Empires on Source 2 : Source 2 is FREE edition

i dont really get your point, you had to learn hammer and find a fitting workflow aswell ...

this baking stuff and what uv means is nothing mystical and unless you do highly detailed animals or humanoids not as complicated as you seem to think it is.
also you dont neccessarily need to bake normalmaps at all (you will want to use it later i bet you as you can archieve way higher detail at lower cost)

theoretically you could make your whole map in blender and then copy it over in parts. but its probably faster to align your stuff in ue4 right away as you get more of an idea about the results.

if you need anything specific with blender i will give my best to answer.

 

i wonder how performance is on that. it even says so on the manual pages for geometry brushes, unless its really simple shapes, static meshes are better. but it also seems you can turn geometry brushes into static meshes - idk why youd want that, its gonna be so much easier to create in a 3d suite where you have all those nice functions and modifiers and whatnot.
noone ever argued about possibilities. you could do the above in hammer aswell - only lighting/reflections will look worse (and if its a room with angles different to 90°, its gonna be a drag to do in hammer)

also something 3dsuite haters seem to forget, unlike in hammer its possible to scale static meshes, maybe see them more like youd use textures in hammer. you dont need to create each wall by itself ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9wRN7gZkyk a series of 6 videos, he doesnt use all that many different props, neither are they overly complicated to create.

yes its probably a bit more work as long as there are no static meshes available, but in a few months this might have changed (hopefully) - then kitbashing will be a super fast way to create awesome looking levels.

edit:
maybe we should start a list of meshes mappers will need so whoever is bored can pick something and we eventually will end with enough stuff to create something nice?

 

mapping in unity is not so different from how it is in ue4. i have only downloaded unity5 so far, but if it isnt much different from 4 you get a way better package with ue4 - unity youll have to do almost everything except for the renderer by yourself.

edit:
oh i lied i installed it aswell

edit2:
alright, version5 comes with a lot more useful standard assets. 4 didnt even come with a c# character controller and getting js and cs to work together was a hackish hackjob
now it even got all sorts of vehicles, thats nice

 

I think part of the reason you might want to create static meshes of brushes is so you can import that mesh to a 3d suite so have a better guide as to how big you need to make something, or simply shape it. That's what most tutorials say, block it in with brushes then replace it with meshes made in a 3d suite.

The other reason especially for people coming from hammer that just want to work with brushes is lighting gets funky with just brushes, light will bleed through corners when it shouldn't, so you convert it to a mesh then lighting problems are gone.

 

you are right, we should stick with a horrible outdated engine for as long as its not working exactly like hammer.

 

Yes, sorry that was inappropriate.

But wouldn't it be better to find ways to work around the admitably steep learning curve instead of criticising something we cannot change easily? We can teach eachother, we will need to anyway, theres a lot of tutorials to be written, its supposed to be a community project, the more there is a community the better chance its getting done. The more contribute the faster its done. Each crate, barrel, rock, pilar, statue, wall, door, fusebox, vent, pipe, valve, gear, desk, chair, stool, couch, bed, plant, trim, fence, railing, staircase, flag, poster, lamp, road, floor, locker, chimney, supportcolum, i-beam, railtrack, sign, post, watertower, gastank, hatch, and what else not, helps at this point - all stuff you can easily get started with before you go about a full scale level. There is basically nothing of that, its not coming with a ton of props like source does.

Yes its a lot of work to create all those art assets needed.

 

i wanted to ask you anyway so i aswell could do it publically. i plan to do (or at least start) a short kickstart-introduction to blender (=from null to something in UE4) specifically aimed at mappers/contributors this weekend, would you proofread it? (also my workflow, you are way more experienced then i am - and ofc im happy about anyone else wanting to help, i just dont know who knows his way around blender already)
i thought ill do a fire-extinquisher since it will cover a lot of stuff already - reference images, round shapes and holes, extrusion along a path and whatnot - any better ideas? im open for suggestions ...

... also im a fan of written tutorials and i have very little clue about screen recording. if anyone wants a video with sechsy flasche voice in austiran accent, would someone be willing to show me through the process? i dont really want to waste time on learning that all by myself aswell either.