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3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender

By : Jessica Plowman

4.3 (8)

3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender

4.3 (8)

By: Jessica Plowman

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine 4 now has support for Blender, which was not available in earlier versions. This has opened up new possibilities and that is where this book comes in. This is the first book in the market combining these two powerful game and graphic engines. Readers will build an amazing high-level game environment with UE4 and will show them how to use the power of Blender 3D to create stunning animations and 3D effects for their game. This book will start with creating levels, 3D assets for the game, game progression, light and environment control, animation, and so on. Then it will teach readers to add amazing visual effects to their game by applying rendering, lighting, rigging, and compositing techniques in Blender. Finally, readers will learn how to smoothly transfer blender files to UE4 and animate the game assets. Each chapter will add complexities to the game environment.

Preface

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

1. Unreal, My Friend, I'd Like You to Meet Blender

1. Unreal, My Friend, I'd Like You to Meet Blender

Installing Blender

Exploring the interface

Customizing your settings

Working with modes

Jumping into our first project

Getting things started in Unreal Engine 4

Summary

2. Starting Our First Project

2. Starting Our First Project

Using the Content Browser to start building the level

Using different types of light

Adding interactive elements using Triggers and Blueprints

Playtesting our level

Summary

3. It's Time to Customize!

3. It's Time to Customize!

Getting started making game assets

Using the basic tools of polygon modeling

How to use UV mapping and why it's important

UV unwrapping our game asset

Basic texturing techniques

Summary

4. Getting the Assets to the Level

4. Getting the Assets to the Level

Exporting our object from Blender

What is FBX?

Importing our object into Unreal

Setting up and using our new 3D asset

Summary

5. Taking This Level Up a Notch

5. Taking This Level Up a Notch

Planning a more complex level

Whiteboxing a level for better asset creation

Level design principles

Advanced scripting techniques

Win conditions

Summary

6. Monster Assets – The Level Totally Needs One of These

6. Monster Assets – The Level Totally Needs One of These

Designing our asset – inspiration and concept art

Advanced tools: Subdivide, Knife, Bridge Edge Loops, and more

Using multiple shapes within Blender

Summary

7. Let's Dress to Impress!

7. Let's Dress to Impress!

Unwrapping complex objects

Using Smart UV Project

Custom Marking Seams

Using different maps to create a more realistic look

Summary

8. Lights, Camera, Animation!

8. Lights, Camera, Animation!

How does Blender handle animation?

Rigging and using keyframes

Using Blender's suite of animation tools

Summary

9. Bang Bang – Let's Make It Explode

9. Bang Bang – Let's Make It Explode

Creating a class blueprint to tie it all together

Using sound effects

Using particle effects

Index

Index

Exporting our object from Blender

We dreamed up our creation.

We sketched our crate.

We modeled and UV unwrapped it in Blender.

Unreal is now ready to receive our creation.

Before we export our model from Blender, there are a few things we can do to make sure everything comes out perfect. Unreal can get finicky when it comes to importing objects, and with just a few steps we can minimize any potential issues.

Let's get started by applying scaling:

Exporting our object from Blender

Applying scaling to our object

During the process of setting up our scene, we scaled the default cube so we could use it as a starting point when building our crate. To ensure we do not have any problems during the exporting process, we need to apply our scaling to the object; this essentially tells Blender that the object is no longer scaled but is really that size:

Make sure you are in Object mode.
Press Ctrl + A, this will open the Apply menu.
Select Scale.

With our scaling applied, we can move on the next important step in prepping our object for...

CONTINUE READING

83

Tech Concepts

36

Programming languages

73

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3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender

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