7. Let's Dress to Impress! | 3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender

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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

Using different maps to create a more realistic look

Materials in Unreal Engine 4 are made of several different textures working together to provide a realistic result. Generally, a material for a game asset has at least two to three different texture maps that are being manipulated by different mathematical nodes. These maps are usually a Diffuse map, a Specular map, and a Normal map:

The coloring of the Artifact is determined by the Diffuse map

Diffuse maps are the basic colors that we have painted on our objects. Unreal accepts these textures in the Material Editor as the object's Base Color. These maps generally contain color and pattern information that is painted directly onto a copy of the object's UVs in programs such as Photoshop. Simply put, this type of map contains the surface colors of our object.

Next is the Specular map:

The Specular map controls how light behaves when it hits a surface

Specular maps control how shiny or dull a surface appears to be and can be hand painted or...

CONTINUE READING

83

Tech Concepts

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Programming languages

73

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3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender

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