Unreal Engine Log on D'Arcy Norman, PhD

Unreal Engine Log - Final Snapshots of the TI Mockup

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 10:30:59 -0700

After consolidating my Unreal Engine log notes from a separate WordPress site into my main website (this one), I realized that I hadn’t captured any of the final (or “final”, as I basically stopped that work to focus on supporting student-led deliverables that took different directions) “Taylor Institute Game” level.

It’s still empty, but has more textures and materials applied. I didn’t add a roof because I found the environmental lighting useful without having to manually light every nook and cranny…

Unreal Engine Log - adding some assets

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 20:41:20 +0000

So much for the pristine fresh start… I’ve added a few of Unreal Engine’s free asset collections to try out some ideas:

VisAI Modern AI Framework (to try adding some bots)
Basic Pickups VFX Set (to try adding some game elements)
Advanced Cel Shader Lite (to try non-photorealistic stylistic rendering)
4K Materials: Wood Flooring (I mean. The TI has so much wood, it’d be a shame to just use “wood” as the material…)

And then Unreal Engine had an update, from 5.3 to 5.3¹, apparently? Regardless. Always apply updates, so hopefully the project works now that I’ve added a couple GB of materials and some complexity.

Unreal Engine Log - A fresh start

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 19:44:33 +0000

I spun up a fresh project, re-imported the FBX models of the TI, and set up a first/third-person player with keyboard toggle. There are no textures, no lights, and lots of meshes to fix. But I let go of over 8GB of kruft that had accumulated from messing around in the previous project. There’s probably a better way to clean out old gunk, but a full restart of a project should work.

Unreal Engine Log - Friday, September 29

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 16:51:30 +0000

I’m trying to practice modelling/staging/lighting the Taylor Institute learning spaces in order to give me a chance to learn how to build stuff in Unreal Engine 5. I have some .FBX exports that a staff member had created back in 2016 from the original Revit .RVT files for the first and second floors of the TI, and have been trying to process/fix/import those. I don’t have the original .RVT files, to these .FBX exports are as close as I’ll get. They look like they get some things right – individual steps and railings on staircases are modelled – and some things quite wrong. It looks like all “ways” were just extruded from the floorplan at an estimated full-storey-height. There are no windows, and no doors. No floors, no ceilings. But, it’s a good start to get a feel for the layout of the space.

Unreal Engine Log - Friday, September 22

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Fri, 22 Sep 2023 17:32:40 +0000

I had a few minutes to play around with textures a bit, and added some MediaPlate objects for each of the “displays” in the space.

Unreal Engine Log - Thursday, September 21

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Thu, 21 Sep 2023 16:45:57 +0000

I messed around with the scale of my model as imported from Blender. In UE5, I just selected the folder and all descendants and bumped the Scale value to 2x2x2. It applied uniformly to all objects within the model. I had to adjust the position of the lights, but otherwise the scale of the room “feels” right.

The textures are a hot mess, but that’s easily changeable. Also, I don’t think “shiny metallic cyber femmebot” is the look I’m going for. stock models…

Unreal Engine Log - Wednesday, September 20

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Wed, 20 Sep 2023 22:14:58 +0000

I spent a few more minutes trying to futz around with getting my Blender model of a learning space (loosely modelled on TI 110) into Unreal Engine. Following a godawful YouTube video that I’m not going to link to because holy crap what an annoying mess but I did glean one bit if useful info from sitting through it.

In Blender, I exported an .FBX file using these settings:

Unreal Engine Log - Tuesday, September 19

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 17:17:43 +0000

I’ve been trying to model a space (starting with a learning space in the TI) in UE5 and have been stuck by the editing tools. So, I figured why not try building a model in Blender and export that for use in a UE5 project?

I was able to get the dimensions right (based on the architectural files I have), and cut out windows and doors using boolean subtraction. It looks like it works, but I don’t have time to import it into a new UE5 project right now, but that’s the next step.

Unreal Engine Log - Monday, September 18

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 02:46:45 +0000

So I decided that editing 3D objects with a trackpad is non-optimal. I sprung for a super-fancy professional-grade mouse. Or, I picked up the first decent-looking cheap Bluetooth multi-button mouse on Amazon, because it could be delivered the next day. It came today, and seems to work well enough. I haven’t used a mouse in years, so it’ll be an adjustment.

I tried setting up a new Project, replacing the stock First-Person game with my own stuff. Really, I just deleted the initial obstacle-objects, and then started building a new space within it. Primitive, but I’m getting better. I need to figure out the rendering settings, though, because they seem to go from “Quake II” to “Cyberpunk” and I can’t figure out how to properly set it so it will play at a decent framerate on my M2 MBA.

Unreal Engine Log - Thursday, September 14

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 19:27:38 +0000

I created another new project – this time using the Game – First Person template, with Starter Content. I make some cubes, resize and rotate them, and kinda-sorta have an idea of how to do this. But I have no idea how to do booleans to remove chunks to add doors and windows. I’m sure that’s easy.

After reading some documentation and starting ANOTHER new project (Game – Blank – with starter content), and watching part of a youtube video (about using boolean brushes on Cubes to cut windows and doors out of other cubes – but that didn’t work), I have a prototype space built with starter content primitives and some Cubes and textures. Very cool. I think I can make this work.

Unreal Engine Log - Wednesday, September 13

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 19:24:16 +0000

Maybe there’s something funky with the .FBX files? I’ll try importing them into Blender to create new ones.

Download Blender.
Remember how to use Blender.
Import the .FBX files for both first and second floors, match them up, join them, and export a shiny fresh new .FBX file that hopefully doesn’t have any issues.

Create a new project in UE5, with starter content.
Test it in playback mode. It works great.
Import the new .FBX file and poof nothing works and my laptop begs for mercy.

Unreal Engine Log - Tuesday, September 12

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 19:23:04 +0000

“I have these Revit-exported .FBX files of the Taylor Institute. How hard can it be to import them into Unreal Engine 5 and build some learning space mockups in them?”

Took maybe 30 seconds to figure out how to import the files. It’s built-in.

I started with the Architectural starter content, and tested that it worked first. It works great and I can navigate around in playback mode. Cool. I can move around and explore the space in pretty impressive realtime rendering.

Unreal Engine Log - Friday, August 25

dnorman@me.com (D'Arcy Norman) — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 19:15:32 +0000

After working with Matthew to finalize plans for the architecture studio project, I figured I needed to refresh my own 3D modeling skills – and I want to do the project myself. I started dabbling with the default content in UE5 Architectural mode. Managed to get a model set up and running well on my laptop. I’m not sure “Architecture” mode is what I want, despite the project being architecture-focused. I may want to switch to building in “Game” mode – but what’s the difference? So much to learn. UE5 is huge.