What is this post all about ?

First of all, this is going to be a rather long post split into six parts. The reason for the lengthy size is that we will take a look at the whole workflow. This workflow means starting in 3ds Max and ending with our model inside Unreal Engine 4. Alright then lets start !

Modeling the Custom Chair

The first thing that we need to create is going to be the HP ( high poly ) model. This is a given if we want to have a good quality model when we later bring it into UE4. For this case i decided to go with a custom chair. If you read the FB group you will know that i kinda messed up with a NDA issue. This meant that i had to rerecord everything from scratch. So to make it safe i decided to go with something that doesn’t exist. The modeling of the said chair will show you how to use couple of different techniques. These techniques are like box modeling, modifier stacking, cloth simulation and a few others. Anyways you can see all of this in the video below so go check it out.

Creating the Low Poly

The second video will cover the creation of the LP ( Low Poly ) model. In the past i have created a few videos that were about retopology. Well this time around it was more of a simplification rather then retopology. This is because when you have a HP model that was created with proper box modeling it’s faster and easier. In the video below you can check out the whole creation of the LP model.

UVW Unwrapping

This is where it starts getting interesting. A lot of people for some reason find this complicated and hard. For this phase i wanted to show you two ways for UVW Unwrapping. In the first video i decided to go ahead and do the UVW Unwrapping inside 3ds Max. You can see how i did it in the video below.

Now if you watched the video above you heard me saying that i hate doing unwrapping in 3ds max. It’s not that it’s hard, it’s simply tedious if you ask me. This is why i decided to throw in a bonus video about Unfold3D. This is a piece of software that is used only for one thing, and that is UVW unwrapping. So if you want to see how that worked out, check out the video below.

Texturing the chair with Substance Painter

For the texturing phase i decided to go with Substance Painter. If you have never seen or used Substance Painter you are missing out. It’s an amazing software that makes texturing assets an easy task. Since i haven’t made any prior videos with the software i will stick to the basics. This means we will use already existing materials that come with the Substance Painter. So if you want to see how i did it, check out the video below.

Exporting the model to Unreal Engine 4

In the last part of the mini series we will see how to get the model to Unreal Engine 4. We will also see how we can prepare the model so we have no issues with the transformations. How to prepare the model for use of multiple materials in UE4. How to compile the materials so we can use the textures from Substance Painter. In short all the things that you have to do to your model to get it working inside Unreal. Again, if you want to see that check the video below.

Is that all ?

Well with this we covered the whole process of preparing an asset to go from Max to UE4. If you followed the videos you will have an idea of the steps you need to do. So i do hope you guys found this entertaining and educational. You guys learned the workflow, and i learned the importance of an NDA 🙂

In any case, if you liked the post like and comment on the videos and help spread the word around.