want (e.g. DarkTerrain).
After converting the brush to a StaticMesh export it from the MeshBrowser as .obj.
Save the .obj in any folder you want.
Part 3) Importing the .obj into Blender and prepare it for editing
Open Blender and delete the cube which is always in your empty scene. Simply select the object and press "x" to delete it
Now import the .obj over File/Import/Wavefront (.obj)
After you have imported the .obj you will notice that the brush is way to huge for Blenders space. This will be fixed in a few steps later
but first you have to join the groups to make it one object.
To do so press shift to select multiple objects in the object list. Move your mouse back to the 3d viewport and press "ctrl + j" to join them.
Note: If a group is selected it has an orange circle around the triangle as visual feedback.
Now scale the huge mesh down by factor 100!
After the scaling procedure the mesh should be completely visible in your viewport.
Part 4) Editing your terrain mesh in Blender
First change the mode from "Object Mode" to "Edit Mode" to have accsess to all the editing tools you need.
After switching the mode the mesh should look like this:
Now the fun part begins :)
- Press "ctrl + v" to clear those cyan looking sharp edges.
- Press "w" and select "Remove Doubles" to connect all seperated vertecies to the mesh.
- Press "ctrl + f" and select "Tries to Quads". This turns most of the triangles into squares.
Your mesh should now look like this:
- Make your changes on your terrain or create your own. If further explanation is required use other tutorials or resources on YouTube on how to use Blender to shape the mesh.
- After you are done with your changes the mesh needs to be closed on the top.
Simply select all four outer vertices on the very end of your mesh.
press "e + z" to extrude them along the Z-Axis
Select the new edges which were created after extruding the vertices along the Z-Axis....
...and create new faces with "f" ...
...and close the top of the mesh.
Part 5) Export from Blender and reimport into Unreal 227
Well done! Now export your mesh over File/Export/Wavefront (.obj) It is recommended to choose a different name for your exported .obj (e.g. DarkTerrainMod).
Go back into your UnrealEd 2.1 open the Mesh Browser and reimport your edited mesh.
import it into the package MyLevel
After you have imported your modified terrain as StaticMesh select it in the MeshBrowser
Right click on any surface you want and add your StaticMesh to the click location
Select your fresh imported StaticMesh and press F4 to open the actor properties. Go to "Display" and change the DrawScale up to 100 to restore the orignal brush size.
The last step is to convert the static mesh to bursh :) simply right click on your static mesh and use Convert / To Brush