Empires on UE4: UE4 is FREE edition

Instructions Unclear



EDIT: Turns out the scale needs to be 0.5, not 0.01 as indicated in the video. You also need to rotate the mesh -90 degrees along the Z axis to import it correctly.

 

Did you import it as a static or skeletal mesh? Because I can tell you for a fact, that 0.01 is the correct scale. You need to apply the scale to both the mesh and the armature, if it is a skeletal mesh.

In any case, since there are still some problems here and there, I'll go about and write an import tutorial, when I am home. (In about 4 to 5 hours.) Maybe I'll also go about and try to make some nice textures for the old assets before making new ones.

 

Hey folks, really nice work!! Maybe you can write more tutorials? That would be helpful... What kind of people do you need... prefered specialization?

- Programmer
- Designer
- "Mapper"
- ?

Are you interested in a fund to buy (external) UE4 content, maintain servers?

 

Thanks flasche. I keep forgetting Source's stupid units. But to be honest, that would be something I would take care about when importing SMD files.

 

This image got me thinking, you said import first, change later, but i wonder how much of the current style do you want to keep. Stuff like brenodi Ars seem to fit well with the 'evil empire' thing, sans the plain ammo counter maybe.

 

I'd be more than happy for someone who actually knows what they are doing to write a tutorial. I managed to get it imported and working, but it's not the best.

 

So, I have 3 classifications: Programmer, Designer, and Artist. "Mapper" is part of Design. I really want people who think about creating levels for this project to think about the design of the game as a whole.

As for what is most needed? Another C++ programmer would be really nice. We could also use some designers who can start making maps and looking into gamemode creation. An artist who can work with me on taking the Empires assets and making them work in UE4 for what we need (removing extra bits, fixing up materials with the UE4 shader, etc) would be nice as well.

 

Converting from Empires Source QC/SMD to UE4​

First time set-up​

Open Blender, delete everything, set your scale to Metric and 0.01

optional: save as start-up file (Ctrl+U)

go here: http://steamreview.org/BlenderSourceTools/
download the tools

back to blender:
File->User Preferences->Add-ons->Install from File...

navigate to the downloaded zip and open it
make sure to select the add-on afterwards

if not already enabled, search for FBX as well and enable that Importer-Exporter too
finally press Save User Settings in the bottom left, then close the user preferences

Model conversion​

File->Import->Source Engine
navigate to the SMD (preferably the qc, because it imports everything mentioned in the qc at once)
put your settings like that:

then open the file

select everything, if not already selected
scale everything by 1.905 (Imperial to Metric conversion)
have a look in the qc file and look for $scale
scale everything again by what is written there

export base mesh (with armature), each LOD and the physbox in separate fbx files
the physbox is only required on complex meshes, as UE4 is quite good at creating collision meshes itself
to export:
File->Export->FBX

export

drag the fbx into the UE4 content browser (in the models folder)

click on import

go back to blender, go through every material there is on the model and look for the textures (material names should be the image file names)
open them with VTFEdit and export them
drag the exported images into the content browser (in the textures folder)

create materials in UE4 for every material used on the model
drag in the maps you have
you can simply copy the name from the texture images imported into UE4 already
put a 0.5 in roughness for now
put 1 in metallic, if the material is a metal, 0 if not

That's how I got this to work:

There are still some parts that could be refined (smoothing groups, but they are of no use without good normal maps)

Skeletal Meshes​

require a bit more work and they also require you to know what you are doing
I haven't tested it with the Source files yet, but in the essence, you have to import skeletal meshes twice. Once for the skeleton and then again for the mesh, making UE4 bind the mesh to the skeleton.
I would really recommend you only do this, if you know what you are doing or are willing to fiddle around to get it to work.

 

I've already done the work exposing the SMDs and getting the textures out of the VTFs

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5prZNxOmeijbUI1ZlJGTU5YNm8&authuser=0

 

Thanks for the tutorial f1r3w4rr10r!

That's great to hear! I'd like to design some maps... Maybe we can build 3 teams, because I (and maybe you) can't do and know everything and it is better to specialize in one or two fields (division of labour ;-))) ). Don't know, if this is correct/useful... however:

1. Programmer (Kylegar, ?)
2. Designer (D.D.D Destroyer, f1r3w4rr10r, Kylegar, Noname, ?)
3. Artists (f1r3w4rr10r, Redskull, ?)

So first, I need to know everything about designing a map in UE4. Does somebody know good tutorials, helpful sources/examples... whatever?

 

Here is how to do shit with Landscape (the terrain editor): https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Landscape/index.html

Here is how to do shit with the foliage stuff: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Foliage/index.html

There are some free resources here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/forumdisplay.php?12-Community-Content-Tools-and-Tutorials

This is going to be a very exploratory process. I can't lay down any hard rules here for what is best, as I simply don't know. The one main thing is that Level Streaming doesn't work right in Multiplayer (it only streams around the server in a listen server and doesn't stream at all with a dedi), so doing super large maps is simply not going to work.

 

I would recommend you link the post in the starting post, so it's easier to find.

Further, I did some small formatting and added a small paragraph for skeletal meshes.

 

What would be the parameters on map size?

 

Also Roy, you should probably put your .sln in the git ignore.

 

This is part of that exploratory process I was talking about. I don't know.

1 Unreal Unit == 1 cm. So you probably want something around 600 meters wide. You can go up to 22km, but that's going to be too large.

 

Alright, Problem solving time:

Adding the Srcpires art assets will make our repository much larger than Github's max file size.

Anyone have an ideas of a good free alternative that we can use? I do have some Azure time, so if someone knows how to configure svn such that it's easy for people to drop by and contribute... I can bounce back over to that.

 

How big are you talking?
Id imagine bigger than a shared dropbox account can handle?