UDK Modular Grid Size

nevets2001uk

I've been learning modelling recently with the aim of building a test level in UDK. I have a scene blocked out in Sketchup but have since decided a modular approach will be most sensible.

The level will be an inside of an old medieval library with a traditional beams type construction. I may make future buildings as part of a larger village set so think modular is a good approach.

My plan is to make a series of beam modules which can fit together to form the main structure and then wall fillers to go between the beams with some shape to represent old un-even plastering. I'll also be extruding some smaller construction beams from these pieces. I plan to have a few options of wall filler to create variation.

Enough background and over to my question. I've seen a lot about grid sizes etc and know that keeping to power's of 2 seems to the be the recommended approach. Some things I've read seen to suggest 16 units is a good grid size but I'm finding during some basic testing that this is too large to be able to place the walls in relation to the beams without everything being larger than life. A grid size of 4x4 seems to give me the balance I need. Is there any reason not to build on this size for the placement of objects?

passerby

there is nothing bad about dropping down to 8 or 4, most people do 8 or 16 for large pieces than drop down lower for detailing.

but how thin is your beam if 16 units is too big a grid for it?
also before exporting to udk try to put the models origin in a spot that makes it easier to work with in udk. (something like the bottom front corner or a place that makes sense to use as the snapping spot for the object)

nevets2001uk

Thanks for your reply. Originally I was planning to make the beam about 30cm and I read somewhere that this is about 16UU using the 16UU = 1 foot system. I was wondering sbout just making it 1UU = 1cm for easier conversion and the beam could then be 32 units thick.

My wall is going to be about 8UU thick on the current scale and needs to be central to the beam so I thought 4U grid would make most sense.

If I use a 4U grid can I also size things in increments of 4 such as some of the other support beams?

passerby

ah ya i take a different approach i just make my models proportionally correct and not worry about conversions between what i want the real world size and UU units to be, than i pop it in a level with a player model, than doable or half the size or whatever till it looks the correct size when compared to the player model.

once i got that size i usually go back into my 3d package and re export it out with what ever number i came up with, so i don't need to reset it after i place a prop each time.

i find this works the best for getting scale since most games kinda have the scale and proportion tuned a bit for style or game-play purposes, and scale is all relative, if you made everything really huge but also had really large player models the end user would never know, and the same goes if everything was really small and the player was really small too.

nevets2001uk

Actually yes that makes sense to me. So for my purposes perhaps I will work with a 1UU to 1cm scale. I find it easier then to model based on references as I can estimate their real-world size and model accordingly.

sprunghunt

nevets2001uk wrote: »

Thanks for your reply. Originally I was planning to make the beam about 30cm and I read somewhere that this is about 16UU using the 16UU = 1 foot system. I was wondering sbout just making it 1UU = 1cm for easier conversion and the beam could then be 32 units thick.

the 16UU=1ft is because the characters are 96UU high. If you change the units you are using then the unreal characters will not match up to your props. The playerheight will be wrong too and your world won't look right when you walk around it.

Changing the units is fine if you're re-making all the assets in the game and changing the playerheight. But changing the size of the units just because you don't like them is not such a good idea if you're just making a level to be used with an existing game.

Camikaze

Don't be afraid to stray from the grid with your static meshes. Granted, it's much easier to line things up and keep track of general structures on a 16-unit grid, but for fine detail placement it's perfectly fine to drop down to 4, 2, 1, or even turn it off completely.

BSP is something you've got to be careful with, grid-wise; not sure if it's so much of an issue these days with UDK but back on UE3 not snapping your BSP to grid points caused a lot of weird issues and random crashing.