Beginners questions for modular environment on UDK

Gooner442

I am just getting into UDK and want to build my own modular environment. Just have some questions I'd like to ask, I hope you can help.

1. In your 3D app (3DS max for me) do you create only modular parts for your scene and then fix them together within UDK? ...or fix up your scene in Max using instances and then import it all into UDK in one go, does UDK then read all the instanced parts as modular assets?
2. I understand that the grid is very important and you must stick to powers of two. As you model perhaps floor tiles and set your grid to 128 for example, with smaller assets do you change the grid as you build, to a grid of 8 or so?
3. From looking at assets built for UDK (Gears of War II for example) they are very elaborate, presumably not all assets fit to the grid?... is it only neccessary to have the ends of the modular asset snapping to the grid?
4. Is there a workflow that is recommended?.... I read of one where you block out in UDK using the building tools(don't remember what they're called) and presumably save all the seperate modular assets under different file names. Then create all the assets in 3DS Max and go back to UDK and reimport them over.. does that make sense.

Any clarification needed let me know, I don't (clearly) know too much about UDK... any help appreciated!!

Cheers 8)

Martin

sprunghunt

Gooner442 wrote: »

I am just getting into UDK and want to build my own modular environment. Just have some questions I'd like to ask, I hope you can help.

1. In your 3D app (3DS max for me) do you create only modular parts for your scene and then fix them together within UDK? ...or fix up your scene in Max using instances and then import it all into UDK in one go, does UDK then read all the instanced parts as modular assets?

If you import it in one go you'll just get a single giant mesh. It's better to import individual meshes.

2. I understand that the grid is very important and you must stick to powers of two. As you model perhaps floor tiles and set your grid to 128 for example, with smaller assets do you change the grid as you build, to a grid of 8 or so?

The grid is so you can snap edges of objects together easily. If an object doesn't need to fit perfectly with another object then it's not important to make it fit the grid. Rocks are an example of an object which doesn't really have to be on the grid.

Yes you can use different grid sizes. I tend to scale my grid size depending on how big the object is. Large things fit to a 1024 or 512 grid and small things fit to 4 or 8.

3. From looking at assets built for UDK (Gears of War II for example) they are very elaborate, presumably not all assets fit to the grid?... is it only neccessary to have the ends of the modular asset snapping to the grid?

Yes the grid is for convenience. It's not a rule and not every edge has to snap to the grid. Things like statues only kindof need to fit to the grid.

4. Is there a workflow that is recommended?.... I read of one where you block out in UDK using the building tools(don't remember what they're called) and presumably save all the seperate modular assets under different file names. Then create all the assets in 3DS Max and go back to UDK and reimport them over.. does that make sense.

Workflow doesn't make the assets. You do! And if you're working by yourself it really doesn't matter what the workflow is. Workflow is more for when you're working in a team.

HOWEVER!!

there's some handy pages on the UDN about it :
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/GettingStartedLevels.html
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/rsrc/Three/ModularLevelDesign/ModularLevelDesign.pdf
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/DesignWorkflow.html

Gooner442

Hey, thanks for the reply. You've pretty much confirmed most of the things I suspected.

I was checking out your stuff earlier, very impressive, hope to have you critiquing mine in the future!

passerby

you should also be putting some thought on how you can reuse parts of the model and texture space.

it's a pretty common approach to make things like vent grates and little added details in a way that you can add them to multiple props and have them all use the same texture.

Gooner442

yeh I had thought that, planning how you can reuse models and textures is a real skill. I know that UDK comes with a few sample levels, is it possible to export that to 3DS Max to see how it was made?.... or else do you know of other sample environments that can be brought into 3DS Max?.. I think looking at how they have been produced will be very useful

Gooner442

..and on the subject of reusing models, can you scale different modular assets individually without affecting all of them?... for example if I have a column that I want to use but at 3 different sizes, are they treated like instances in that they can not be individually scaled?

passerby

yes you can scale and rotate each instance of the asset.

it is very common in epics maps to just have 3 or 4 different rock models that are all rotated and scaled differently. to make them all look new.

and yes on the latests udk you can export pretty much everything out to fbx and open it in a 3d package most people use this for making things to scale for the map or for doing things like water meshes that need to fit around stuff in the world.

really the best way to learn how it all works is to just start making stuff and getting it into udk and experimenting.

Gooner442

quite right, I'm waiting for the weekend to get something started... darn work is getting in the way!