Multiple Materials on Static Meshes

I'm trying to get a static mesh imported and be able to assign different textures to different parts of the mesh with those material listings in the SM browser. I'm using Blender and I assigned different materials to different faces in Blender and it works fine but when I import it into Unreal it only has one slot and it covers the whole mesh. Any suggestions?

My only thoughts are maybe have the one face that I want to have be a different texture to actually be a separate object in Blender but both objects end up being one mesh in Unreal. I haven't tried that yet. Thought I would ask here first.

Okay, I got it to work somehow. I was trying to use a couple of different ase exporters but they are for older versions of Blender and they don't always work so I was exporting as lwo. I finally decided to try the ase again and it worked this time. Still not sure what's going on there as I didn't make any changes to the Blender file. I just closed Blender then opened it up with the default cube and unwrapped that and the ase exporter worked on it so I opened my file without closing Blender and the ase exporter worked on it this time and I got the multiple material thing in the games SM browser.

So what I'm trying to do here is add a texture that Lagzilla made to a static mesh that I made. He made a street signs texture for Minus and had some static meshes made from it and had the signs attached to poles. I had already put in traffic lights and just wanted to attach basic signs to the traffic lights so I made my own meshes and used his textures. Thanks for that Lag, you motivated me to figure out how to get U/V mapped and textured meshes into the game. I can't tell you how happy it made me to finally do that. I could have just changed your texture to put bare metal on the back of the sign but I needed to figure out the multiple materials things for the panning of the tanks treads texture on the tank model I'm working on. Thanks again.

Here's a pic of my simple little sign (that made me so happy) with part of Lag's texture applied. You can't see it but the edges and back are a different texture.

Unrealed support only Ase files for multi-materials static-meshes imports, nice work binger .

Glad to help! Nice job

Andrew

Originally Posted by Binger

Okay, I got it to work somehow. I was trying to use a couple of different ase exporters but they are for older versions of Blender and they don't always work so I was exporting as lwo. I finally decided to try the ase again and it worked this time. Still not sure what's going on there as I didn't make any changes to the Blender file. I just closed Blender then opened it up with the default cube and unwrapped that and the ase exporter worked on it so I opened my file without closing Blender and the ase exporter worked on it this time and I got the multiple material thing in the games SM browser.

So what I'm trying to do here is add a texture that Lagzilla made to a static mesh that I made. He made a street signs texture for Minus and had some static meshes made from it and had the signs attached to poles. I had already put in traffic lights and just wanted to attach basic signs to the traffic lights so I made my own meshes and used his textures. Thanks for that Lag, you motivated me to figure out how to get U/V mapped and textured meshes into the game. I can't tell you how happy it made me to finally do that. I could have just changed your texture to put bare metal on the back of the sign but I needed to figure out the multiple materials things for the panning of the tanks treads texture on the tank model I'm working on. Thanks again.

Here's a pic of my simple little sign (that made me so happy) with part of Lag's texture applied. You can't see it but the edges and back are a different texture.

Originally Posted by GLoups!

Unrealed support only Ase files for multi-materials static-meshes imports, nice work binger .

Good to know. Thanks. The mesh for the sign probably took me like 10 minutes. Very basic mesh and I just let Blender tessellate it. It's the U/V mapping and texturing that was new for me. Even though it was easy in hindsight it was still a hurdle for me. Love the nodes in Cycles (and youtube).


GLoups!, do you use Blender? If so what ase exporter do you use? What about you Lag? What modeling app do you use?

I use max and sketchup, it take me days to understand that i have to bring order in the material browser before exporting, i guess it is the same way in Blender, also the outpout options in the ase exporter, here's one model i'm currently working on and the six materials that are going to be display in unrealed SM browser, it's a need to add somes smoothing groups for not having lighting issues when building the map afterward .



Once in Ued:

Originally Posted by GLoups!

I use max and sketchup, it take me days to understand that i have to bring order in the material browser before exporting, i guess it is the same way in Blender, also the outpout options in the ase exporter, here's one model i'm currently working on and the six materials that are going to be display in unrealed SM browser, it's a need to add somes smoothing groups for not having lighting issues when building the map afterward .

That building is cool. Nice work. It's funny how it's harder to make stuff in ruins than it is to make them normal.

I'm not sure what you mean about bringing order in the material browser. I'm very new to this. I know a lot of terms but I am still learning what they mean. For the sign I just did the minimum. Two materials with one texture assigned to each material and the different materials assigned to different faces on the mesh. It could maybe use some specularity but I think it's fine for now. I'll look into smoothing groups though. There is still a lot for me to learn if I want to make any assets for the game besides a simple sign. I'm making some sci-fi panels that I plan on using to learn about materials.

Originally Posted by GLoups!

I use max and sketchup

I remember sketchup has a giant repository of free meshes, are they all capable of being exported to unreal? I think this is it: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/

I can see massive potential of making maps using prefabs in very short periods of time, or simply importing better-looking trees than the ones provided with the game, just as an example.

Originally Posted by Anonymous[Lolz]

I remember sketchup has a giant repository of free meshes, are they all capable of being exported to unreal? I think this is it: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/

I can see massive potential of making maps using prefabs in very short periods of time, or simply importing better-looking trees than the ones provided with the game, just as an example.

I didn't even notice that GLoups mentioned SketchUp. I was playing with that about 5 years ago and made some basic buildings. I gave up on it but recently I imported them into Blender just for fun. It worked no problem. I've been thinking about going back to it. It was so much easier for some things than Blender. The warehouse has a lot more in it now then it did back then.

These are unfinished, ofc.

Originally Posted by Anonymous[Lolz]

I remember sketchup has a giant repository of free meshes, are they all capable of being exported to unreal? I think this is it: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/

I can see massive potential of making maps using prefabs in very short periods of time, or simply importing better-looking trees than the ones provided with the game, just as an example.

The terms of service for 3D Warehouse are not really understandable, but if you ask modelers directly, most of times there is no problem for them to share their works and happy that the persons asked, as long it's for non-commercial purposes (which is the case here) and you want to mention their names somewhere with your work, that's what i did for some static-meshes on syrma, however it's not as simple to find exactly what you are looking for, most of times the models are not very optimized for games, also sketchup's models are not very well textured, find several modeles which go together is not easy, there is generally lot of work to fix them unless you found the rare jewell, more, making your own models can be a contentment, of course it's possible.

I played one or two years ago with google earth, one of the old version offered the possibility via somes free software, i think it's 3DRipperDX, to get the 3d buildings you want all over the world or even the terrains just next door to your home (imagine to reproduce the grand canyon in 3d model for your map), that's possible but not so easy, anyway there's somes places you can find somes free stuff, here's (tf3dm.com) a good one.

Ok, you've got me. How do I export from Blender to Unreal? I'm curious about trying out the models from the above sources... I also have access to Maya/3DS.

Originally Posted by Anonymous[Lolz]

Ok, you've got me. How do I export from Blender to Unreal? I'm curious about trying out the models from the above sources... I also have access to Maya/3DS.

I think this is the one that works best for me but I'll check tomorrow to confirm. I found it through katbits. I haven't found any for v2.7. If you can use Maya/3DS that would probably be best.

https://code.google.com/archive/p/as...-vmc/downloads

Thanks so much, it worked on 2.68 for a simple cabin model. However, Blender became unresponsive when I tried to export http://tf3dm.com/download-page.php?u...-outpost-59804. I think it's because it has too many faces, but I'm not sure.

Has anyone tried exporting Counter Strike (or other Source) maps and then trying to import them to UT? There's lots of good maps on there, someone even re-made a BF3 map. http://gamebanana.com/maps/192508
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/...compiling_Maps

Originally Posted by Anonymous[Lolz]

Thanks so much, it worked on 2.68 for a simple cabin model. However, Blender became unresponsive when I tried to export http://tf3dm.com/download-page.php?u...-outpost-59804. I think it's because it has too many faces, but I'm not sure.

Has anyone tried exporting Counter Strike (or other Source) maps and then trying to import them to UT? There's lots of good maps on there, someone even re-made a BF3 map. http://gamebanana.com/maps/192508
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/...compiling_Maps

Yeah, that model is way more complicated than it needs to be.

Originally Posted by GLoups!

I use max and sketchup, it take me days to understand that i have to bring order in the material browser before exporting, i guess it is the same way in Blender, also the outpout options in the ase exporter, here's one model i'm currently working on and the six materials that are going to be display in unrealed SM browser, it's a need to add somes smoothing groups for not having lighting issues when building the map afterward .



Once in Ued:

One thing to keep in mind when making StaticMeshes: you should attempt to split large faces into smaller ones, even if it increases the polycount a bit. The game is over 12 years old by now and I think it's fair to assume that most players have upgraded their hardware in the meanwhile and can handle a little more detail in an older game without any problems.

The reason for splitting faces is the fact that UE2 uses vertex lighting on StaticMeshes. I could go into details why that is an important thing to keep in mind, but Hourences did a much better job at explaining it: http://www.hourences.com/tutorials-vtx-lighting/

Yeah, static mesh lighting is really bad.

Interesting but i think that's not complete, do not trust the first picture, the model here is somehow broken by the obj importer plugin in sketchup, the black lines you see there are a bug because sketchup hide the triangles, in fact the front wall has something like 71 triangles, the whole model has 4000 faces, a model like this must have 3000 faces after optimization, i'd try something like a year to fix theses lightnings issues, change the triangle orientations and layout, tesselisation etc..
In fact i found the second part of explanation on the Rachel Cordone site: Smoothing groups/www.angelmapper.com.
Very easy to use, just select a group of faces and assign them a number of smoothing groups, where i spent a week on a model, The problem was settled in few minutes.
There is however in somes cases more or less rarely, you can always seeing some lighting traces that deserves to be manually fix.
Here's two pics from exactly the same model, one without smoothing group, the second have it.