Creating Modular Environments in Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) | ArtStation Challenge EP.003

[@adamplechaty]

Still watching this more than a year later. It all clicks even more now that I got my first junior job as an environment artist. Just listening to this while working away haha. Hope all is well with you Tim, thanks again for these! Peace.

[@PolygonAcademy]

cheers! happy to hear you come back to it, and congrats on the jr position! thats awesome. things are going well thanks!

[@RickHenderson]

That's so cool. Congrats! I've got a question. I've watched a lot of videos on exterior environment/level design, but how do you start with an interior location? I know for a dungeon the modular approach makes sense but what about buildings?

[@M_Lopez_3D_Artist]

so did u keep the job career path still? im trying to break into this industry

[@quentindonnaint1138]

I wasn't aware that agent 47 making 3D Art. ....jokes apart your videos are very useful thanks a lot !

[@PolygonAcademy]

Quentin donnaint hahha hitman represent!

[@everabyss]

Hahahah !

[@tjrizvi251]

@@everabyss You mean Johnny Sins?

[@nfrancisj2122]

Agent 47.... with N7??

[@barry_crisp]

Keep doing what you're doing, this is great, I've learned so much just in the last three videos. You've got a new sub!

[@PolygonAcademy]

will do :) thanks for the great feedback and I appreciate the sub :)

[@Lazarosinep]

I love you. You seriously helped me understand what to pay attention to, and what not :) Personally i am struggling with making too many assets in white boxing and i always feel that all of them are needed.... Then i end up with 30 pieces... What is normally a decent number of models to create a modular environment of this scale? Also could you explain a bit better your thought process on a trim sheet?There is information about how to make it, but there is no information on the thought process, on how to design your trim sheet.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Zaroukos Maf awesome! Glad it helped. The number is hard to figure out, i usually use my concept or reference to try and break down how many pieces i need based on walls, window, door pieces etc. I just try to get away with making as few pieces as possible but still hitting the quality and feel of the concept or reference. Ill go in depth on trims soon :)

[@UE4SkyFexInfiniteMeuProjeto]

I love this style Even because my project is entirely based on this

[@JoshChristiane]

This was an awesome video! I make assets this same way. One big perk to doing larger modular pieces as well is that it will equate to fewer draw calls, and especially on Switch/Mobile games that's really important.

[@openroomxyz]

What about poly count? How much you worry about it when you are doing things like this? Complex shaders are worse right?

[@PolygonAcademy]

polycount is not really too much of an issue, especially with a good set of LODs, complex shaders, lights and drawcalls are the performance killers for sure.

[@Wenedi]

When your whooping 6 hours a week of lectures doesn’t teach you stuff so you happen to find amazing channels such as this, keep it coming! ^-^

[@PolygonAcademy]

Cheers! Plenty more to come :)

[@vfxart1994]

There is your art school education for which you will pay $40,000 or some ridiculous amount for free combine in a nutshell /cut the crap 8 videos.

[@PolygonAcademy]

thats high praise haha, thanks! glad you enjoyed it!

[@VRDivision]

your tutorials are so helpful man! I'm trying to replicate the same but entirely in Unreal 5 :D different type of project tho keep up the amazing work!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Awesome, good luck! Im lovin ue5 so far!

[@gamedevartist-k9622]

Love your videos, could you do a video on detailing organic rock in zbrush? Thank you

[@SxitGtwitch]

Hey, great video but I got 1 question. I want to create a wall out of 5 wooden planks that I copy and paste over and over on this wall. Every of this 5 wooden planks got his own high poly version, texture and Uv map. My problem is that when I merge them to 1 object to bring them into Unreal I lose the Uv maps and then also the texture maps. So how can I bring this wood wall that is made out of 5 different wooden planks with 5 different textures and Uv maps in one object to Unreal without losing my Uvs, textures for them?

[@PolygonAcademy]

you would need to set the material ID's of each plank to be different in your 3d program after you combine them, and in unreal you should have 5 material slots that you can plug in 5 different materials you create, one for each plank with its own textures and uvs. this is super expensive though as it dramatically will increase your drawcalls for this object. most objects should only have 1-2 material IDs in most cases. I would just put all the planks onto one big 2k or 4k texture, like attach them all, spread out the uvs for all 5 planks and then bake them all down onto one material and assemble them after baking.

[@SxitGtwitch]

@@PolygonAcademy Thanks a lot for your answer! Do you know any tutorial on how to bake them all down to one material? The only video I found is this " kzbin.info/www/bejne/l5O9Ynikns-lidU " But if thats what you mean Im not sure how to load it to Unreal after. Sorry that I'm bothering you again

[@PolygonAcademy]

@@SxitGtwitch dont know of any tutorial but you would just attatch all the lowpoly together before baking, layout the uvs in the 0-1 space for all 5 planks, and then bake from the highpoly to that single lowpoly mesh, then you can detach them again after, and use the individual meshes however you like to build walls/windows etc. Each plank would only take up a portion of the actual texture space and they would all use the same material.

[@SxitGtwitch]

@@PolygonAcademy You are a hero! Thank you so much. I hope that you will bring out a tutorial about creating a full environment one day

[@jso19801980]

if you have to tweak your models in 3dsmax/maya you have to reimport and reassign all the shaders?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Nope, you just rightclick and choose reimport on the mesh in the content browser and it should be fine unless you changed the material ids in max.

[@TheJohn0363]

Hey! Really loving the videos.. being into this over 8 years now, modularity (specifically textures) have always stumbled me. In terms of textures and draw calls, would the walls, then Windows, then roof all be their own texture timetable of would you put them on an atlas? What's the best industry working practice for buildings with that? Can never find that any where. How in-depth you are in this series is incredible, I really love it! Thank you

[@PolygonAcademy]

For most modular kits you are going to want to use a combo of tiling textures and trim sheets. You can use an atlas but it makes your kit less reuseable and harder to quickly swap surface materials because the uvs are more specificly laid out instead of more generic tiling materials. I wouldnt worry too much about drawcalls for personal work, chances are unless you have 5+ material ids on each mesh you are fine ;)

[@hossienasadi7063]

Hello dear Tim, I am learning very awesome things from your tutorials. Thanks for sharing this with us. Please breakdown another environment. I am thirsty about your new tutorials.

[@rancheraosborne]

Hey, the terrain, wood...textures, do you do them yourself or do you pick them from a library? how do you usually face that amount of work that is doing all the tileable textures by yourself in like designer? Great videos btw

[@PolygonAcademy]

ranchera the ground textures were made in quixel mixer by combining some megascans textures, the wood was done in substance painter with a couple smart materials and my tree bark was sculpted in zbrush haha. So i go about it many different ways. If i can use a library or asset pack to get a head start on something its usually a good idea, spending 20-30 bucks to even save a few hours of work is well worth it, especially when you are doing freelance/professional work

[@TrySomeCG]

nice video....you could decrease amount of poly in your models because even with LOD there are too many poly...your workflow is very helpful, i work in blender there is a modifier called decimate what is does i basically reduce geometry without changing its shape im sure 3DS max have a modifier with same feature....should try it with your workflow and might be able to get more performance

[@PolygonAcademy]

yea its pretty high poly but for a scene like this its fine, the LODs do their job agressively, on those walls, once the camera is more than 3m away it cuts the polycount in half. I used similar polycounts to this to the environments we are building at work and similar models we had on farcry 4. 3ds max has a pro-optimize modifier, sounds like a version of the decimate modifier :)

[@CyberBunStudio]

Raising the Bar....Good fuckin book.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Love it, one of the first art books i ever got!

[@Umarfarooq_47]

Hi my name is Umar, I'm wondering that how I will create. Modular kit for rocky seen like mountain. Thanks in advance 😊

[@PolygonAcademy]

I would sculpt 1-2 large rocks you can place ontop of a large terrain mesh you create in unreal. You can scale/rotate the rocks to hide repetition and it should look good :) there are lots of good rock sculpting tutorials on youtube. This is how we did large natural scenes when i was working on farcry 4

[@Umarfarooq_47]

@@PolygonAcademy Thank you so much sir ! Can u make a tutorial about that topic ?

[@bs_art3625]

You're a natural teacher, great videos man. Can't wait to purchase the full environment workflow tutorial I think you mentioned you were working on in one of your more recent videos. Thanks, and can't wait for more!

[@PolygonAcademy]

cheers! gonna get working on that eventually haha.

[@thomasherrera772]

This is awesome to see. I really appreciate the knowledge you are sharing. I will be using a lot of your tips in my future projects.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Thomas Herrera awesome :) hope the tips save you some headaches in the future

[@batoucoup1]

I don't get how u did the Bend thing and the symmetri :/ It is not doing the same thing for me :(

[@PolygonAcademy]

you need to change the position of the bend and symmetry gizmos in the modifier, sometimes the rotation of it as well.

[@fishomelette4871]

Hey! I don't really quite understand how you made the materials. Were they seamless materials or were they applied specifically to the UV Unwrap of each mesh? And also, did you use those wooden meshes together with the wall mesh, and then grouped together before exporting for UE4 or what was the process? I'm still very new to this whole process and don't quite understand the workflow to efficiently making meshes with so many materials. (Currently I'm having unique materials made for each mesh's specific uv unwrap which takes up a tonne of time and doesn't always necessarily line up properly) Anyway, this is a really helpful tutorial series! Thanks for sharing this with us! :)

[@PolygonAcademy]

yea the moss and plaster were tiling (seamless textures) and then the wood pieces were a tiling trim sheet that tiles seamlessly horizontally. each piece had 2-3 material IDs on the mesh, for each different material. If you havent seen my trim sheets tutorial series, check that out next it will help you understand a lot :) and save you a TON of time in future i hope!

[@fishomelette4871]

@@PolygonAcademy Thank you very much for the response! :) I'll definitely check out the series!

[@monicabenya6071]

This is great stuff, super helpful for learning a modular workflow. Just a quick question... do you do your graybox on the modular grid as well? So that when you make your kit you can re-import the meshes and everything snaps together? Or do you not bother with the grid during the graybox phase and then when you move on to the kit you factor that in?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Monica Benya you could definitely do that, for professional work after i have done a first pass and have something compositionally i like i will go back and gridify things with proxy models that work on the grid, but during thr first pass i am scaling and smashing objects together, starting 100 percent grid based can limit your composition initially. If there is gameplay involved and actual level design, i stick more to the grid right off the bat.

[@Yaroslav15]

Hey Dude, a little off top question. Are you a Mix fighter or some sort of wrestler? Your ears are wrecked and I only know one reason for that =) And yh, good tutorials and neat explanation of game assets production! Keep it up!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Конструктор hahah thats from fighting with my brother as a kid and him hitting me with a ps1 controller in the ear 😂 i wish i was tough enough for mma haha. Thanks for the feedback!

[@3dfer383]

I tried to make a modular urban night scene and bake lights (there's a lot of neons) to reduce draw calls, but oh boy, seams appear everywhere (and i'm using a proper lightmap for each asset). The only way to keep it consisten visually is by using real time but draw calls are over 3K and that's insane. Anyone knows a way to keep draw calls low while using real time lighting? Because I wonder how open worlds and cities are made, these kind of scenarios demand you yo use real time lighting. damn, I can't wait to get my nanites and stuff...

[@PolygonAcademy]

3D Fer are you using material instances for all your materials? That helps, aldo for open world, usually there is an aggressive streaming setup and heavy use of cull volumes to only load objects in a small radius around the player. Then you tune the max draw distance on your lights so they only appear when on screen and noticeable. Also, try and use as few material ID’s on meshes as possible, 1-3 is fine but sometimes people have 5-10 materials on all their modular kit pieces and that blows up your drawcalls super fast

[@3dfer383]

@@PolygonAcademy hmmmm i'll have to lower material slots then, some neon ads have around 5 or so, even tough my neon emit materials are instances.

[@aaeriam]

I'm a little late to the party but I wanted to say thanks for posting these videos. As someone who's trying to learn environment art. Being able to see these breakdowns and hear about what's going through your head when you create modular environments like these is a huge help for me! :D

[@PolygonAcademy]

no problem! so happy when I see comments like this :D

[@PaburoVIII]

Hello! again sorry a quick question what brush did you use for the roof tiles? please :)

[@PolygonAcademy]

I think it was the trim smooth border brush for the edge detailing, similar to doing rocks :)

[@PaburoVIII]

@@PolygonAcademy wow soo quick thank you so much I didnt kn own about that brush looks like a cuirous and usefulk brush thanks have a great day :D

[@xroman_]

Hi Tim! I also decided to go with polygonal roof instead of a tiling texture. But when I mirror it to create corner piece ( like at 7:42), my normal map (on the mirrored side) on the edges starts to look super weird because of the -1 x-axis scaling. Have you had similar problem?

[@PolygonAcademy]

burningJoe yea mirroring can look wierd, especially in max which has terrible display when it comes to normal maps, I dont even plug in my normals in in max, just the albedo to see what i am working with. If its a problem in unreal or the end result game engine, you could break and flip those uvs, or try re-setting the xform, that can fix a lot of normal weirdness as well. In my case i just hid that mirror point with some geo over top 😂

[@MissMatty420]

I found the cnannel today and i am so happy! finnaly some1 to explain 3d max + unreal. Am i dreaming???

[@MadpolygonDEV]

Would be cool if you could make a video similar to the wood one on how to creatw nice looking bricks. Your videos are really nice, love to watch them at night while relaxing

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks! I will do a trim sheet sculpting tutorial soon with some brick style shapes in it :)

[@madhatter5361]

That lighting on the rooftiles

[@PolygonAcademy]

The 1llus1on1st 1 saw your reply on the other video, hes going to release the shader in a pack for sale at some point. This video also shows you how to make a good moss shader :) kzbin.info/www/bejne/fnXPpnRnm5qasNk

[@mostafasamir9472]

This video helped me alot to think differently while building the moduls for my environment .you mentioned that you are a self-learner so is there any books you recommend me to read about level design and environment art ?.Really i'm so hungry to watch more videos from you .

[@PolygonAcademy]

Mostafa Samir thanks man, that means a lot :) i dont know any books, i would just look on youtube for tutorials so you can actually see peoples process.when i was learning art i bought a few gnomon dvds and other tutorial videos, they were a great investment!

[@madhavbharadwajchakkilala4674]

Hey your techniques are new and i found them very useful but can you do a video on vertex painting

[@PolygonAcademy]

yea, I will make one soon, I added the topic to my list :D

[@andrewlundiii1387]

I notice that you've got a vertical trim between each section of the building wall. Is that pretty much a standard, or could you break sections on a flat plane, without the covering geo? I'm in the process of breaking wall sections on a flat plane and am hoping with higher quality light bakes as I get further into the project that the weird light artifacts and bleeding/lightmap baking problems will go away? You have any tricks/tips for that? ('don't do it' is an acceptable answer, haha)

[@PolygonAcademy]

Andrew Lund III yea you could have it flat for sure, if you set static lighting scale to like 0.1 in the world settings it helps with weird seams, but generally its better to have flat walls be single pieces of geo to avoid lightmap seams,

[@andrewlundiii1387]

@@PolygonAcademy Thanks, man! Yeah, little bit of a planning error for me there... whoops. Thanks for the tip, and I'm going to 're-modularize' a few things on this scene per your advice. You the man! Keep attacking life like this. Its inspiring :)

[@PaburoVIII]

great video where can I get the shader you use for the moss sounds super interesting if it is on sale I am willing to pay :)

[@PolygonAcademy]

My buddy lincoln made it, you can get it on his gumroad lincoln-hughes.gumroad.com/l/Qxqod

[@PaburoVIII]

@@PolygonAcademy thanks!

[@grayjackgaming1746]

at 0:52 I think you mispronounced BLENDER! :D

[@barbarak1850]

I'm really loving this series, thank you for taking the time to make it! I was wondering, for UE4s LODs, did you have to manually set anything up in unreal to get it to work or does Unreal do that by default already? Cheers!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Barbara K i think you have to set it manually in the static mesh options after you import it. If you scroll down there is an lod section where you can chose the amount of lods and how much to reduce etc.

[@ogarga666]

nice shirt

[@PolygonAcademy]

Gabriel Garga haha thanks. Im a mass effect fan for sure :)

[@alextilica8165]

man, I absolutely love your videos. thanks for starting this channel!

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks Alex, appreciate the feedback, glad you like the content!

[@TAKASHI2010SAM]

for me the Roof tiling texture from megascans works with just displacement map we can get the details better

[@PolygonAcademy]

Yea they have some awesome textures on there. For this challenge we were not allowed to use megascans at all, so had to make this from scratch, but i definitely use megascans on projects these days

[@TAKASHI2010SAM]

@@PolygonAcademy can u show one tutorial on how to use roof tiles texture tilling on plane mesh in ue4 , i mess up texel density always while exporting from maya wht texel density should i set

[@jasmyn1258]

I love your videos! I'm a new subscriber trying to become an indie 3D game designer! Thanks so much for all your videos and I hope you keep making them! :)

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks for the love! yes i will be back making videos soon :)

[@StylexSai]

Another great video! I have a question. You said you put the pivot point all in the same place. Where exactly did you put it? The center, bottom, bottom left or right?

[@PolygonAcademy]

StylexSai i always put the pivots on the bottom corner, on a grid point, that way when you duplicate things its easier to snap them end to end, or rotate them like a hinge/door. Works well for fences where are duplicating and rotating. Pivot in the centre means you gotta move, rotate and then usually move it again to align meshes. Rotating from a corner fixes that ;) right or left doesnt matter but keep it consistent throughout the kit

[@bilgeratbozza1090]

Great video man, thanks for this! Quite heartening to watch

[@PolygonAcademy]

Bensonwave haha cheers :)

[@guillermosanchez6951]

Seriously Tim these step by step vids are awesome!! Keep up the great work and I'm also following everything on Artstation so can't wait to see how this turns out :D

[@PolygonAcademy]

Guillermo Sánchez thanks bud!

[@viodvue2227]

Could you show and explain the unreal LOD system. How to use etc.?

[@PolygonAcademy]

viod vue good idea! Ill put it on the list :)

[@gabocavallaro]

Hi Thank you very much for this really usefull tutorials!! Could I ask you a question?: If you use shapes of 4m x 4m then how could you achieve 10.24 texel density (1024px / m2) this works in a 2m x 2m plane with a 2k texture but in case of chunks of 4m, what´s the best to do for? (overlap or use different udims maybe? are you using another TD or 4K textures? Thank you very very much in advance!

[@PolygonAcademy]

You would rely on tiling that 2k texture 2x on a 4m piece, 4k textures for environment work are still pretty rare, so tile the 2k texture and also break up large areas with vertex blending in other materials to help hide the tiling

[@gabocavallaro]

​@@PolygonAcademy Oh that's it! thank you very much! Is Vertex Paint expensive or we can use it freely (I guess only where it's necessary)? You inspire me and helped me a lot. Regards from Argentina.

[@PolygonAcademy]

@@gabocavallaro yea its pretty cheap, you can use it on assets quite a lot, if you are doing variations on every instance of an object it can get expensive, but if you put it into the base asset itself it is extremely cheap.

[@gabocavallaro]

@@PolygonAcademy Thanks a lot bro!! Gonna send you my practises so you can take a look^^ have a wonderfull day

[@lockenessmotorsports818]

Was just wondering if you would do a video on the texturing side of things ? Im having some difficulty on the best way to go about it and understanding trim sheets

[@PolygonAcademy]

LockeNess Motorsports new video on trim sheets is up on the channel! Should help you out :)

[@vast634]

It 3dMax really not anti aliasing the mesh-edge lines? Looks like editors from the 90s.

[@MarcusRamsey]

CGM is so expensive. you should make your own version and sell it for like $300 -$400 dollars. Id buy it.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Marcus Ramsey haha i think cgma is actually underpriced based on the results i have seen the students get, but yea my premium courses will be in the 200-500 range depending on the content and length :) with beginner and advanced courses/subjects. Something for everyone i hope, just gotta find the actual time to make them 😂

[@MarcusRamsey]

@@PolygonAcademy Haha you're probably right I just don't have like 5k to drop, unfortunately. Awesome man! you're a great teacher and I would buy it! I'm sure other people would too. A lot of people making $$ from courses right now. Thanks for the awesome free content in the meantime!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Marcus Ramsey thanks dude, that support really gives me confidence for the future of this project :) and spoiler alert: the free content is ALWAYS gonna be the backbone of my content ;) 90% free 10% premium for the people who are super serious and wanna go deep. Thats the business model im planning

[@zeriyify]

So if I have no skill in 3d modelling can I just other people assets right

[@PolygonAcademy]

yes, if you want to be a level designer or level artist who works in the editor all day you can, while i was at ubisoft i didnt make any assets for farcry or watch dogs, just focused on world building. just make sure you state that in any portfolio pieces you do, give credit to the asset packs etc.

[@zeriyify]

@@PolygonAcademy thank you that will be helpful i didnt learn any level design during my degree in game dev

[@hemingway8671]

One more subscriber! I really like where you place your camera for your videos. It feels like I'm right next to you and looking at your computer. Great videos! Thx!

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks! its a combo of a small apartment and also wanting to make it feel like me and you guys are just hanging out! I hate formal education and that power dynamic haha.

[@文达李]

这么好的课程竟然没有中文，中文字母版本的这套视频还都看不清画面，难受啊

[@Mr_Tea_Rexx]

hey buddy need some advise as im trying to figure it out. are you free to chat if your available as i would like some insight into my situation

[@mdmofazzalhossain77]

Your Pc specification please

[@PolygonAcademy]

nothing too crazy, i-7 3.4ghz, 16gb ram, nvidia 1060gtx, no SSD just a normal 2tb hdd. Its like a 6 year old pc and I updated the graphics card a couple years ago. I need to get a new one soon haha.

[@zarakikenpachi1400]

this was awesome!!, please, I'm really searching for a long long modular tutorial like this, but more longer with nice detail about how to create modular UV's or how to set up modules for anything, You could think about to create something like this tutorial but getting more depper about modular kits?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Irensay yea i will be making more tutorials on this subject soon, and eventually have a super in depth environment creation course that covers every single aspect in depth step by step. Just gotta find the time to make it 😂

[@zarakikenpachi1400]

@@PolygonAcademy really appreciated, is awesome that guys like you try teach us, this is awesome, thank you!

[@Kainkun]

Thanks! I was kind of confused on how did you texturing. Are you planning on going more in-depth for texturing?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Kainkun yea, ill go into it deeper in my next video i think :) basically just textured the little geo kits in substance painter and then duplicated the already textured objects around in max

[@Kainkun]

@@PolygonAcademy Awesome. Looking forward to the rest of the series :)

[@RaduButarascu]

Hello! I am still a novice, but I have tried to replicate the dimensions of my apartment in UE4. Using the FirsPersonBP to roam around I realized right away that real world dimensions of walls and doors do not work - too small. Should I use a multiplier?

[@PolygonAcademy]

yea with fps views you have to take the cameras FOV into account, things tend to feel smaller. I would say 1.2x-1.5x is a good ballpark, thats why blocking it in super rough in greybox is a good start because you can figure out what feels good before advancing the art :)

[@RaduButarascu]

@@PolygonAcademy Great, ty so much for the tip! :)

[@PolygonAcademy]

@@RaduButarascu you're welcome :)

[@vfxart1994]

11:31 you mentioned the Zup shader by some other artist possible to get a link to it? thanks

[@PolygonAcademy]

yup, its from my buddy lincoln hughes, you can find it in this vid/channnel: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bIHSl5V_lt6djpI&ab_channel=ArtofLincolnHughes

[@vfxart1994]

@@PolygonAcademy many thanks will check it out.

[@sudanemamimikiki1527]

Creating each individual brick and shingle for walls and roofs sounds like it's going to bloat your blend files? Is this really a good way to make assets for a game?? Also you are using unique trim sheets just for the shingles ,bricks etc????

[@PolygonAcademy]

Yes this is a pretty common method, look at games like dark souls or god of war, they use a lot more geometry for things like bricks and chunky rock walls, it looks better than a flat tiling texture or trim sheet. With nanite, now on our current production we are using a TON of geo for everything, with displaced surfaces and high poly props etc. but yea max/blender files get quite large, but thats a pretty common thing on modern productions now

[@sudanemamimikiki1527]

@@PolygonAcademy ok. I guess I'll follow your lead and try do my 3d for my game like yours. Just wild. I have been taught to try and use as little vertexes as possible. So this comes as a completely new frontier for me

[@PolygonAcademy]

@@sudanemamimikiki1527 yea geometry used to be more of an issue on ps3 era games where it was more strict for memory count. But nowdays geo is one of the cheapest things. Better for memory to use more geo than to put 4k textures on everything. Nanite also compresses geo data incredibly well to small on disk sizes

[@sudanemamimikiki1527]

@@PolygonAcademy oh boy I was planning on using 4k textures on everything... Man I'm supposed to graduate from my uni next year fand I still feel like I should be in here for a few more years...

[@zyord8159]

This is so useful, I wish it came out 2 years ago

[@PolygonAcademy]

Z Yord thanks :) more to come soon too

[@bobkentucky5611]

well it came out 2 years ago=)

[@ArtemM3D]

Great content! Thanks for your effort! Keep rocking!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Artem Mykhailov thanks artem! Finished editing this one at 4am last night so glad to know the effort was worth it 😂

[@Infernodragon48]

Hey Tim, thanks for sharing your workflow, I am really thankful for it. Just had a little question about those modular pieces, have you attaches them together in one mesh in max or they are in a group? Or if you have attached them then how will you apply different material lets say roof material for the roof and wood for the wood if they are in one single attached mesh? Will wait for your reply 😊 Thanks

[@PolygonAcademy]

yea they are all attached, you can apply multiple materials to a mesh with material ID's. easiest way is just to select the elements you want say a tiling wood on within the edit poly, then apply the material to that selection, and it should work fine.

[@Pdexterness]

Great videos! Thank you for doing this.

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks Johan!

[@StefanDiNazareth]

Hi Tim, can I ask you what you made the bake of the normal of the tiles and the stones for the wall? did you simply sculpt the low poly and then bake on the same starting meshes? or some kind of retopo? thanks for the videos, today I followed your video on sculpting wood, (very useful), that's why I ask you. I made the bake of the model carved on the simple starting mesh but looking at it angularly we could see the net angles of the low poly, after I tried instead to decimate the sculpted model and the result was much better, even if maybe 200 faces and 100 vertices are too many for a piece of wood. have a nice day :)

[@PolygonAcademy]

Yea the roof tiles and stones on the walls were just decimated meshes and then i added lods at aggressive distances to keep the overall polycount down at a distance

[@StefanDiNazareth]

@@PolygonAcademy Hey, thanks for the quick reply! In the video, when you show the stone walls I see that they are made up of quads and some beveled ( around 5:30 min) So aren't they decimated in this case? I'm a little confused and trying to figure out how to do this in a good way. Thanks again 😊

[@PolygonAcademy]

@@StefanDiNazareth oh yea the stone walls were probably a quick retopo if they were quads, but either method is fine.

[@StefanDiNazareth]

@@PolygonAcademy thanks for the clarification

[@DecimatedVideogame]

Great tutorial! Is the Unreal moss shader that projects onto upward facing polygons available for download? Perhaps with different texture layers for snow, sand, rainwater?

[@PolygonAcademy]

It was a beta version on my friends shader, he released it for sale i think with a ton of other features that make it extremely useful kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5rLq4eJoc2BgsU

[@johnw3194]

Extremely useful . Thanks so much !

[@alexandruachim743]

I just saw your work on artstation yesterday and I loved it. I came across the videos linked in the feudal japan piece and I've watched all of them! Really love how you spoke clearly, directly, yet naturally about everything, it was almost like you were my friend Devon from my university and you were helping me with homework. My favorite part was when showed the scene in unreal with the wall going through the wall and saying 'it's OK for this to happen' I'm always scared cause when I'm in school doing 3D environments my teachers point out my waste of geometry! Looking forward to more of your videos in the future and if you'd be down for doing a twitch live stream one day that would be great too! :D

[@PolygonAcademy]

alex achim awesome! Thanks for the love :) yea a little waste in polys vs spending time fixing something that isnt effecting performance is fine. Time investment almost always dictates my actions ;) i might do fb live or stream on here when i get some free time haha

[@alexandruachim743]

@@PolygonAcademy I was rewatching your video and I was thinking to myself at 5:00 when you talked about all the modular assets, especially the smaller ones, how do you handle UVing them? Like when you are working on AAA games, do you unwrap them and put a bunch of meshes UVs on a single UV sheet? I imagine the large pieces like walls/doors etc would have an entire UV sheet to itself.

[@PolygonAcademy]

For a lot of things i use tiling textures and dont uniquely unwrap things in a 0-1 layout, tiling textures and trims make up a lot of environment work, for this poject i am doing more unique unwraps to shake it up and try other workflows, but for most games, tiling textures and trims will be a big part of environment work. Ill touch on that in the textures/materials vlog coming soon :) but if you want to know more asap, just search for vids on tiling textures and trim sheets 👍

[@Carlosnl16]

Anyone know how to do what he did with the corner piece of the roof but in blender?

[@Kajuto3D]

Excellent explanation!! Thabks!Thanks!!

[@dmitryleshchenko7292]

Hey Tim! Really great videos! I'm learning a lot!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Dmitry Leshchenko cheers Dmitry!

[@robertmoats1890]

Extremely useful strategies and advice! I've been on the other side of the "too many pieces" kits. Conforming to a simple standard setup makes the entire process more efficient and fun to build and work with.

[@thedrone1036]

No windows. That's cheating ;D

[@micflynn1]

Hi NEW here, I been looking for a long time for someone who show HOW to build a Scene and not just say "oh you need too block this out first......blah blah" I look forward to watching more of your videos TODAy prilly binge watch them, lol. I'll drop comments off as I go! Thanks and Lets see where it goes!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Cheers! I hope it gives you some new info, enjoy the series!

[@MarmaladeMaki]

You deserve way more subs, this was a great break down. Looking forward to more of your stuff.

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks M Bomb :) that means a lot to me! got a zbrush wood sculpting tutorial that will go live in a couple hours ;) check back soon

[@wirrexx]

What i like about these videos, is how prepared you seem. You simply beat so many teachers on the fingers. Well done, really well done. Patreon next?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Wisam Odish thanks dude thats awesome to hear haha. Eventually i might do some premium high level tutorials or paid mentorships, but i am so busy with work and the challenge at the moment so i am focused 1000% on that and just providing pure value and building an audience ;)

[@wirrexx]

Polygon Academy keep me updated, i’ll be first in line!

[@andrewchang6662]

Hey Tim, love the series! Just a quick question, I noticed that on your wood trims there were no bevels on the edges. Is that what you normally do? Does that not create problems when baking? I usually bevel every edges to avoid that low-poly looking and baking problems. What's your take on it?

[@PolygonAcademy]

Andrew Chang i just had them on different smoothing groups with a uv seam on each edge, bakes perfectly :) that way there are no wierd gradients in the normal map where its trying to compensate for the bevels/ averaged bormals and i could use the texture as a trim sheet even on flat geo i have elsewhere

[@andrewchang6662]

@@PolygonAcademy Oh yeah, that totally makes sense! Thx for clearning that up for me :D

[@debmalyamitra353]

Subscribed to your channel man.... Your content is awesome. Also watched the greybox part and was blown away by the simplicity and efficiency

[@PolygonAcademy]

Debmalya Mitra thanks! Appreciate the sub and taking the time to comment 👍

[@davidmozaffari6260]

Nice Biceps XD thanks for the vid

[@CrizisAMV]

So good i learned so much from your vlog serie thank you. But I have a question, how do you set up your smoothing groups to your modular pieces when you apply a tiling material? Since you don’t go through the process of baking the low and high poly.

[@PolygonAcademy]

sorry for the late reply, I usuall just auto smooth the pieces smoothing groups with an angle of 45, so anything that is a hard corner either needs a bevel or gets a hard edge.

[@gatleonhart]

Hey dude, sick video! I had a question about Maya if you know. I know lattices can bend things like your roof tile, but that awesome corner piece - do you know a way to do that in Maya? Like the symmetry deformer you used? This would save me so much time. Anyway, I'm learning too much from your vids my dude. Thanks for that.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Its been a long time since i used maya, i know there for sure is a way to do it, maybe with the mirror tools or something? Wish i could be more of a help :/

[@Rosankarel]

great tutorial in such small videos...why did you created 2 by 2 for corner and 4 by 4 for wall ...

[@PolygonAcademy]

Rosan karel i did that mainly to not have my house be super wide, i tried with a 4mx4m corner at first and the building was really wide when assembled, i generallly like corner pieces to be smaller, i find it more useable in most cases. But its just personal preference

[@ghua]

i love these series, I learned so much from just 2 vids :D please keep making them :D

[@PolygonAcademy]

cheers! thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed the series :D

[@mustafah_art]

Awesome video!! man this is a great series and help me alot.

[@PolygonAcademy]

mustafa Hussein awesome! Glad to hear :)

[@capo-flow-atom993]

Thank you so much for the insights! How much time did it take you to finish the whole scene, from beginning to end? I often feel anxious about my speed in creating 3d environments and would love to have a rough orientation/comparison.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Capo-flow-atom about 2 months, 3-4 nights a week at 3-6 hours a night probably. Probably around 150-200 hours.

[@PolygonAcademy]

If you are starting out dont focus on time/speed, focus on matching industry quality work. Speed just comes with time, i talk about that in my video on failure on the channel :)

[@artofserif]

Heyyy! I loved this channel. I've subscribed, keep it up bro!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Can Durmaz thanks bud, appreciate the feedback, it helps keep the motivation and creative spark flowin’!

[@hemantlonkar7116]

He, I went to ask something to you that how much time to build the game Environment model and character is assumed

[@PolygonAcademy]

Hemant Lonkar it really depends on your time/budget. For the challenge i know i have an exact deadline of dec3 and started oct 15, so i will be putting ad much time into it as i can spare. On other projects like farcry 4 i worked on a 1KMx1Km square area of the map for almost a year. I have seen characters take 2 weeks and others take 6 months, depends on the complexity of the design. I would just focus on getting to high quality end results, you will get faster over time, but quality is super important, especially for portfolio work 👍

[@Sikik1313]

Once again cool video, where can we find that moss? it sounds like a awesome tool. Not all heroes wear capes!

[@PolygonAcademy]

João Pereira its a shader my buddy is building, hes gonna release it publicly at some point i think, ill drop a link here when he does 👍

[@ulsd]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/fnXPpnRnm5qasNk this one is pretty good

[@Gazzoth]

rly rly helpfull, keep going!!

[@PolygonAcademy]

thanks :) more to come soon, got some huge time saver tricks coming next video

[@DominikMorse]

This is the best video I have ever seen! Like... man, I've created a lot of sets for UE4, mostly modular environments, all of those full of little details. Thanks to this video I was able to re-package all the assets and remove like... 80% of the content! Thank you"

[@PolygonAcademy]

Dominik Pavlíček awesome! Thats great to hear, thanks so much for the feedback :)

[@alzajel1]

thank bro very good tutorial!

[@btdarmstad5815]

Great video! I have a question, though: I found it a little unclear whether or not this would be a viable workflow for a so called "game-game". Do game studios start out with loads of individual pieces and end up replacing them for better performance, or is this never part of the workflow at all? How much does it depend on the scale of the game? Does it mostly affect performance, or development time to do it this way?

[@PolygonAcademy]

BT Darmstad hey thanks for watching. Most games i have worked on keep everything in modular pieces like this. Sometimes if there is extreme optimization needed, some assets might get combined, but that is usually a last resort. It depends on the game and engine, but like i i said, 99% of the games i have worked on keep it multiple meshes like this, it makes changing things and adding quick variation a lot easier

[@greeengin]

Tim, don't stop!!!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Денис Иваненко haha thanks! More to come soon

[@xorip9292]

He looks like the brazzers guy

[@PolygonAcademy]

HAHAHAH this isnt the first time I have heard that :P always makes me laugh.

[@xorip9292]

@@PolygonAcademy 😂

[@m0rph3u5.]

thanks for another great video ;)

[@TheTwister22]

How did you get every brick to have its own normal map? Wont it be it’s own static mesh in UE4 and only have one set of UV’s?

[@PolygonAcademy]

I baked 3-4 bricks all on one uv layout and then assembled the walls out of them so they share the same texture, then for each wall piece i gave it a second uv channel for the lightmaps. same process for the roof pieces, build a couple pieces and then assemble it from baked/textured art to have higher texture resolution.

[@fantasygamedev]

Thank you for making this video! So helpful and easy to follow!

[@PolygonAcademy]

you're welcome :D

[@rahulkasana1]

I am a little confused. For the building wall pieces, do you keep all of them in same UV set. Or do they all have separate UV sets for each. Really helpful tutorial.

[@PolygonAcademy]

the buildings use tiling textures so the same 2-3 materials for each piece, each piece I just applied the material and uv'ed it so it looks ok. they dont have unique 0-1 unwraps, they are using tiling texture mapping.

[@adamplechaty]

Hi Tim, thanks for the video! How do you bring your sculpted bricks into the engine? Do you just bake the normal in Substance Painter, or do you first retopo and then bring it in for texturing? This part of game asset creation still confuses me. Also, when you say your bricks are on one UV sheet, do you mean they are unwrapped separately, each on their own sheet? Again, thanks a lot!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Adam Plechatý hey, thanks for watching! I basically sculpted 3-4 different bricks, unwrapped the retopo version, put them all on one 2048 together, baked and textured them, then brought them back into max and assembled the walls out of those 3 bricks, just scaling and rotating them to add variation. Then attached them all and exported that single modular piece to unreal, with a second uv channel for the lightmap to avoid baking errors caused by overlapping uvs. Hope that helps!

[@adamplechaty]

@@PolygonAcademy Thank you for your quick response Tim! I bit off more than I can chew with this one it seems :) My lightmaps are not working out, they are super tiny when there is so many pieces inside one sheet... (Separate they look great.) I would love to see a tutorial on this whole deal, but I guess it is too basic? Anyway, gonna keep working on this!

[@PolygonAcademy]

Adam Plechatý im filming a tutorial on lightmap uvs in the next couple days actually ;)

[@adamplechaty]

@@PolygonAcademy what a great timing then! Looking forward to it. Also the high to low poly workflow baffles me (retopo and normal baking). I would love to see you cover it. And last but not least, have you considered a Patreon? I would definitely chip in for your hard work on these tuts. Thanks again!

[@clairewarren3203]

Very helpful video! I loved the tip on keeping modular pieces as large as possible. One thing I'd really like - could you put the three tips you give in the blurb of each video? This would be good for quick future reference.

[@PolygonAcademy]

Claire Warren oh good point! Ill edit those in when i have a second :)

[@clairewarren3203]

@@PolygonAcademy Thank you! Much appreciated.