Unreal Engine- Is edge support needed?

TrevorEugeneArt

Hi all,

Just a quick question regarding Unreal Engine. Do my models need edge support, or will they be fine without it after importing and placing into a level?

I know I can import and test it, but I've never really used Unreal so I'm not sure if it will affect anything later on down the road? 

I've attached a picture for example of the type of edges I'm going to do on most of my assets.

Thanks,
Trevor

CharacterCarl

You won't need support edges for a game model. Unreal will be fine without those. You can use custom weighted normals to help with the shading though. The "Game Tools" tab has the Vertex Map tools that can help with that.

Obscura

TigroMike said:

Support edges for smoothing techniques in 3d editors. You don't need it in game engine as it uses normal map.

This is definitely optional, in some cases its just better to have this in the geometry ie. vehicles (see gta games, which werent made with unreal, but that doesn't matter. Or space fighter games like star citizen or elite).

Zablorg

TigroMike said:

Support edges for smoothing techniques in 3d editors. You don't need it in game engine as it uses normal map.

I thought the normal maps in UE4 were applied as a modification to the model's existing normals, not replacing them entirely? Do I have that wrong?

In any case, support edges for something like a cube will in many cases result in a better normal map bake, for reasons described in this sticky. Though I suppose you could get rid of them after the bake has been acquired.

Obscura

You can not get rid of them because the baked information that is stored in your baked normal corresponds to the used geometry in the procedure, and you can clrearly see the differences when the mesh was mainly made with fwvn in mind (you usually wouldnt bake anything). Non fwvn meshes are highly relying on smoothing splits with lowest possible geo, and fwvn meshes are usually including curvature weights which is normally stored in your baked normals, to correct low'ish poly shading and also to add some details, usually achieved through trim texturing techniques. If you bake a mesh with fwvn or supportlops and you remove them afterwards, you are definitely going to see usual shading errors. If you consider using these techniques in your current work, I would say it is better to have them in mind from the beginning til the end, and from my experience, you never want to bake them. Then the whole thing kinda looses its point.