Help With Maya and Unreal Engine 4
Hello,
I am pretty new to UE4 and most of this creating games in general. I am confused about UE4 completely and was hoping someone could explain it to me.
So basically what is it and how is it different to a 3D program such as Maya or Blender?
How do I use Maya and UE4 together, for example if I created an environment in Maya and wanted to render it as a single frame, how would I using UE4. Or how could I play around in this environment in UE4?
I have googled around and I do some what understand what UE4 is but I find it all confusing and find it best if I could properly talk to people about it.
Thank you!!
I am pretty new to UE4 and most of this creating games in general. I am confused about UE4 completely and was hoping someone could explain it to me.
So basically what is it and how is it different to a 3D program such as Maya or Blender?
How do I use Maya and UE4 together, for example if I created an environment in Maya and wanted to render it as a single frame, how would I using UE4. Or how could I play around in this environment in UE4?
I have googled around and I do some what understand what UE4 is but I find it all confusing and find it best if I could properly talk to people about it.
Thank you!!
Replies
Basically, a modeling package is where you will create the objects you want in your game, adjust the UVs for your texture painting application, and rig/animate content for playback in the game engine.
The game engine is a huge project repository for all of your models, textures, animations, and other content you want to see in your game. This is often where you would take your assets and move them around to assemble entire levels, set up lighting and other environmental effects, post effects, and all the code required for your game to become interactive.
If you want to render an environment you created in a modeling package in a game engine, you just need to import all your content to the engine, get all the materials, lighting, and effects set up to your liking, and take a screen shot.
There isn't really a "single-frame render" like you would get with Mental Ray. Game engines are designed to be rendered in real time at 60 frames per second.
You'll be able to play around with your stuff in UE4 after importing your content the same way you would import an OBJ into a modeling package. There is a bit more setup involved but it's essentially the same concept. If you have texture files and stuff too, that all gets added to the UE4 project.
A super basic pipeline between Maya and UE4 would be: Model and unwrap your model in Maya then export that object into UE4. In UE4, create and prepare the necessary materials in order to view your texture maps on the model. If you need to adjust your model's UVs or polygons, you would go back to Maya to make the changes then re-export the file to UE4.
Would I texture everything in UE4?
I have just been researching about PBR and how the textures work for this, I know Maya can do it but would it be a lot easier to do in UE4?
Photoshop
Substance Painter
Substance Designer
3D Coat
Zbrush
Mudbox
are a few of the standard texture creation tools. There are a lot out there, each with their own set of tools, strengths, and weaknesses; and some are preferred over others depending on the art style.
If you are super brand new to the whole game art thing, you might want to try modeling and texturing a small asset and then getting it into a game engine on your own to help understand how the pipeline works.
I have a basic understanding on UE4 now and should get the grips of it soon, I am only new to the gaming side of 3d art. I am comfortable in Maya and no my way around it is just the initial switch to learning a new software and trying to get my head around it all haha.
But you have been a great help so thank you so much
This time it is more with other peoples work that I have noticed. Everyone when showing off a model or prop they seem to have some kind of blurred back ground or image in the background which can be reflected by the object being shown... What is this and how do I do it? or just point me in the right direction haha
Here is some more information on lighting within Marmoset Toolbag:
https://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/lighting
I may have more later if so I will post them on here again, thank you again!
If i do 1:1 scale then it is pretty massive and the camera clips a lot, if I do it smaller then it is a bit harder to move around trying to get to all the detail.