UE5 Advanced Vehicle Lights Tutorial Part 1 : prepping the mesh

all right guys welcome to the first video on the advanced lumination system in this episode as you can see we will be setting up the materials and exporting the mesh into blender setting up the materials for the headlights so we can actually start using them in game this episode will not include any Blueprinting yet this is just prepping the mesh and getting it ready for the light system that we have and uh yeah uh this is the preview for it as you can see this is how it will look at the end of the episode and uh the other videos will be coming out pretty soon I'm actually working on them as we are speaking but it would be easier in my opinion to make it in different parts uh it will make it easier for me for actually making the videos because they're shorter and I can edit them like in parts and for you guys as well so you have a natural ending to the episode uh anyway I quickly want to say before the video starts thank you so much for the support lately um it is absolutely amazing and uh I I want to do this for the rest like of my life as of right now it's way too early to say that but uh yeah I hope you guys enjoyed this series thank you so much for watching and uh yeah I hope you guys enjoy hello guys welcome to the first episode on this Advanced illumination system um in this episode we will be working on getting the mesh prepped and making the materials for it the reason is going to be split up uh into different parts is because this is quite an advanced setup it will take a little bit of time but I promise you it's it's worth it as you saw in the preview um in the first episode this one like I said we're going to be prepping the mesh this will involve a little bit of blender if you already know how to separate um parts of the car and apply different material to it uh by all means use your respective um software if you do not uh know how to do that don't worry I will be explaining everything step by step so you can just follow along it's really easy to do um if you do not have blender I would advise you to probably just stop this video right here um download the software and then get back to me so we can get started or if you don't want to do it then that's also completely fine there is no other way to do it as of right now to make it look good um so yeah I'm using a method that involves a little bit of blender um I have have to mention that this is a continuation of the previous episode on the vehicle um system if you guys haven't seen it yet it's just how to set up vehicles for your game like this one and the reason I took this car because in that episode we made two different cars the reason I quickly made this one offc screen using the same um principles but the reason I did it is because later down the line we'll be adding special vehicles that like include like turrets uh tanks stuff like that so that's why I put this car in so we can continue working on this one with the turret and everything but uh yeah without further Ado let's get started and the first thing we are going going to do is actually go find the mesh that we're using for this vehicle which is somewhere here like I said if you have a different car this will work um you just have to do with that car but the principle is the same so the first thing we are going to do is actually go into the asset actions and then press export and just put it wherever you want I'm just going to put it on my desktop for now next thing we are going to do is actually open a blender I'll be back once blender is fully started up all right guys now blender is fully opened up you will be met with this screen if it is your first time uh um what you can do is just click in any of this area and it will go away this is the default project that blender starts you out with but we don't need the cube and the uh camera and the light so we're just going to delete everything in here and also the collection on the top right next thing we're going to do is go to file import fbx look where it is um where the model is that you are going to need uh for me it is the Light Armored car one there you go now that we have this we're actually going to get started on prepping the car for the lumination system so the first thing we are going to do is actually click on the mesh and we're going to press tab to go into edit mode or press the top here and go into edit mode and we're going to go to the third option right here on the top left which is actually select mode this will select vertices instead of the single poly so go into the face select I'm sorry it's called face select and now we're going to see what we need so the first thing we are going to do is actually I'm quickly going to double check everything in this project as you should with your as well and what we're going to do is just see what is what so as you can see the headlights they have this border around them so we only want the inside part so go back into blender and as you can see on the mesh you have the outside part and then the inside we're just going to select the inside like so for both of them oh by the way uh if you don't know if you hold shift and click you will actually select multiple uh faces like so next thing we're going going to do in the bottom right right here you can see material we have currently two materials in here one for the vehicle itself and one for glass yours might be different depending on what vehicle you're using and all we want to do is just click on the little plus icon here and create a new material down here it says new we just want to create a new material and we're going to call it mcore headlights after that all you want to do is click on the assign button right here and now it is assigned to that mesh you can test this out to make sure that everything is properly I'm going to give it like a random color let's say like red and if you then go into the I think it's yeah in the shading I'm sorry in the shading tab as you can see now the headlights have a different color than the rest of the car meaning that it did work okay so the next thing we'll we'll continue with the front and then move our way to the back so if you go back right now you can see the next thing we need is the blinkers right so go back in the blender and for this we are going to do it slightly different uh if you go back into edit mode by pressing tab or in the top right going to edit mode you want to select the blinker like so and also on this side there is also a blinker like I said every car is going to be different but as you can see on this side there is also a little blinker on the inside so go back in the blender and select this one I'm going to go through this a little bit fast because everything is going to be the same after this so we're just going to be selecting the faces for the blinkers like so and that is the front but we do want to have both of the areas to be the same oh uh if you don't know how to rotate like this you just hold the middle Mouse button I know some people might be completely new to blender some people might not so if you already know all of this uh I'm sorry I'm trying to explain it as best I uh as I can to like new people so after you have the front selected we're going to go to the back because we also want the back blinker to be in the same material so in the back just select the blinker there you go and now also we want to check the back here because one of these is also a blinker so look in the back and it is the middle one so go back here the middle one select that select the top and select the bottom like so all right now that we have that we do want to have one side is one material the other one is the other one so you have blinkers blinkers on the right and blinkers on the left once you have that you just want to go back here make a new material click on new call it m/ _ blinker I'm going to say right and assign to it now we want to do the same thing for the left side I'm going to go uh faster on this one but uh principle is completely the same [Music] so all right guys now that we have that we're just going to be doing the same thing and creating a new material and we're going to call this m blinker left and assign to it there we go now the final thing we're going to do is the tail lights and the reverse so if you look the tail lights are the top parts and then the bottom ones they have a little bit of an indent so go back in the blender now we see it's going to be this one and the bottom one as well so just select all of them and this one can be all together because they don't have to animate independently so we're just going to be selecting all of them and then uh make one material for it so give me one second while I work on this there you go and now we are going to once again make new material click on new call it m slash um I'm just going to call it brake lights but you can call it whatever you want once again there you go and if we now go into the shading tab as you can see the blinkers will have the materials for it they will have a different color meaning that we successfully um change them to a new material okay all we now want to do is we are actually done in blender if you press tab you go back into object mode click on the car and what we want to do is export the vehicle we're going to go into file export fbx click on wherever you want to uh put it I'm just going to say I'm going to override the other one so click on the car and we want to select Armature and mesh now why do we want to have um Armature and mesh in blender Armature basically means that it will get exported with a skeleton if you don't have this you will have a static mesh meaning a mesh without a skeleton and this just won't work you can't you cannot make the chaos vehicle system with a static mesh you can if you do it modularly um like separating the wheels and separating the body that is possible but uh for this tutorial and just in general I would recommend making a um a rig making a skeleton mesh if you don't know how to do that I can do a tutorial on it just let me know in the comments down below um but yeah let's continue after this for the transform everything can stay the same for geometry it really depends on what vehicle you have if you have a high poly one it might require some different settings so do your own research on depending on which one you have but because this is low poly we don't really need to smooth anything and now for the Armature the one thing I am going to do is actually not get Leaf bones this will basically add extra ex ra bones to the skeleton uh we're needed but we don't need that so double click on the car everything is fine and Export fbx like so and we can actually close blender I'm not going to save this because I don't really I'm actually going to keep it over for a second all right now that we are back into our skeletal mesh right here what we're going to do on the top here it says repport base mesh if you click on the little drop down here reimport base mesh with a new f file click on that select the vehicle that you just exported from blender and it's going to say that um there are new materials for it just say reset to fpx fail to merge bones that is fine Yes again there you go now the materials will look a little funky um as of right now but that will go away once you save that um um a little bit of shading issues but once again that basically goes away once we start applying all the materials to it the one thing you are going to notice and I'm going to show you that if we go in game as you can see the car will be broken nothing works nothing is simulated and that is because the physics asset is no longer attached to it to fix that all you have to do is basically just go into the vehicle again and under right here it says uh animation uh physics asset click on that and it will give you this error all you want to do is say okay and now all the collisions are gone except the wheels but we don't need that because we also want to have Collision on the body so what you can do is actually click on this one shift select the bottom one delete all of them and then you can say plus and then what you want actually no you don't want to do that I'm sorry what you want to do in the bottom right um you actually want to go here where it says primitive type and select the single convex hole and then in the bottom here it says regenerate all bodies and just give it a second there you go now it will have generated some stuff that we don't want so for example this plug I'm not going to use that so we can get rid of that the glass also doesn't need to be simulated get rid of that and the steering wheel also does not need to be simulated we just have the body and the vehicle uh and the wheels for the wheels just click on all of them by shift selecting them go in the bottom here and then say um regenerate them as spheres regenerate the bodies and there you go you can make this more advanced you can for example say that you want to have a multic convex hole to make it more accurate like so I'm not going to do that because I don't really need that it does need to be hyper realistic and it's simulating anyway so once that is done just close this down and now if we go into the game as you can see the car will be working as intended again and everything is fine okay now we want to get started on the material go into the core folder or wherever you want to put it right click and we're going to start with a material like so we're going to call this M for material underscore and we're going to start with the let's say the brake lights so breake lights like so click on that and what you want to do now is actually open this up and click on this now for the material domain this is actually going to stay surface for the blend mode we do want to set it to translucent why I will show you that in a minute once we get started it's easier to explain it if it's already in there but what we are actually going to do if you hold three and click you'll get a three VOR that is basically the color that you want to have so for this one let's make it like a nice redish like so and we are going to apply save for now and now what we want to do if we drag this in you can see that it will already be working now now depending on a variable that we will be setting up this will be either emissive or it will go back to the default value which the default material is actually the polygon military vehicles in this case or just take the um take the one that you have so I'm just going to go in here I'm going to copy this and I'm actually going to paste this now if I uh put it right here and I apply and we go into the armored car we go to the brake lights right here and we apply this as you can see it will be the default lights like it was but we don't want to have that we want to have this if the car is turned off right so what we are actually going to do is create a material that is going to change depending on a variable that we are going to be setting up so what you want to do is actually from this we want to lurp this value and if you don't know what a lurp is it basically just goes between A and B depending on the alpha value like so and we want to put that in the base color and now if it's 0.5 it will actually just be a blend of both of them if I set it to one it will be the uh default color to make it easier for us we're actually going to be switching them around that will make a little bit more sense later down the line so just do that and now if I set this to one meaning that the vehicle will be on or the brake lights will be activated you will see that it actually it's hard to tell but if I change this to like a green let's say and we actually look this Alpha value default value is one why is this not working do we have the oh we actually have the vehicle in here which we don't want we want to have the M brake lights okay they there you go there they are so now they are green right but if we turn the alpha down to zero they will go back into the original um material okay good now what we want to do from this is actually if you hold one and click you'll get a constant variable and we want to right click convert to parameter and we're going to call this parameter the blinker um intense oh not blinker I'm sorry the brake intensity okay now we are going to put this into the alpha of the lurp so we have a variable that we can adjust just later down the line if necessary click on the color I'm going to put it back on like a reddish like so and now if we for example set this default value to one once again it will get the red color and now to make it shine more or how do I need to explain this to make them actually look like they are working in the uh emissive color we're actually also going to do a uh lurp okay another lurp and this is actually also going to be the breaking intensity for the Alpha and the value is going to be if it is zero then we want to have zero in the intensity okay now if it is one we actually want this to be a fairly High number so I'm going to say 35 and as you can see now it's glowing if I go into the game uh into this mesh now you will see that it is glowing it actually looks like they are breaking but the color is wrong why is the color wrong because this value the um emissive color actually needs to be this color right multiplied by the number that you want so 35 as you can see right now if we save this now you will have your red color and they will be emissive like a tail light wood okay that's basically pretty much everything you can play around if you have like glass for example if we change this texture to be like glass I don't know if we have it no we don't have that but if you for example want to have that is just glass um or glass on top of this what you could also do or give it like a glassy effect um you could make another material over it and have the glass there I'm not going to do that in this tutorial but you can definitely find tutorials on how to do that okay so this will be the breaking material so um right here I'll put comments right here so the multiply is to set the intensity and this lurp will be um from zero intense intensity to 35 intensity on the light and then this will be just if zero use default material okay now that we have that done I'm going to set the default value back to zero because we know it works now and there you go so the brake lights material is done now for the blinkers they're going to be pretty similar um they're actually going to be similar the only thing that has to be different is the intent like this name so what we're actually going to do is go back into the brake lights we're going to right click and duplicate them and we're going to call this m uh blinker left for the blinker on the left side for the color we're actually going to make it like an orange like so and this name we're going to change to blinker left intensity like so save that always make sure you save so you don't lose anything and I'm going to click on the color and I'm actually going to copy this hex code if you don't know you can copy this code or you can hold this like left Mouse button hold it and drag it here to save the color so after that we are actually just going to close it again and duplicate this one again call it m blinker right okay and right here what we are going to do is actually change this to be blinker right and I just noticed we didn't really have to um copy the code because we just duplicated it that's my fault but if you set it to one as you can see it still works perfectly fine and now the last thing we want for this vehicle is headlights so we're going to duplicate this one again call it m headlights like so open this up and this one will be like an whitish yellowish color something like that let's set to one and check out how it looks that is fine for me and we're going to just be naming this the headlight intensity there you go okay after everything like that is done go back into the skeletal mesh and we're going to be assigning these blinker materials to it so for the M blinker left you can just copy the name because we keep the nameing convention the same so M blinker left for this one it is M blinker right and then for this one it is the headlights so M headlights there we go and there it is now if if we set all of them to have a default value of one so blinker left blinker right and the headlights and the brake lights now all of the lights will be working on the vehicle so if we save everything and we go into the skeletal mes and there you go you have your lights on the car already now if I put this into a into the game um it looks pretty nice right but if I now make it dark in here so let's just make it dark like so we'll say like 0.1 so we see a little bit and we press play as you can see the lights are there but they're not actually Illuminating anything they're just like just lights like an emissive color but they're not actually shining a light um that is what we're actually going to be doing in the next part in next part we are going to be working on setting up the fog light like actually the spotlights and the point lights in order to make everything uh shine bright and uh yeah if you guys enjoyed this video uh please leave a like comment and subscribe this will be a quick series I will be posting multiple videos a week hopefully we can get this done in like two or three parts but uh this was was episode one if you guys enjoyed it please leave a like comment and subscribe and uh yeah I hope you guys enjoyed the video

Channel: Rebake Studio

Views: 130

Keywords: UE5, UE5 Vehicle, UE5 Car Lights, UE5 Lighting, UE5 Tutorial, UE5 Vehicle Lights

Id: LGqUw3HwOEs

Length: 28min 37sec (1717 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024