Blender Help Thread

Sly. · Unreal Old Friend

Blender Help Thread

Lord_PorkSword · Connoisseur of Bourbon!

ANyone know if there's a new fbx exporter for Blender that works with UE4?

Sly. · Unreal Old Friend

I found this one:
http://blenderfbx.render.jp/
For 2.65 and up (probably newer than the one I have I guess, I think I installed one that was compatible with 2.5). Though I didn't test it yet and don't have Unreal Engine 4, so I won't be able to give you any information about that. I could only check if UE3 still bugs me about "your fbx file is too old and might cause bugs".

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

You can use the default .fbx exporter that ships with blender for a long time now. It is an old .fbx format (ASCII 6.1 whereas the new ones are 7.x binary) but it should work the same as with UE3. You can safly ignore the message on import in UE4.

If you like to go with binary .fbx files you can either use Autodesks FBX converter or check out this github site from mont29 who is working on an updated FBX exporter for binary 7.3/4: https://github.com/mont29/blender-io-fbx/tree/master/io_scene_fbx

-- Edited by mAlkAv!An on Friday 28th of March 2014 07:12:50 AM

Lord_PorkSword · Connoisseur of Bourbon!

Yeah, that's the error I get in UE4.

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

Just for clarifications, it's a hint/warning/message but not an error. That same message appears in UDK/UE3 but there really is no drawback on engine site when using older .fbx files.
Non-binary .fbx files take longer to save and are larger in size, but that's about it. You can always batch convert multiple .fbx files from v6.1 to v7.3 with Autodesks FBX Converter if you like to.

Sly. · Unreal Old Friend

When UV mapping in Blender, is there a way to tell it to only draw straight lines on the UV map or stick to the pixels? The pixelsnap option in the UV editor didn't seem to do anything.

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

Snap to pixels works but not instantly, you'll need to do some translate/scale action first (just hit S, R or G and confirm without moving the mouse) . Also keep in mind that this is dependent on the resolution of the background texture, e.g. 1 out of 1024 is only barely noticeable when not zooming in.

For perfectly aligned UVs you usually need some tricks like using 'Follow Active Quads' unwrap or manually straighten some vertices of the UV map, pin these vertices (shortcut P) and then re-unwrap.
That aside make sure to use Conformal unrwapping instead of the Angle Based method in the first place.

Sly. · Unreal Old Friend

Thanks a lot!

I assume to tell Blender "these surfaces are identical, merge the islands" one has to do that manually as well and there is no option that would recognize if islands are identical, right?

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

By merging do you mean stacking/overlaying the UVs or stitching them together to create larger UV islands?
The former can't be done automatically as far as I know. Best practice for such objects is to unwrap one part of your model first and then copy it in 3D to build the object.
The latter one is totally possible, by pressing V you'll get a bunch of options from the stitch tool.

Sly. · Unreal Old Friend

Ah, I see, so if I want to have a pillar which shall have a pattern of 2x the same texture spread on its 4 faces, I would have to make two faces, UV map them to make use of the entire texure (and make them seamless if possible) and then duplicate the object and merge it?

If I'm not very clear about what I mean, I can provide a screenshot any time.

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

Sounds right to me, although that's one of those simple cases (4 faces) where it's not making much of a difference whether you are doing it one way or the other.
But go ahead and post some screens. It's always interesting to see different approaches on accomplishing the same thing.

Sly. · Unreal Old Friend

A screenshot of the mesh (and its UV map) I talked about in the last question will follow later. smile

Just another small question (not related to the first one):

When rigging a model/applying bones to vertices, one has to do weight painting. In a model with overlapping parts (that shall not bend organically, basically a "machine"), this can be unnecessarily much work (and accidental weight paint on parts that were not supposed to be painted) and it would be easier if one could simply select the vertices/loops that shall belong to the bone. Is that possible or do I really have to carefully weightpaint vertex by vertex? blankstare

And a small Unreal Engine related question: Does Unreal Engine 3 understand "loose" bones, as in bones in a model that are not connected with each other but float (with the root bone having weight applied on the entire model) or is required/better to link the bones? The animating page on UDN only had an example of a human with bones linked to a full skeleton and/or to the root bone at least, I take it that one has to have a solid skeleton and no floating bones?

mAlkAv!An · calculating Pi by hand

You don't need to paint, you can directly use vertex groups. Select a set of vertices and then assign it to a specific group with weight=1.0

Bones don't need to be physically connected, but they need a hierarchy so each bone has a parent/child or both.
Think of a weapon with a root bone to move the whole weapon and 2 'floating' bones without weights just to easily assign sockets/emitters. (That's exactly what I did for the UT3 automag)

Sly. · Unreal Old Friend

Malk, I know I said this so often, but you're awesome!

This makes stuff much easier!

Heimdallr · Unreal Old Friend

Well, I need help

I made a staticmesh into unrealEd 3.
I exported it to import in Blender 2.65.
I improved the vertex of my statichmesh and removed some faces.
After this long and hard work, i exported my statickmesh from Blender and import in UnrealEd.
Until now, i have no problem.
Even if the scale. confuse

Look the pict

The scale is around 6.25 between the 2 staticmeshs.

The pivot is not align on the staticmesh. It place itself anywhere (for me). I can't use it for the align my static on my brushs in unrealEd.

How can i fixe that ?

I wanna set the pivot and have scale at 1.

Thx for your help.

Heimdallr · Unreal Old Friend

In fact, i found the solution.

Sorry to disturb you.