Blender to Unreal engine Pipeline Hey everyone, if you ever wanted to get into game dev with Blender and you haven't heard of the unreal engine send to unreal pipeline you must get it! Check this vid out to help you get started. Blender For Unreal Engine This Add-on allows you to export content created with Blender to Unreal Engine 4. StaticMeshs, SkeletalMeshs, Animations (NLA and Actions), Collisions and Sockets, Alembic animations, Camera and sequencer. It works with Blender 2.8, 2.9 and earlier versions.
- Blender To Unreal Engine 4
- Blender 2.79 Export To Unreal Engine 4
- Importing From Blender To Unreal Engine 4
- Blender To Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial
You should be able to make an object for collision in Blender and export/import that. For this you have to use a naming convention, where your collision objects are named as follows:
- I made a free addon for Blender which will speed up vehicle rigging process, you can get it here. Blender 2.8 or newer installed. (As I am creating this tutorial, I am using Blender 2.8 beta version, but it should not differ much in a stable release or newer versions.) Unreal Engine 4.21.2 installed.
- You can have some infos about importing from Blender to Unreal Engine 4 from this page: https. Importing Rigged Character and animations to Unreal Engine 4.
UBX_[RenderMeshName]_##for boxes/cubesUSP_[RenderMeshName]_##for spheresUCX_[RenderMeshName]_##for your custom (convex) shapes
The ## means 'some digits', which can be used when you have multiple collision objects for a single mesh. You can find this and more info at: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Content/FBX/StaticMeshes/#collision
Disclaimer: I have not tested this myself with exports/imports from Blender.
If you want collision with the geometry exactly as you already made it, and don't plan to make simpler collision shapes, then you can set 'Collision Complexity' to 'Use Complex Collision as Simple' in your static mesh settings. This can be useful when you quickly want to test your scene before spending time on your collision modelling.
Hopefully this helps you with what you tried to do. Now, lastly, it might still be beneficial to export your items as individual models. Then you could, e.g., move tables in Unreal Editor when the office layout changes, or allow the player to open drawers.
Creating a destructible object in Unreal Engine 4 & Blender
While Chaos physics engine is on the way. We were testing approaches to make destroyables in Unreal Engine 4. Here you can find how we did it.
Requirements
As always we start by pointing out what we would like to reach:
- Artistic Control. We want our graphics artist to be able to create destructible as they wish,
- Don’t break gameplay. They should be only visual representation not breaking any gameplay-related stuff,
- Optimized. We want to have full control of performance and don’t break CPU performance,
- Easy to setup. They will be configured by graphics artists so we want them to be easy to configure without too many steps,
We were searching for best references that fit our needs and we found that destructible from Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne fit perfectly for us.
Basic Idea
The basic idea is easy:
- Have base mesh which is visible,
- Add mesh parts which are hidden,
- On break: hide base -> show parts -> enable physics,
Preparing assets
We are using Blender for object preparation, we recommend using it too.
To create fracture mesh we use Blender Addon called Cell Fracture.
Enable Addon
First you would need to enable the addon as it’s not enabled by default.
Search for Addon (F3)
Blender To Unreal Engine 4
Then enable addon on selected mesh.
Configure Settings
Run addon
Check out our settings from video.
Select by Material to unwrap the cut parts
Then just create UVs for parts.
Add Edge Split
Edge Split will correct shading.
Link Modifiers
This will apply Edge Split modifier to all selected parts.
Final
This is how it looks in Blender. Basically we don’t need to model all parts.
Implementation
Base class
Our destroyable is an Actor who has a couple of components:
- Root scene,
- Static Mesh which is our base mesh,
- Box for collision,
- Another Box for overlaps,
- Radial Force,
Blender 2.79 Export To Unreal Engine 4
We are configuring some things in the constructor:
- Disabling tick, (basically always remember to distable tick on actors that don’t need it)
- Set mobility to static for all components,
- Disabling affecting navigation,
- Setup collision profiles,
In Begin Play we are gathering some data and configure them:
- Search for all parts using “dest” tag,
- Setup collision for all of them so artist doesn’t need to think about this step,
- Set mobility to static,
- Hide all parts,
Destroying part
There are three places which will trigger break:
OnOverlap
For example: when you want to break if someone is dashing or using the specific thing like rolling ball 😉
OnTakeDamage
When destroyable is receiving damage.
OnOverlapWithNearDestroyable
This one is important. When you put one destroyable on another one. In our case, they both break as we don’t want to have too many specific physics issues to handle.
Breaking Part Flow
Handle sleep
When a part is going to sleep (from sleep physics event or forced sleep by delay) we are disabling physics/collision and set mobility to static. Thanks to that performance will increase.
Sometimes your physics asset won’t go to sleep and will still update even if you don’t see any movement. We are forcing all parts to go to sleep after 15 seconds if they still simulate physics:
Handle destroy
After breaking we are trying to check if we can destroy the actor (eg. player is far) if not – check again in some time.
On Part hit callback
We decided that Blueprints are responsible for audio-visual part of the game so we are adding Blueprints events where we can.
End Play and clearing out
Our game can be played in editor and custom editors created by us. That’s why we need to clear out everything we can on EndPlay.
Configuration in Blueprints
The configuration is simple. You just put parts attached to the base mesh and tag them as “dest”. That is it.
Graphics artists don’t need to do anything else in the engine.
Our base blueprint class is only doing audio-visual things from events that we provided in C++.
Begin play – load necessary assets. Basically, in our case each asset is soft object pointer and you should use it as well even when creating prototypes. Hardcoded assets reference will increase editor/game load times and memory usage.
On Break Event – spawn effects and sounds. Here you can find some Niagara parameters which are described later.
On Part Hit Event – spawn hit effects and sounds.
Basically we are always trying to implement logic in C ++ and use the Blueprint to configure parameters and do audio-visual things.
Utility to Quickly Add Collisions
You can create Utility Blueprint for Asset Type Actions to generate collisions for all the parts. Much faster than creating it by yourself.
Particle effects in Niagara
Niagara is life changer now. Here you can find how we created this simple effect.
Material
Erosion, color and alpha comes from Niagara.
As you can see most of the effect is coming from the texture. We could use B channel here to add more details but currently, it’s not needed in our case.
Niagara System Params
We use two Niagara Systems: one for break effect (which is using base mesh to spawn particles) and the other one when a part is colliding. (without static mesh location)
Niagara Spawn Burst
Niagara Particle Spawn
- We sample static mesh which comes from the destroyable,
- Pick random Lifetime, Mass and Size,
- Chose color from user color parameter, (which is set by the destroyable actor)
- Spawn particles at mesh verticles location,
- Add random velocity and rotation rate,
Sampling Static Mesh
To be able to sample static mesh in Niagara your mesh need to have AllowCPU checked.
TIP: In current (4.24) version of the engine if you reimport your mesh this value will reset to default. And in shipping build when you try to run such Niagara System with a mesh that doesn’t have CPU Access enabled you will have a crash.
That’s why we have added simple code to check if mesh have this value checked.
Which is used in Blueprints before spawning Niagara.
What is cool you can create an editor widget to find Destroyables, and set their Base Mesh AllowCPUAccess variable.
Here’s the python code which is searching for all destroyables and set CPU access on the base mesh.
You can run it directly using py command, or create buton to run this code in Utility Widget.
Niagara Particle Update
On update we are doing couple of things:
- Scaling alpha over life,
- Adding some curl noise,
- Change rotation rate using a custom expression
(Particles.RotRate * (0.8 – Particles.NormalizedAge)
Sometimes it’s easier to do custom expression than a curve. - Scaling particle size over life,
- Update material erode parameter,
- Add some vector noise,
Niagara Learning References
You should definitely watch some presentations about Niagara. We will be doing more Niagara focused tutorials over time.
Importing From Blender To Unreal Engine 4
Why we are using such an old-school approach
We could use the current destroyable system from UE4 but we want to have better control over performance and visuals. You should ask yourself if you need a big system for your needs. In our case, we don’t. As for Chaos, we are waiting when it will be production-ready.
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Blender To Unreal Engine 4 Tutorial
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