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3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender

Chapter 1. Unreal, My Friend, I'd Like You to Meet Blender

As game developers, all of us have our dream game—that one game that excites us and sticks in our minds no matter how many years have passed. For some, that means waiting until another game developer builds something like it, but their version never quite matches up with our own. For most of us, the desire to see this game made and to be able to play it became the catalyst for starting our careers in independent game development. As we build our dreams and pour our heart and souls into the development of games, we still want to compete with the big boys in today's game markets, but we don't have the money for commercial licenses of "triple A" game engines and high-end 3D software packages. That all changed a few years ago when big 3D game engines like Unreal Engine went free for indie developers. Now smaller developers have the same access to high-end tools that larger developers enjoy. These new game engines gave us the ability to build the games of our dreams. However, 3D art programs never really followed suit. Many of the industry standard creation suites, such as Autodesk 3ds Max, still cost thousands of dollars. This changed in 2002 with the creation of the Blender Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the support of Blender. Blender is an open source 3D creation software that allows small developers like us to use our art in our commercial projects without having to spend tons of money up front. We can finally create the 3D games of our dreams without the stress of having to wonder how we can pay for the tools we need.

And that's why you're here. Maybe you are already an independent developer using the latest version of Unreal Engine 4, but are still only using game assets created by others. Maybe you are a complete novice with your mind filled with amazing digital vistas that need to be created. Either way, this book is for you. Within these pages, we will take a look at how to use Blender and Unreal Engine 4 together to create custom levels and game content for your games.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

Installing Blender
Exploring the interface
Customizing your settings
Working with modes
Jumping into our first project
Getting things started in Unreal Engine 4

Exploring the interface

When you run Blender, you are greeted by the splash screen. A list of files you have worked on recently will be listed on the left, as well as some quick links to various things, such as the documentation and the website. Click in the space to either side of the splash screen to remove it. Now let's take a look at the default scene.

Blender starts you off with three basic objects in the scene already: a cube, a light, and a camera, as shown in the following screenshot:

Our Blender default setup. We will change this to work better with Unreal 4

Select any one of them by right-clicking on the object. This will highlight it in orange. Try right-clicking on other objects in the scene:

We can rotate our point of view around the center by holding the middle mouse button (MMB). We can slide our view by holding Shift + MMB and zoom it using the mouse wheel or + and - on the number pad. Lastly, the number pad can also be used to view specific angles of your object.

Now let's take a look at the menus:

The Blender interface

Menu Bar
Tools Panel
Animation Timeline
Properties
Scene Properties (press N if you don't see this menu)
Scene Outliner

All of the preceding options have several functions. We will discuss them briefly here and more as we continue with the project:

Menu Bar: This contains the File, Render, Window, Help, Scene Layout drop-down, Browse Scene drop-down, and the Render Engine drop-down options. For the most part, we will use the File menu to save, load, change user preferences, export our files, and exit the program.
Tools Panel: This contains most of our functions that we will use to edit our shapes and mold our creations.
Animation Timeline: We will use this later to manage our animated game asset.
Properties: We will use the panel frequently to edit the properties of our scene, add modifiers, and more.
Scene Properties: This contains a few specific functions that pertain to items in the scene, such as scale.
Scene Outliner: This is a convenient list of every object in our scene and is handy if you can't find a specific object visually. Unreal Engine has one of these as well.

A lot of information, huh? Trust me, it gets easier with practice. To make things even easier, let's customize some of our settings.

Customizing your settings

Without customizing some of your settings, working with Blender can be a bit of a chore, especially if you have any experience with another 3D software. When we started moving around the interface a bit, you may have noticed right away that if you left-click, it moves the little bullseye cursor. This is called the 3D cursor and it is actually used for a lot of things within Blender, such as where to place new 3D shapes. Now, moving this when you left-click is less than ideal and is sometimes easily forgotten as you attempt to select things in your 3D scene, but there is a way to change that.

In the top-left corner of the screen, click on File and select User Preferences. Select the Input tab and look down along the left-hand side until you see the Select With option. You can see that it's currently set to right-click to select objects. Let's change that to Left to bring it more in line with Unreal Engine 4. It stops a lot of confusion later when you are going between the two programs. Be sure to click on the Save User Settings button at the bottom left corner once you have made this change. The second setting that needs to be changed involves scale.

The following screenshot shows the Blender User Preferences window:

Setting the mouse selection to use the LMB

To change this next setting, we are going to take a look at the Properties pane. The window looks something like this:

Along the top of the pane are several small tabs. We are looking for the Scene tab denoted by this icon:

Setting the mouse selection to use the LMB

This pane allows us to change several options pertaining to the scene, such as the scale. Unreal Engine 4 uses centimeters as its default measurement, so we want to match that here. This will make our game assets fit into our levels without the need to scale them in the game engine. Follow these steps:

Change the units used from None to Metric.
Change the scale to 0.01.
Objects already in the scene (such as our cube) will not scale. If there is anything you would like to keep, scale it by 100. This can be done by clicking on the Scale button on the left hand side, typing 100, and pressing Enter.
This will cause the object to start clipping through the edge of the grid. To fix this, we press N to open the Scene Properties bar, find the View section, then the Clip section, and lastly, change the End property to 1km.

Tip

Hint: Certain objects dropped in through the Add menu will not be scaled appropriately. Scaling these objects by 100 will fix the issue.

Now that we have made those changes, save your file by using the File menu or pressing Ctrl + S.

Key benefits

The only resource that shows how you can incorporate Blender into your Unreal Engine 4 Game environment

Create amazing 3D game environments by leveraging the power of Blender and Unreal Engine 4

Practical step-by-step approach with plenty of illustrative examples to get you started immediately

Description

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.

Who is this book for?

This book would be ideal for 3D artists and game designers who want to create amazing 3D game environments and leverage the power of Blender with Unreal Engine 4. 3D design basics would be necessary to get the most out of this book. Some previous experience with Blender would be helpful but not essential.

What you will learn

Create a fully functioning game level of your own design using Blender and Unreal Engine 4

Customize your level with detailed 3D assets created with Blender

Import assets into Unreal Engine 4 to create an amazing finished product

Build a detailed dynamic environment with goals and an ending

Explore Blender's incredible animation tools to animate elements of your game

Create great environments using sound effects, particle effects, and class blueprints

What do you get with Print?

Instant access to your digital eBook copy whilst your Print order is Shipped

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Download this book in EPUB and PDF formats

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Aadi Sharma Apr 07, 2018

You don't to see loads and loads of YouTube videos.Once you have this book.Very well scripted and good paper quality.

Amazon Verified review

Zain Jul 02, 2022

Really good for readers who are looking to learn the fundamentals of both Bender and UE4. The book takes you through level development in UE4, then walks you through artifact design, texturing, and animation in Blender, then you bring the Blender models into UE4 and incorporate the animations into the game.

Scott Hafner Jul 20, 2016

Hi everyone, I recently had the pleasure of working as a technical reviewer on this book, 3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender. If you've been looking to learn the tricks of bridging the gap between your Unreal work and your Blender work, this is an essential title for your work space. Lessons and skills are presented in an easy to understand manner with a huge range of topics covering everything from creating a game level in Unreal 4, importing 3D assets from Blender into your level and even adding some animation work to bring your creations to life.I'm very pleased with how this book came out, and I feel it will really help take your game design work to the next level!

Marcos Pérez Jul 19, 2016

I liked all the books that have been published UE4. I would like to see soon some focused on UMG interfaces.His books have been of great help in my learning process Unreal Engine 4.

digi-mech Apr 18, 2017

another great book, well worth the effort, a lot of useful information in here..

3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender: Combine the powerful UE4 with Blender to create visually appealing and comprehensive game environments

What do you get with Print?

3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender

Chapter 1. Unreal, My Friend, I'd Like You to Meet Blender

Installing Blender

Exploring the interface

Customizing your settings

Tip

Working with modes

Tip

Jumping into our first project

Getting things started in Unreal Engine 4

Summary

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