Awesome collection of little tips. Thanks for sharing man! Just one small tip: You can easily paint vertex colors using the vertex paint modifier. I find it much easier than assigning the colors by hand. And it's also a bit weird to use vertex "alpha" for darkening corners. Vertex alpha is used for transparency on some…
If you import it as a FBX it should bring the vertex colours in. Make sure you have replace vertex colours turned on. http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/FBXImporterUserGuide.html Then you just have to setup a shader with the vertex colour multiplied over the top of the diffuse.
If you are blending based on vertex colour or vertex alpha, then you need a plugin to paint vertex colours in Unity. There's a bunch of them on the asset store. If you are using an image-based mask you could try the TexturePaint plugin on the asset store.
I was wondering if there is a way to see individual vertex color channels. I am using Maya for some vegetation creation and would like to visualize each of the rbga channels.
How do you guys vertex paint, and transfer it to lods with different vert counts, inside UE4? Is this a valid technique, or should I be looking at another approach? Cheers