Tips for blender users

[lastrevenge]

Making this post for people who want to use blender with UDK and are just beginning . Hope this helps out. I will try to add on when I can think of various things to add on.

Simple Checklist
1.Make sure your mesh is a manifold mesh, to check just click the decimate modifier but dont apply it.
2.With 2.64 you dont have to worry about the vertices limit, but if you are working with blender 2.49 or lower for some reason you can only have a limit of 1000 vertices total collective from what i have found out.
3.You are most likely going to be scaling up your mesh a lot with it, just remember to apply your scale location etc with ctrl+a.
4.Use normal maps when you can. Once you learn how to use them they can greatly improve the game engine rendering performance.
5. Generally best to have at least 4 bones in total when exporting.
6. Triangulating is generally from what I have found unnecessary (mainly because I think the script does it for you). To triangulate, use ctrl+t and alt+j to undo it. Sometimes the alt+j doesnt always work but oh well.
7.Generally best to make sure your mesh is UV unwrapped somehow whether UV smart unwrapped or just unwrapped. It wont look that good in UDK if you dont.
8.Generally best to make sure all your meshes have Materials assigned to them.

At the moment I cant think of anything else. Have fun!

[James Ordner]

Almost all of these tips apply for all 3d packages, not just Blender. However, a few don't really make sense. Number 5 doesn't apply, and triangulation is important for baking normal maps externally in programs like xNormal. Using alt+j is just Blender's best guess at converting everything to quads, so it makes sense for it not to e 100% accurate. It's best just to undo with ctrl+z if you accidentally converted to tris. Blender also has a fancy new 'Triangulation Modifier' that keeps the triangulation constant across the model without converting to tris, which is useful for the previously mentioned external baking and exporting. Also, you can just go into edit mode and use 'Select Non-Manifold' to check if there is any non-manifold edges, rather than having to use the decimate modifier workaround.

[lastrevenge]

Well If you dont have 4 bones if i can remember right blender gives you a warning error. Most of the time people will probably have more then three anyways. I geuss, but you dont have to worry about when you are just doing test exports to make sure everything is right. In the end though I guess you are right and it is best once you have a final product to triangulate. As for the triangulate modifier, i cant find anything in the list. Yes you are right about the Manifolds to. Im just saying if you want to check.

[James Ordner]

As for the triangulate modifier, i cant find anything in the list.

It's in 2.65.

[lastrevenge]

Oh okay. Im using 2.64 for now.

[darknet]

What blender export are you using?

[lastrevenge]

export version 2.5 that comes with 2.64

[Odedge]

3.You are most likely going to be scaling up your mesh a lot with it, just remember to apply your scale location etc with ctrl+a.

This never made much sense to me. I don't know why you wouldn't just create the mesh to the size it's going to be in UDK? The grids are equal.

I have a random tip: If you don't want to see a grid size smaller than 1x1, open up the properties shelf (Key=N in edit mode), expand the "Display" section, change "Scale" to 64 and "Subdivisions" to 8. You can have as many "Lines" as you want.