Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: Hey, everyone. Welcome to my UE five level
design blockout class. In this fast paced
hands on session, you'll open Unreil Engine five and follow along as we
block out a complete, gritty urban rooftop compound from scratch in just 1 hour. You'll learn pro
techniques for shaping modular structures,
multi level rooftops, industrial details like
HVAC units and vehicles, plus verticality with stairs and walls to create
playable spaces. By the end, you'll have
your own finished blockout and reusable workflows for
any three D game project. I've helped hundreds of students
speed up their blockout. So if you're ready to build something cool, let's jump in. Hit play, and I'll see
you in the first lesson.
2. Modeling and Texturing Primer: We've got a brand new seam or level open in
Unreal Engine Vive. We're going to design
a level from scratch, do a blockout pass and wing it. Think of what the spaces, what the goal is on the fly. Now, we're going to be using the built in modeling tools that are available up on
this shelf here. If you press Shift five, you can shortcut
it to opening it. What this does is create
geometry that then gets saved into a file usually called
underscore generated. It's going to live somewhere
and that's how you get in game geometry that you can model on the fly without bringing anything
in from blender. Something I wanted to note
before we get started, and this is a change that's in all the newest unreal updates is that the geometry
you create with the modeling tool won't
have collision off the bat, so you can change that or fix it by opening up
the modeling mode, press on this cogwheel and
under new mesh settings, it'll usually have a checkbox
next to simple and complex. Just click on Complex only and then you get
your collision back. So if you make
something like a box, you hit play and your character walks right
through it, that would be Y. I just have the third
person template so we can run around with
a third person character. Like any blank canvas, the best way to start is just to put something, anything in it. We already have a box here. You create shapes
from a selection of primitives next to
the create tab, and when you want
to manipulate it, you go to the model tab, click on polygroup Edit, click on a face and
you can pull it, push it, change the shape. Presenter to accept. You'll notice that when we push and pull the faces
and change the shape, the checker pattern texture
gets stretched along with it. In order to keep a consistent scale in
our blockout texture, I would go to level prototyping folder materials
and drop in one of these gridded textures
or materials. Then now when we push and pull, it doesn't affect
the grid texture. Those are the basics. Let's just go ahead
and place a bunch of primitives and see where this
blockout session takes us. I'm going to build a
taller structure here. Give it that MI underscore
prototype grid top dark. There's these other ones.
It's really up to you. I like the one that instead of this uniform grid all around, this one detects
where the top of the geometry is and then
applies a darker texture to it. That helps distinguish between what's a floor and
what's a wall. I like using this last one here.
3. Using a Scale Figure Reference: I think maybe I'll
add a bridge of some sort that connects
these two blocks together. I just pressed shift one to
go back to selection mode, and I'm pressing Control
space to bring up the hidden project folder tab. But you can do
that manually just by clicking on content drawer. So if I press play, I'm going to be spawn
where this icon is. I don't have a way to get
up there at the moment. Let me just drag this over
here to test how this feels. Right away, the
scale of this is way smaller than I was imagining
as I was blocking it out. One thing you're
going to want to do that's going to be very helpful
in your blockout session, I'm going to go into
the character folder, find the mesh of our
character that we were just controlling and then drag and drop him
into the scene. And this will serve as a scale reference for
when we block things out. Already, let's bring
up the modeling mode with Shift five and go to the modeling
tab, polygroup Edit. I want to widen this platform so it doesn't feel
so narrow and same goes for this bridge. I would also move this mini tower over
and extend this bridge. Let's make it thicker too. Make it look more sturdy. Now let's try that again. Oops. Feels much better. Now let's see how it feels to
walk underneath the bridge. I think maybe we
could stand to raise this so that the feeling of walking underneath it feels better too without it
colliding with the camera. Very much. Just slightly. I'm going to bring
this platform up too. So Then this needs to be expanded as well. Let's go ahead and add some
structures surrounding this first platform that will give players a
way to reach the top. Maybe some kind of like a
dock type of structure.
4. Modeling the 1st Building: So far we've only been
using the box primitive, but there's a bunch of
other options here. This would be a good opportunity to use the stairs primitive. Let's play with the sliders here to make it fit our purpose. We got one on each corner. And then we just need something to bring the player the
rest of the way up. Instead of stairs, that could
just be a stack of boxes. Or maybe it's some
kind of machinery or HVAC or something that
players can climb over. You can bring the players spawn objects back
down to the ground. Check how the stairs feel, check if we can climb over those boxes and
get to the top. We can. Go ahead and apply
these textures. In fact, I might go with different one than the
one that darkens the top because these are more
props and they're not really solid structures like the rest of these masses are. Now we know we can
get to the top. But still feels
pretty narrow out, push this out this way. Then instead of having the player go directly
forward to cross this bridge, maybe it will be more interesting expose
offset to the side, so they have to maybe not go in such a
straight line across the roof in the interest of breaking up the
path even further, we could add another box here. Let's assume this is a
rooftop HVAC equipment occupying this space
in the middle. And, maybe I'll give it the
gray all around material. Let's try cylinder this time. Just to give it a little
more visual interest and also block line of sight. Give it the tiling grid
material. We have an idea. This could be very far from
what the final art would be, but it just gives you a little context clue of
what that's supposed to be.
5. Modeling the 2nd Building: Let's adjust this building to accommodate to be able
to catch that bridge. Up to this point,
everything's outdoors, but be cool if this leads
you inside this building. In order to do that, let's bring this rooftop down to the
level of the bridge. So you have actually
something to walk into. Then let's construct a
wall around it to create a room push this in about a wall width. Copy paste, chan over. I want to show you
something interesting. It's a quirk of how the
modeling tool works and unreal. I have two copied
and pasted items that are basically an
instance of one another. Watch what happens if I change the height of this
wall and press Enter. Notice the wall on
the right updates two to stay the
same as this wall. This is something you
have to be mindful of because you might decide, I need another wall in the back here and copy and
paste the wall, line it up here, and then you want
to close this gap. You use polygroup edit and pull this wall out like
that to fill the gap. But look what happens
when you press Enter. You just updated all the other walls that this is a copy of. This is something that's
going to take some getting used to but you have to keep track of which
geometry is copied and which one is brand
new knowing that now, we know that if we change this, it's going to change
the other walls. In order to have this
be its own thing, go to the form tab and
press the duplicate button, hit Accept and now when I extend this to fill
the gap and press except, it's not going to
affect the other walls. Remember what I said
earlier about how all these meshes get
saved under a folder. Typically, underscore
generated and each of these different shapes are saved somewhere and all of these
reflect the saved geometry. They have their own own identity
and their own location. If I save all, you'll see let's see. When we go back to generating? Somewhere here it is. Underscore generated
in the DBOsFolder DBO stands for design blockout. This is where all
our geometry lives. You might recognize some of these shapes like
the cylinder one that we just made. This
is where they all live. When we duplicated
this back wall, it created another
one of these files. That's how the modeling or the geometry the
geometry data is stored.
6. Finishing the 2nd Building: So you're probably just
going to have to go through a bunch of times
where you change something, it updates another geometry that you didn't
want it to update. But that problem is going to become less and less
as the better you're mindful of this cork so let's take a moment
to take control of our character again and just test out what
we have so far. This is good. I like how this cover or line of
sight blocker is human height. So if there's a firefight here, you can duck behind this and get a sense of safety and cover. Go across. This is a
decent sized room. I think the ceiling
height is good too. Generally, when
you're building or designing for a
third person game, you want to push the ceiling a little higher than it normally be if you're trying to be
strictly realistic scale. Now that that feels good, let's go ahead and close off this second story room
with the remaining walls. I want this front wall to be different from all
the other walls. I don't want it to
update anything else. I'm going to go back to X form
and duplicate press Enter. Then I can make all
the changes I want without worrying about it
affecting anything else. Same thing. Once again, this wall has to be
its own unique length. Finally, let's start
with a new shape for this and put a top put the
roof back on this building. Need something here as well. Supply our materials.
You know what? We probably don't
want the width of the doorway to be the exact
same width as the bridge, let's narrow the doorway by adjusting our walls. Okay. I'm going to push that into
so we don't have Z fighting. Z fighting is just when two
pieces of geometry that are occupying the same space or
surface are in conflict, so you have weird
texture artifacts. The shape and size of that
doorway looks much better. Let's move our
reference character over to see how he fits. That looks good
to me. Let's just throw in a light in here
because it is super dark. Let's just throw in a basic point light. The middle of the room.
7. Controlling the Flow of Player Movement: Let's test it. Up to the dock, up
these boxes around this Each fat machine
and into the room. Yeah, the ceiling height of this room is working real well with our third person character. The doorway feels
nice, feels right. Again, it's much larger than it would be for real life or even for a
first person character, but it works well with the
third person controller. And we can continue
on with our blockout. Now, we have this cool moment
underneath the bridge. Let's have you start
in a place where you get to actually walk underneath it and I'll have this character point this way. Let's see how that feels. Let's say I start
the level over here, come around this corner,
go under the bridge, and then climb up here. As far as the flow
of player movement, I think we can have our
players spawn somewhere over here and guide them to walk under this bridge and turn right over
here to climb up top. In order to encourage that, let's add in a bunch of walls. This is serves as the
perimeter of the level. I want to stretch this
out to filter this gap, but I want these two walls
to remain the same length. I'm going to duplicate it so they can maintain their
different lengths. Stretch this out another wall on this side. I do want to close this off, but I thought it'd
be interesting if maybe you can see this
area before you can reach. It's looking like
this environment is turning into an industrial
urban location. Maybe some of a chain link fence that you can see through. And
8. Controlling the Flow of Player Movement Pt. 2: He. In fact, there's a lot
of space over here. Maybe we can guide the
player to come to this area, see this section
first before making their way under this bridge. We can do that just by blocking the bridge a bit. Maybe they're starting
somewhere there. Okay. It could be some structure right there. Although it's very
semi as this one, I don't want another two L shaped fences right next to each other.
It's a little odd. We could do with more
solid structure. That's also a bit taller Let's play this level
for a get a feel for how all these walls
and new blocks feel like. They're definitely
accomplishing the goal of directing us in a
certain way so that we experience the space
in a particular order. And I think this box could
actually be some kind of security outpost or a
security checkpoint with somebody inside letting
people pass through. You open up the modeling
tool window and hollow this out so that there's maybe even allow the
player to go inside of it. Now, this wall, I
need to push it back, but I know it's a
copy of another wall. In order for that change to not affect the original
copies, I duplicated it. Same here. Duplicate this, it except, and then
make the adjustments. Just like this
second floor room, using this as the foundation, and I'll add individual walls. Actually, to get a better
sense of the scale, I'm going to copy our mannequin, place the inside and see
how that looks right away, I can tell that the
wall is too short, so let me pull it up at the top.
9. Modeling the 3rd Building: Also keeping in mind that if we want the
players to coincide, then the ceiling has to be extra tall compared to how it
might be in real life. Already, we increase the
height of the walls, but I'm pretty sure
we also need to expand this box horizontally. I want to take four
and pull it out. Probably need to at
least double the size. And you just witnessed that thing I warned
you about where making one change to a copied
object could make unwanted changes to
the other instances. Let's go ahead and grab
this and duplicate it. Push this back in and hit play to see how it
might feel freak got inside. Okay. That's fine. Let's copy that
wall to the front, copy this as well. All of a sudden, we need
to push this wall out. You see how important it is to always keep scale
in mind and having a scale figure like this goes a long way in keeping track
of the scale of your level. Probably you need to push
this wall out as well. I think for a
checkpoint like this, typically it's not for
just people walking by. You'd have a it's more typical
of a vehicle checkpoint. I think this will make this path wide enough for
cars to pass through. Basically one at a time
and maybe over here is a little parking area. I think this wall could stand
to use for height short. This pillar that's holding the end of the fence
needs to go up as well. Now, we just boxed in
our mannequin here. Let's create an opening. There needs to be at least
a doorway over here. Copy this, pull it forward. Duplicate. P out. I want to duplicate this. Then we're going to create
the top of the doorway. Like so. I forgot
to duplicate it. Let me fix that now. Pull down, push back out. Oh, this can start to
get a little annoying. You lose track of
which ones are copies, which ones are duplicates. But we're on top of it now.
10. Finishing the 3rd Building: Probably going to need
an opening here as well. I think this is going to be there's going to have
to be a window here. Duplicate. Push in, copy paste duplicate again so that I can pull this it play. All right. Now it's
starting to feel like a checkpoint box room. We'll just copy and paste the floor to use as the ceiling. And do we need a light
in there? Maybe not. Let's go ahead and
replace the textures. I'm hitting a control space every time I want to bring
up the content drawer. Let's do the same with fence. I'm going to push the
end up to the wall. Get rid of that one, turn
this into a duplicate. Also turn this into duplicate. You can trim this length. We need to resolve
this outer wall here, close up this gap. Before I change this,
I probably going to want to duplicate this as well. Pull this up. Let's apply the grid textures to the outer walls
to the inner fence. Duplicate this pull this to the end maybe raise the
height on this too. Everything's covering
up, looking nice.
11. Modeling a Vehicle Cover Object: Let's hit Play
again. Let's imagine this is the start of the level. You just entered this
compound or facility. I walk past the security
checkpoint. You can go inside. Maybe there's some
items you can pick up, go around the space
is fairly open. We talked about how it
could be a parking lot. Go around under this bridge. Go up these stairs,
climb up these boxes, go around this object and
into the second floor room. This space is feeling
pretty empty. Let's go ahead and put
some objects in there. If this were a third
person shooter, probably want to have
a combat encounter here in this space I'm going to quickly model something that
approximates a vehicle. And let me pull this guy
out of that security room. Next to the vehicle, so I know that it's the correct scale. And when you hit
the polygroup edit, so far all we've been doing
is pushing and pulling faces. But you'll see that
there's actually a lot of other options. The operation that
I want to look for is actually
insert edge loop. I'll choose an edge. That I want to, you don't
have to choose an edge. Just click the Insert
Edge loop and then you'll have this
preview line that shows up where you can add edges. I added two and then I
want to extrude that face. You can probably see where
I'm going with this. That is the top of the car. Then let's pull in
some edges to make the vehicle a little
bit more aerodynamic. I would not spend too much time on trying to make this pretty. We're just trying to
approximate a vehicle so we know what the context
is for this space. I think that's pretty decent. You can tell us a car. Okay. Then let's add
a prototype texture. Let's add a couple of these. Maybe two in a row like that. I'll push this forward so it's more believable
that a car can pull in here and have enough
room to maneuver to go into a parking
slot, push this guy back. Now if we turn this into
a combat encounter area, then there's some
pieces of cover.
12. Finishing the Level Blockout: I think we could stand to
add something here as well. Maybe this is one of those mini cargo container just occupying the space here, slap on that material. Let's have a go with our third person character
and see how that feels. And it could even be
sneaking encounter, there's a couple of guards on a patrol route in this area, you could duck
behind these cars, wiggle your way through
around like this, hide behind this
cargo container, and then proceed undetected. As far as the scale
and the placement and the density of cover there down in that initial area,
it's feeling pretty good. You end up in this room That was a really quick blockout of, I guess, a modern urban
industrial setting for a small a linear
single player level. There's all kinds of ways
you can expand on this. You could add a doorway here
that is initially locked. And then once you come
around to the second floor, maybe there's a stairway in this corner that leads you
down to the first floor, and then you can emerge through this locked door from
the other side and open it to end up at
the starting area, which could be really
cool way to loop back around and make use
of the entire space.
Design Boy, 3D Designer
