Blockout phase (Maya to Unreal)

Elliott

Hi,

This is the first time I work making a Blockout phase and I got a problem about transitioning from Maya to Unreal.
At first, I made my blockout scene  in Maya, then, I selected all my assets and export selection in one fbx file that.
Once in UE5, I imported the file that contained all my assets, selected all my assets and drag & drop them into the viewport so all objects are in the same position that my blockout scene in Maya.

The problem is, all of my pivots points are not like they was in Maya (They are in the center of the scene instead of being in the center of each objects. 

The only solution i got is to place each asset in the center of the world in Maya before exporting to have a good pivot point in UE5, and do it for each object..  But what is the point of doing a blockout if I have to set up all again in UE5 ? 

Benjammin

Just import your objects  at 0,0,0 and position in unreal. Is there a reason you have to block out in Maya? 

Alex_J

in the advanced options on the importer you can check something like "transform vertex absolute" which will keep maya's pivot.

You may also want to look at the File -> Import into Level tool which has the purpose of importing entire maya scenes while keeping the outliner hierarchy + instancing.

I made a tutorial which covers similar topics but not exactly what you are asking about: https://youtu.be/uGMJodCvuis

A good reason to do blockout in maya rather than unreal is that it is like 5x faster and more ergonomic. But setting up the workflow does take some figuring.

Benjammin

Alex_J said:

A good reason to do blockout in maya rather than unreal is that it is like 5x faster and more ergonomic. But setting up the workflow does take some figuring.

Good to know, thanks - It never occurred to me. Any issues with swapping out block out meshes for final assets?

Alex_J

in my case I did the blockout in maya and then manually replaced final art assets in typical way, though it is possible to do the same import process with final art assets as was done with blockout.

For me the decision comes down speed versus WYSIWG. For blockout since I want to throw down a ton of shit fast and then change it a billion ways, the speed of maya is worth that extra step. Especially cause unreal requires a lot of click-drag type stuff, within just a few days it will have my hands hurting pretty bad to do blockout in there, comapred to maya.

For replacing final art, speed isn't as important to me there since you only have to place things once. like you have settled on the placement so there wont be tons of tweaking things.

It's probably not a workflow that lends well to teamplay because if somebody changes things in the engine level then you'd have to pass that back upstream to maya. Things like that might become a pain in the ass and make it not worthwhile. So a lot depends on the project and team. But for a solo dev (or a level artist not needing to collab with others at least) if there is an ass ton of things to place, being able to do that portion in maya is worthwhile IMO.

Elliott

Alex_J said:

in the advanced options on the importer you can check something like "transform vertex absolute" which will keep maya's pivot.

It was already check, but the pivot stay in the middle of the scene

Elliott

It's probably not a workflow that lends well to teamplay because if somebody changes things in the engine level then you'd have to pass that back upstream to maya. Things like that might become a pain in the ass and make it not worthwhile. So a lot depends on the project and team. But for a solo dev (or a level artist not needing to collab with others at least) if there is an ass ton of things to place, being able to do that portion in maya is worthwhile IMO.

So, what is the workflow when you're working with a team  ?

Alex_J

you probably want to look at unreals one file per actor system and develop your workflow around that. I coudln't tell you best thing to do I only work solo. on a team you need the ability for multiple people to update the level, so if the way to do that is a maya file that has less flexibility than an unreal level where individual actors can be checked out. You have to develop your own workflow to suit your own teams and projects needs though. The first step is identify your goal, your restrictions, your team composition, disposition, etc.

the transform vertex to absolute should work, try testing on a single static mesh and get it working in test environment first, then translating to your full project will be easier.

poopipe

I genuinely don't think One File Per Actor actually helped our art team work any quicker  - it's just moved the problems elsewhere.

Using it at home has been pretty miserable as well, the main issue is that using UIDs instead of names prevents you from telling which file is which 

If a process such as building HLODs fails and you have other changes that aren't committed (pretty normal since breathing at the editor makes changes)  you have a hell of a job ahead of you working out what needs reverting and what doesn't. 

it's a great idea - it just requires that everything else works properly.  Not sure I'd recommend it - but then again you don't really get a choice if you're using world partition

Fabi_G

Hi! What kind of project are you making and what's the scope/goal? Depending on the project and team, it might be quicker blocking out directly in engine using primitives and playing it, to get a sense how it feels. Then place graphics modules on top of the blockout. Using sublevels allows toggling the visibility of levels and working in parallel. So level designers could create greybox levels in engine and test them, level artist can then use those levels as reference when building the visual levels.

poopipe

in ue5 you're better using level instances for that sort of thing than sublevels since they can be re-used etc. 

your approach overall is very much determined by whether you're gonna use world partition or not though. 

if you are, you have access to data layers which allow you to organise your work into blockout / gameplay layers and so on. you also don't have to worry about collaborative working since OFPA eliminates basically all the problems associated with it (in theory, see my post above) 

if you're not using world partition, you can still use level instancing