[UE4] Help on organizing environment game assets.

Veha

Hello everyone ! I hope you're having a nice day !

First of all, I am kinda new around here, so feel free to tell me if I've posted this in the wrong place.

I'm working on my first game environment in Unreal Engine 4, and was having trouble organizing my work.

I need to know if my workflow makes sense, so if you would be kind enough to take a look at my work, it would be great !

The goal of my project is to make a small level you will be able to walk through on First Person view.

I've already blocked out the main spaces, and split the assets into different modules. Now it is time for me to dive into modelling and texturing.

I kinda already know how to deal with rocks, vegetation and simple props, my problem right now concerns models like the stone bridge you can see on the picture.

I've made it following a simple process:

- I modelled the basic shape in 3Dsmax

- I sculpted a few hi poly stones in Zbrush, then baked them on low poly stones

- I made a tiling texture using the same stones

- I assembled some stones on my basic shape to detail the model and hide corners

I will probably use the same workflow on several pieces of building, along with the use of trim sheets.

The goal is to use these stones and tiling texture as much as I can on the other assets.

Trying to keep the same texel ratio everywhere, I end up with one tiling texture and two unique textures for my dozen of different trim stones.

The problem I have now is when I import my models in Unreal Engine 4 and try to bake lighting.

I've tried to import the model as a single mesh, with several material channels (one for the tiling texture, and two for my trim stones)

or to split my mesh into different parts

- When I import my bridge fully assembled, the basic lightmap resolution is not enough, and I need to push it up from 64 to 256 to have a nice result.

- When I import my stones and my basic shape separately, the engine makes a different  lightmap for every one of them, so everything goes well with the default lightmap resolution, but I have to assemble my models again in UE4.

So here are my questions:

- Does this workflow makes sense to you ?

- How should I import my models into Unreal? Fully assembled (say, as a level artist would use them) or split ?

- Is it ok to raise the lightmap resolution from 64 to 256 for this kind of asset or will it cause performance issues ?

Thanks for your time,

Cheers

sprunghunt

you should try to make your model out of a single shell. Like you had booleaned the meshes together. This will give a much better result for lightmapping. The more seams you have in your mesh the more likely that your mesh will have errors. 

However for a mesh this large it's probably ok to have 256 as a resolution. You can check if your resolution is ok by turning on lightmap density viewmode. If it appears red in this mode it's probably too high. Also it's good to be careful to make sure the lightmaps are even (no red spots)

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/UI/LevelEditor/Viewports/ViewModes/index.html#lightmapdensity