Implementation of Blender in Video Game Industry

Trojactus

Hello everyone so with a huge experience with blender in video game industry i decided (and also a lot of people asked)on how to use blender in video game industry .I will be covering everything said in the video and hopefully i will help someone  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdgqyLCP89Q

Trojactus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLH1usZKNtA Here is how to go from blender to ue4 hopefully it will help some of you guys

reckzilla

I needed this thanks!

Polynaught

Looking forward to see this.

Trojactus

Wow got on the front page thanks everyone (especially the guys at the polycount for the front page)for the huuuuuuuge support I am getting the motivation is through the roof will get everything covered in unity next and again love all of you(no homo xd)

sacboi

Hmm...intregued! will certainly keep an eye out for it.

Finnn

I will probably switch to blender too. It was my first 3D tool (with 15 yrs or smth) and I really like the idea of owning my assets
And learning a new software isnt so difficult when you know another.
Especially with UV's I found a lot of shortcuts in Max and my workflow is pretty efficient and in the beginning, Blender will probably feel slow and tidious. But I guess that process of learning is worth it to have the right to sell assets or use them in my own games.
Thanks for making this guide, really useful compress information.
Will go back to watch it whole when I am switching over

Nam.Nguyen

This is great,  I've been thinking about switching to blender

GlowingPotato

i would love to try blender. but im afraid if i'll ever do so... maya user here with almost no time available to learn a new DCC. hows the learning curve? 

Trojactus

Well to you maya and 3ds guys asking how hard it is.As you can see I have maya as well,and its pretty similar but I use blender just because I started with it and I feel better using it.So for the transition it just takes you to like get used to the user interface and the hot keys do get used to them and as well .Ofc I will never say use blender because its better that would be dumb .To be honest blender,max and maya in my opinion are same thing just people use the one over the other because they feel its fits better for them and because of that they do the job better there and faster.

RyanB

The problem with Blender is the bones always use the Y-axis for the length of the bone.  This makes it extremely difficult to use with Unreal if you need a skinned animated mesh.  Try importing the mannequin and look at the bones.  I've created multiple skeleton constraint systems to try and work around this but it's a lot of work.

Trojactus

Could me the case Ryan I think I never exported(not honestly sure about did I ever exported something with bones) so I cannot judge this since I use blender mainly for modeling.As it came a long way it definitely needs stuff to improve

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA4V7nbgDwM

New video is up and hopefully it will help a lot sorry for delay on upload had a problem with the render It was aimed to be uploaded 2 days ago.Love the support and cannot believe it honestly

Trojactus

https://youtu.be/BVfF60G1ZVM The implementation to cryengine 5 is out.Hope it helps you guys

pior

@RyanB : I feel I need to jump in to attempt to clarify this.

Yes, it makes UE-compatible structures confusing to *look* at, as the visual representation of the main joint axis will make them appear as going sideways.

No, this doesn't prevent in any way a Blender>UE4 workflow. It is a pain if someone wants to create animations compatible with the UE mannequin from scratch in Blender using one of the default Blender rigs, of course. But when it comes to *using* the Epic Mannequin skeleton structure (something that all UE marketplace characters are required to do), then this is a non-issue.

The only thing required for 100% UE4 compatibility is to edit the very top of the hierarchy so as for the structure to fully match with the Epic Mannequin on import. Everything else is a non-issue, probably coming from the fact that users assume that the "sideways bones" are the problem - whereas the thing that actually prevents compatibility by default is the top of the hierarchy that needs to be edited. All it takes to reverse-engineer it is to compare the imported sctructures in the UE skeleton editor, and it becomes clear.

I am absolutely not saying that it is easy or trivial to figure out - but it is far from impossible.

(source : have personally setup half a dozen UE4-compatible characters for the marketplace using Blender only, as well as SFV model mods which require an even more complex joint structure).

RyanB

pior said:

@RyanB : I feel I need to jump in to attempt to clarify this.

Yes, it makes UE-compatible structures confusing to *look* at, as the visual representation of the main joint axis will make them appear as going sideways.

No, this doesn't prevent in any way a Blender>UE4 workflow. It is a pain if someone wants to create animations compatible with the UE mannequin from scratch in Blender using one of the default Blender rigs, of course. But when it comes to *using* the Epic Mannequin skeleton structure (something that all UE marketplace characters are required to do), then this is a non-issue.

The only thing required for 100% UE4 compatibility is to edit the very top of the hierarchy so as for the structure to fully match with the Epic Mannequin on import. Everything else is a non-issue, probably coming from the fact that users assume that the "sideways bones" are the problem - whereas the thing that actually prevents compatibility by default is the top of the hierarchy that needs to be edited. All it takes to reverse-engineer it is to compare the imported sctructures in the UE skeleton editor, and it becomes clear.

I am absolutely not saying that it is easy or trivial to figure out - but it is far from impossible.

(source : have personally setup half a dozen UE4-compatible characters for the marketplace using Blender only, as well as SFV model mods which require an even more complex joint structure).

Have you animated in Blender with the "sideways bones"?

pior

Heya -

As far as I am concerned : nothing more than very simple edits to existing anims, using temp proxy bones to drive the UE ones.

Just to be clear - my point is by no means to claim that animating for the Epic Mannequin in Blender is easy. It obviously isn't, since it would require a duplicate of the whole skeleton, with each of the original bones driven by a re-oriented equivalent bone from the duplicate structure for position and rotation (and then another structure for the control rig itself). All I am trying to get at is that claims like "the Blender FBX exporter is not working" or "making stuff for UE4 in Blender is impossible" are unfounded

Now all that said ... it would really only take a little bit of effort from either Epic and/or the community to make a master file with a solid proxy setup ready for animation and export.

Trojactus

I know I did not upload for a long time and kill me if you want but here it is finally https://youtu.be/v7vdpiPV-3E