Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Topics concerning mapping with the unreal 4 engine
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johnnyenglish
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Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Post by johnnyenglish »

I decided to start this topic because I forget stuff and I'm sure others will want to try to convert their maps to ue4 at some stage.

If you have different experiences or better methods, please feel free to post them here. Eventually I'll use this topic for a wiki page.

Stage 1 (Radiant prep)


Load your map into radiant and save it with a new filename. You're going to delete a lot of "stuff" thats not going to be needed and you probably don't want to spoil your actual map.

Delete all entities, models and clipping. Delete any brushes that are sky and of course any caulk hull that is 100% caulk.

You'll need to use radiant 1.5 for the next stage as the brush to obj plugin was removed in later versions (it's not included in 1.64 of radiant)

Select all the brushes in your map and run the export to obj plugin, don't forget to add the .obj extension as the plugin doesn't do this.

Blender stage

Import the obj into blender. Select everything (press A until everything is selected) then press Ctrl-J to join everything together.

Now we need to remove the rotation (X is set to 90 degrees) and to re-scale the entire map to 2.54

You'll also need to flip the normals at this stage, the option is on the right hand toolbox, uv mapping.

Now enter edit mode and start selecting faces which are smallish blocks of mesh which should be joined.

Split these from the main mesh (select the faces, press P and choose by selection). At this stage I normally assign them a material that describes the portion.

Eventually, you'll have something like this.

oz2.jpg


Once you've completed this stage it's time to export everything to FBX, I generally export only mesh, I choose smoothing by face and disable all other options.

You can now import this into UE4, I'll document this stage later.

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johnnyenglish
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Re: Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Post by johnnyenglish »

When I first started this project I kind of rushed into it wanting to get as far as possible as quickly as possible.

Now I've started again from scratch having learned a lot of important lessons.

Here's a few things to remember

The mesh you will export is one-sided, light will pass through the back of your mesh so consider making a sun blocking mesh to prevent this.
I decided to add this in radiant as I needed to clean up a few messy brushes anyway.

Basically I added roofs to my buildings, added a material to the back walls which will be facing the sunlight.

Only when you're 100% happy with your brushwork in radiant should you move on to the next stage... or you'll need to do it all again.

After Radiant

When you are happy with the map in radiant you will need to convert this to a model format that blender/3dsmax can use. Exporting to .ASE is relatively simple BUT, this converts your brushes into triangles. The only way to create polygons that I've found is to convert to .OBJ using the brush exporter built into the plugins of radiant 1.5.

The converted mesh from the brush exporter is "flipped" so you'll need to reverse this using your modelling tool.

So, import to blender, rescale the whole map to 2.54, flip the normals and begin chopping your map into discrete portions.

Choose the portion to work on, I'm going to choose the top wall.
Choose the portion to work on, I'm going to choose the top wall.

Go into edit mode (press tab) and select the faces you wish to connect as a single mesh, the upper wall portion in this case. Press P to seperate, by selection.
Go into edit mode (press tab) and select the faces you wish to connect as a single mesh, the upper wall portion in this case. Press P to seperate, by selection.

Create a new material (press the +) and name this descriptively. Give it a differnt colour so you can find it later
Create a new material (press the +) and name this descriptively. Give it a differnt colour so you can find it later

You'll need to create a new uvmap, HappyDay suggested to call this lightmap. At the same time rename the mesh portion to match the material
You'll need to create a new uvmap, HappyDay suggested to call this lightmap. At the same time rename the mesh portion to match the material

In edit mode uvunwrap that portion, this section is now finished
In edit mode uvunwrap that portion, this section is now finished


Work through the entire map breaking it up, creating uvmaps and so on.... I'll post the next stage later.

Lizart
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Re: Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Post by Lizart »

It works :D
Thank you Johnny for this tutorial.

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johnnyenglish
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Re: Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Post by johnnyenglish »

Hey lizart, nice to see you're still around.

Well, um, yes, it does kind of work but there are lots of minor issues to work out... but pleased it worked for you.

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johnnyenglish
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Re: Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Post by johnnyenglish »

Would love to see screenies lizart, I like screenies.

Lizart
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Re: Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Post by Lizart »

Ofc, as soon as i have something. Yesterday after pc upgrade I installed UE4 for the first time!
Gonna be lots of learning.

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johnnyenglish
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Re: Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Post by johnnyenglish »

Woo, exciting. If you need any help getting started, shout up in the irc channel, I'm normally around in the morning and HappyDay is there a lot also.

Lizart
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Re: Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Post by Lizart »

Sure I will ask, thank! :>

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DagF
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Re: Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Post by DagF »

Bump

What happend to the next stage? :)
Image

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johnnyenglish
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Re: Converting a urban terror map to ue4 using radiant and blender

Post by johnnyenglish »

I've learned a little more since the last post so I'll probably move this topic contents to the wiki and finish off the process.

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