Maya To Unreal Environment Part 01 Project Setup And Maya Export

alright this will be a video tutorial series of how to export 3d models with textures from Maya into unreal we're going to take it one step at a time some will have several parts here this first part will be about overall setup and then how to export from Maya so though this is unreal I'm currently using in Rio 4.24 and I'm going to show you what the final output could look like two options for how you can get things into unreal then we will come back and talk about the export process in the next video we'll come back and now discuss the overall UI and navigation in unreal so this is unreal and if I hit the play button this is a third person template so the third person character the WASD move spacebar to jump and mouse to look around it is already set up for you as a template what come I can talk about how to do that what I've done is I've imported in my environment scene here and adjusted some lighting that's some custom lights from a light poles and make sure all my materials and textures load in properly so you can see everything should look pretty close to the way it does in Maya the lot Ian actually looks better and we'll talk about how this process works there really is two different ways we can export and then import into unreal we can import the entire scene as one FBX file so one general 3d file that combines everything into one mesh or we can export individual parts so like the wall piece sidewalk Road and then a window door frame so my entire building here is modular and setup so what we can do is export all of our pieces and then build our environment in unreal that's really for more of a level design standpoint the more accurate and proper way to import into unreal quicker and easier way to do this is to say you've or X work from my all of your models that's one mesh so that way it's one object you have to manage and deal with within and real it does have its qualms so one thing I will have to adjust is the way the lighting is set up I cannot do static lighting because there's a lot of overlapping UVs and there will be some shading issues so one thing I have to do if I import everything as one mesh like I would have done here then I need to change my lighting to dynamic lighting all dynamic removable lighting the other thing is when I do this all together I have to set up collisions for everything and it can cause some minor issues and take more time to set up collisions as I move over here I've set up some basic collisions which I'll get back to later show you those basic collisions as well but you will have to set up collisions for all the individual parts if you export everything as one mesh if you do it individually it's a lot easier to set up collisions and more accurate to set up collisions and individually but it will require you to reset up your environment in unreal but I'll go back through that process as well so this is unreal I've set up my project it's a new project in the next video we'll come back and talk about how to actually set up the project as well in a later video from Maya here's all of my meshes and they are right now individual so what we're going to do is combine them all together and export them I'll show you the two methods so the first one is going to take all of our parts our environment position where we want it to to look like the environment that you have in mind we're going to take all of these pieces and combine them together now what I would suggest you doing is saving this out as a separate file so if you go into file save as let's say combining for unreal so that way we can go back to our previous file in case we want to uncombined knees or whatnot so that's a good thing to do to start off with is to save a file as a separate file in case something happens that we don't want to save in our zero file for levels on standpoint we'd want to export out individual parts so that's the second method that I'll show you so this first method we need to select all of our objects and I do have them in groups but our group is not going to matter because I'm going to combine everything together so I select all of my objects for my environment and in the modeling toolkit I'm going to go to combine so have a lot of objects that I might take a second for it to do that I have some history so let's go ahead and rename that object so now we have we call this a mod props combined so whenever I combine doing some other modeling techniques I need to delete the history so two things and you do before I export into a game engine is delete the history and freeze the transforms so let's go first to edit delete by type in history that clears the connection from this object to any of the groups or anything else that might be set up so what that means now is I have all these other groups I can delete those out I don't need them anymore and here is my modular props combined object one of the things that's good to note is that when we export wherever the pivot point is that's where how we're going to be able to move it around in unreal so what will probably be good is if I come in here with the D key vyas change the pivot point and let's hold down V to snap to point and I'm going to snap this to this bottom right corner point over here so that moves the pivot point to this bottom corner so whenever we're exporting to a game engine we want to make sure that we know where the pivot point is because this is much more difficult to permanently adjust a pivot point in a game engine so before I freeze the transforms I need to move the pivot point to where I want the pivot point to be and then I'm going to hold down the X key that's to grid so X snap to grid V snap to point so I've all down the x key and click and drag I want to snap this to the center of the grid so that way when I import this into and real it's going to know that this object should be in the center of the grid from this point of view so before we export we want to delete the history in this particular occasion we also combined everything together and then move the pivot point to where we want the pivot point to be from the game into the same point and then hold down the X and snap to the grid and to move it to the center of the grid in the perspective view all right so the next thing we need to do is we've made some adjustment to the transform nodes and we don't want to have those as we go into the engine so let's do modify freeze transformations what that will do is zero out the translate and rotates and put a value of 1 for the scale as if this object is a base primitive now so technically we're ready to export with this object one thing I do want to mention next is that Maya's unit setup is much smaller than unreal unit setup so we're going to need to do some upscaling we can do that in one of two ways we can do the up scaling or try to start to do the up scaling in Maya or we can wait until we get into unreal unreal is about a ten times scale increase compared to what Maya is I know my project is going to require a little bit more than that but let's go ahead and that's a good kind of default rule I'm going to increase the scale from one to ten in the scale x y&z that's going to make my object which is my environment much larger okay so if you look at the size of the grid as we go to a game engine like unreal we're going to make sure that we increase the scale either from Maya or in under so an increase of 10 is a good start you may need to make your adjustment depending on how large your scene was to begin with so increase the scale to 10 and we've changed our transform so we actually need to go back and do modify freeze transformations as well so we'll do that again now we're ready to export our combining scene out before I do that I wanted to show my materials so even though I have one object I have really a lot of materials in here and that's fine as long as your materials are set up so I have a 20 materials or something like that as long as you have your different materials set up and applied to your parts of your scene before you export when you export an FBX file it's going to save out that material with it as well so once we get into unreal it's going to pull in those materials now one thing it will not do is pull in the texture connection to the materials we'll have to manually do that but what we need is especially if we combine our scene as one object we need our separate materials to go with our model so set up your materials apply your materials to your parts of your scene then combine everything delete the history moves a pivot point where you want that to be move the object with the pivot point to the center of the grid scale up your object to a value about ten times the size so if you put ten instead of one for the scale XYZ and then freeze the transforms then we're ready to export so this is Method one exporting out the entire scene is one object combine everything together and then we'll export so with that object selected we're going to go to file export selection I have other objects I never choose export all file export selection and I'm just gonna name it something different so we'll say mod props combined export always put in like export the end just to make sure the only things that really matter when the export is that underneath the geometry tab smoothing groups smooth mesh and that should be it just makes for smoothing groups and smooth meshes on it doesn't increasing geometry just make sure it keeps the heart and soften edges or what's called smoothing groups on there are the things you can turn on and off but we will just want to make sure from the geometry tab smoothing groups is turned on so determine your location so have a modular set project folder I'm going to make sure I put my export file in there and in files of type make sure you choose FBX we could do obj but FBX does a better job of saving all of those materials and naming those materials keeping the names for me so I want to choose FBX export I'm going to click export selection alright so it did that properly if there's any warnings or errors read those warnings and errors try to correct them google those warnings and errors if need be and find out ways to correct them what I did want to mention is that file export selection or export all if you go to the files of typing you don't see FBX it's just because the plug-in is not turned on so if I go to Windows settings of preferences in plug-in manager you may need to especially if you're working from home turn on FBX so we'll find FBX mono so if I scroll down in the plugin manager FBX my MLL loaded and auto load should be checked and then click close and then in export selection the FBX should be available should be one of the bottom two all right the second method is to actually export out individual parts I've done this as just an example here see it's actually add this object to this group so right click with that object so I can do add selected objects yeah so in this individual layer I have individual objects I'm going to move them apart so you can see them I'm not gonna in this video export out every individual part for my scene but I have four of them to show you how we can do this so what I would do from the overall environment is instead of exporting as one mesh for the entire environment I would export each individual different part so a lot of parts here individual wall sections doors windows columns trash cans trash bags railings a street lamp Road sidewalk pieces so I've made this in a modular fashion so that everything can snap together so one thing that I can do is it's this better for a loved design standpoint and can cause less issues and will also allow for static lighting to work properly is to instead export everything as individual objects so here's four parts a wall a window on the bottom floor sidewalk and a street base so I've already put my pivot points where I want them to be so that everything will snap together which is typically on the this bottom right vertex so right the vertex right vertex so once again we want to make sure we select these I've already deleted the history but make sure we go edit delete by type history and then move the pivot point for each one and then we want to snap the object cannot pivot point mode snap the object to the center of the grid for each one of these objects I'm going to be exporting each one of these individually so it's alright that they're overlapping right now but I'm moving each one up when I for sub pieces to the center of the grid so I know I'm gonna need an increase of about 10 so I'm gonna select off for those objects and increase the scale XY and z to 10 because everything is much larger okay and then I'm gonna select all these objects and go to modify freeze transformations so one thing I'm not going to do is combine any of these objects I'm gonna export these as an individual forms the z-fighting there is because I have my Street base right on top of my sidewalk section there alright so this method I'm gonna come in here and select this wall window small and anytime you are exporting we make sure our objects are named properly so that way as it goes into the game engine we know what's what's a wall half thick border wall windows small street base sidewalk straight so we want to make sure our objects are named properly before we export then also in our Mattila tour we want to make sure we know what our materials are so that way we can connect everything properly so make sure you name your objects and your materials now we're ready to export these parts as individual objects delete the history move the pivot point where you want it to be move the object to the center of the grid scale up everything by 10 and then delete or excuse me I'll freeze the transforms last thing we want to do is select each individual part and go file export selection okay so I already have some in here so I'm just going to call this one wall window what I call it wall windows small I'll do underscore - okay FBX make sure smoothing groups is turned on and export selection so I'm going to go to each one of these parts and export them individually so this is the wall half thick border I'm just going to do underscore 2 just because I already have one name this so we'll go street base file export selection underscore 2 and then a sidewalk straight so there would be export selection side walk straight underscore two okay alright so from our folder standpoint what we need to have ready before we start important into unreal are our FBX files so the ones I just saved out are these five right here my mod props combined export my sidewalk straight individual Street based individual all half thick border individual wall small window individual now I have a bunch more of parts so you will have to export them out individually if you wanted to combine everything together in unreal so you will probably have a lot more individual FBX s than just these four that I have so we need the FBX a--'s Maya files cannot export into unreal and then the FBX to save the modeling and in the material setup but it does not save Z texture files so you also need all of your texture files I have some of them as JPEG and then others as PNG files they need to be in the same location as the FBX files so more ready to import into unreal we will import the FBX models and the texture maps into unreal now we're ready to start important into unreal alright the next video we'll come back and discuss how to set things up in and real we'll do a brief demo on the UI in unreal and then we will come back and do some importing and material set up lighting setup in the overall process of getting your environment into unreal

Channel: bpcrews

Views: 18,696

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Id: K0Q6Bd_ZgUo

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2020