Sources of Ready Assets & Tools

There is a lot of good and bad stuff in the Marketplace, but there are also some great tools on blogs and developer sites, so I’m always searching and grabbing what looks useful to me. What’s more, it’s a lot of hit or miss. For example, I think I have five tools for birds, but I end up using mainly one because of its simplicity and realism. I have a bunch of stuff I bought that I never use, so there isn’t much of a rule of thumb. Something may look good on the web, but you try it out and it’s awful. Datasmith is fantastic for bringing in assets I have in 3ds Max, and I like that UE4 is trying out the glTF importer, but they must also have an export in glTF.

Modifying Ready Scenes

If it’s a scene I almost always start changing the lighting. Not because it is necessarily bad, but because it might not fit the mood I’m after. Sometimes it’s just best to start from scratch as I did with my latest project, Victorian Seamstress. I use more reflections to bring out details and make things look crisper. The reflection balls are great, and I’m prone to overuse them because they are so fun.