Unreal Engine tips to remember
- Check the UE5 Marketplace every month to see the free projects available.
- If your project crashes, try deleting the config file. Similarly, if Maya or UE5 crashes, deleting the preferences should help.
- When importing objects, it’s recommended to combine meshes and use real-time Nanite.
- Creating a new project in UE5 is equivalent to creating a new level at the Basic Level.
- You can view UE5 statistics such as Lumen and Path tracing light. Path tracing provides better-quality light renders.
Stylised rendering: If you want to adjust the post-processing volume, create bookmarks first. Once you have the bookmarks in place, you can create a scenic or cinematic camera that suits your needs. As a lighter, you might find it helpful to switch to Detail Lighting mode in the Lit section of the engine. This will allow you to see the shadows more clearly without the distraction of textures and materials. When it comes to importing assets, it’s worth using a separate project to check them for any issues before migrating them to the main project. Finally, it’s recommended to use the USD file format when importing meshes.
Here are some important guidelines to keep in mind:
– Avoid combining meshes as it can make troubleshooting more difficult.
– When exporting from Maya, make sure to uncheck the skeleton option.
– It’s recommended to set up the scene in Unreal Engine to ensure better recognition by Lumen.
– Ignore the “smoothed groups” warning as it tends to appear even when not relevant.
– After applying smoothing groups in Maya, the situation worsened significantly.
– USD file format is generally better than FBX, although the latter is less problematic.
Importing the project to the UE5
After setting up the scene in Maya, I exported it as a single fbx file to avoid any potential issues with the usd. Since I knew that combined meshes could be an issue (especially with Lumen), I made sure not to include this option in the import. However, the first issue I noticed was a very bright light despite the interior being closed off. I wasn’t sure if the walls’ lack of thickness was affecting the lighting in Unreal, so I went back to maya and added a thickness of 0.2. Additionally, I deleted the history on all the assets, froze transformations and double-checked the UV maps.
After reimporting the scene into UE5 and verifying that everything looked fine (which suggests that I was right about issues with the thickness), I migrated the items into a new project to ensure a problem-free workflow To start the set-up in Unreal, I adjusted the settings in classes and built a new level. After that, I focused on building basic lighting and landscape. The next step was to import meshes without combining them. I also added a third-person mannequin to check the scale of the level. As I changed the scale in Maya to 0.1, I had to scale up everything ten times. Though the real-world scale method might have worked if I had been rendering my project in Arnold, it was an unnecessary step when working with Unreal.
After adjusting the scale, I recheck the lighting. Adding the thickness to the walls has helped, but I still needed to block the lighting near the front wall. I focused on creating a free passage of daylight and connecting the interior with the outside. To achieve it, I placed planes near around the door area to block any unneccessary light sources. I also ensured a smooth transition between the dark entrance and the bright interior near the large window. Lastly, I looked at the position of each mesh to ensure they were in the correct place.