Unreal Engine 5 Beginner Tutorial Part 3: Modelling Tools Basics

welcome back everybody to chapter three of Unreal Engine beginner tutorial Series in this chapter we are going to cover the basics of modeling in Unreal Engine now we talked about this before modeling is not the primary function of Unreal Engine 5 it is a software where you bring in assets from other softwares and marketplaces and build giant worlds but modeling is still a core function of any 3D World and so Unreal Engine epic games the guys behind Unreal Engine decided to create a modeling tab and a modeling tool set just for Unreal Engine so people can create assets within the engine itself and although a lot of the tutorials we found online do not cover modeling we decided to create everything in engine at least for the basics of it the spaceship design The Hanger design and so we're going to jump right into the basics of modeling today and F do you see the number of views on this video some people already gave up on chapter three oh my God guys come on but I got to say if you survived until now you're an OG so let's keep going so first thing we're going to want to do is just look at what we got we got a bunch of things in our scene we want to empty it out so let's go ahead and use the delete key just select the cube delete delete these particles I'm just going to go ahead and shift select on all of them and then delete them as well cuz I don't need them we can go ahead and keep our lighting and our floor the same it's all right and we're going to move all the way back now the modeling tab is supposed to be up here right if you go ahead and click this drop down right here on the top left side you'll see that there is a selection menu this is what we have by default because we're selecting things and moving things in our scene now if you were to go ahead and create a landscape you'll be using the landscape tool right it'll change your viewport a little bit slightly and you'll be able to create a giant world there's other things like creating fractures so breaking things or animation for uh the control R of different characters that you'll get to move around but there's no modeling tool and in order to enable it we'll need to actually teach you guys how to use plugins we're going to go to edit we're going to go to plugins right right here we will see all of the plugins that are available for us to enable right and if you look to the right side you'll see that they're all by epic games so these are all Epic Games owned plugins that you can add to the engine and there's a lot of things that you can use later on depending on what you're creating what we're looking for is modeling so we're going to search for modeling right there's three options we're only going to need the middle one modeling tools editor mode and you can see it's in beta and we'll find out why because it kind of breaks sometimes so go ahead and check that it's going to ask you to click yes so click yes and you have to restart your engine so we're going to do that and be right back save your scene as well all right we are back with our Unreal Engine open it's already restarted sometimes you'll get these different uh popups on the right side it's asking you to update your project we always go ahead and do it so just click update and right now we are in a different level it's the main level let's go ahead and go to our spaceship level that we've created to start modeling right now we can go ahead and go to the modeling tab right here because right now it's available it's right there far so we can go Ahad and select it there are some shortcuts like shift and a specific number so you can go ahead and use that we never do so modeling perfect right now you have the modeling tab open before we jump right into the actual modeling of objects we do want to talk about one thing which is really important before starting any project we talked to Clint pisher we brought him on the podcast if you guys don't know we actually have a bad decisions podcast happening they didn't know they didn't know oh my God every week we bring inspiring guests to talk to them about their experiences about their journey and we posted on our YouTube channel we interviewed blender Guru yeah the OG the goat of beginner tutorials right the donut tutorial shout out we' even brought in Clint the pisher and he was talking about and he was giving us a tip as to what all of his winners of the 3D competitions had in common and he said that they always start with references so it's very important that you already know what you're trying to create for us we're using a software just like all the other 3D artists called Pure ref it's free and it basically overlays on top of your screen as you're creating things and right now we've already dragged and dropped Google Images into our PF so just to show you guys an idea as to what we have for our references we have a bunch of different hangers and spaceships from Star Wars so some are fanmade like this one I believe is fanmade or from the games and some are from the movie itself right like this or like this we really like the hexagon shape hexagon hexagonal hexagon hexagon shape I never get it right hexagon shape for the spaceship so that's what we're trying to create and we actually have photos of our own spaceship that we created the first time in onreal engine so we're going to be following this exact look to model our scene let's go now farad we're just GNA pop this to the bottom right we're not going to need that right now let's go ahead and talk about the basics of the modeling tool now fard what do you think about a modeling tool right now just looking at it overwhelming I'm panicking okay don't panic calm down calm down I'll hold your hand hold my hand okay no I I can't I need to use the mouse you can hold their hand okay so on the left side we are presented with a toolbar the vertical one and that is the general category when you select each of them then you'll see on the right side our options change and within those options you have sometimes even more options now in today we're going to talk about some of the basics and the ones that are going to be most commonly used later on towards the latter chapters of this tutorial series we'll actually come back to the modeling tool and play around with different functions some of them are going to be really useful even if you're not creating the objects from scratch you can bring in let's say a spaceship from outside but make changes to it here so starting with a create tab this is the first one we're going to start with you have the Primitive shapes that you could bring by the place actors panel right here but instead this time you'll have actually some extra options that you can change for instance if you want to go ahead and drag and drop a cube actually I'm not going to drag it I can drag it so I'll just click it now the cube is following my cursor so I can just go place it anywhere I want in my scene and then I have all these options I can change like the width the depth the height and then there are other options like the subdivisions subdivisions are basically saying how many layers I want to cut my Cube into not actually slice it but in terms of its wireframe so in order to see the wireframe Farah what do we do show wireframe check mark there you go so I'm going to click it and I'm looking at the wireframe right now so these are basically the building blocks that hold my Cube every shape in the 3D world has a wireframe right and these wireframes are what create those shapes in the 3 3D software right now as you can see there's these are basically triangles as you can see the triangle shape I'm going to just increase the subdivision so you'll know what I'm talking about so if I increase this slider look at what is happening to my Cube there are a lot more vertices these are the vertices so these the little dots here and then the lines are edges and then the edges and the points the vertices connect together to make up a face and so right now for this same Cube the same shape we have so many more edges vertices and faces representing it and what that does is it causes our model to go from low poly which is low polygons to high poly when you have a high poly model you can then go Ahad and deform it even better deform it smoother and you can bend it smoother if you were to bend this we have a lot more detail so we can get a nice curved shape whereas if it just had four edges let's say you can only you can really not bend it anymore because you don't have the detail that's what subdivisions are for we're not going to need it right now so let's move on if you want to actually create this shape you have to make sure you click accept so anything that you do in the modeling tab you want to go ahead and click accept if you forget to do that none of the changes you made actually work so hit accept and just like that we have our new box our cube in the scene we don't need it anymore let's go and delete that there are other shapes that you can bring in for instance if you bring in a sphere I want to show you exactly what the subdivisions do so if you go ahead and bring in a default sphere here that Unreal Engine has let's go ahead and compare them side by side and see what happens so if you get close here fire can you see something I can see the edges you can see the edges so this is this is not perfectly smooth do you want your sun to have edges no no so if you're making a sun you want it to be perfectly smooth you do that by increasing the subdivisions on your model right we don't need this I'm going to cancel it I'm going to delete this what is stairs very interesting game engine right okay game engine you want to BU build worlds quickly so we have access to stairs you don't want to make stairs yourself you don't want to model them you can actually use the stair function right here and fud there are a lot of different types of stairs we can have check this out so we have the linear we have floating we have curved we have spiral right and all of these settings sorry I hit the drop down if you go to floating for example this is my favorite I can go ahead and change a number of steps to however many I want the steps width so they can be super wide for like a big Cathedral or something and I can even change the height maybe it's going to Zeus's Palace you know and the step depth step depth look at that super cool right I'm going to go ahead and hit accept and farud I want to show you something really cool are you ready yes okay this one is my favorite this one is called Cube grid and if you're a gamer this is going to be very familiar for you like I believe Minecraft or Roblox or some games like that might have similar functions I now have spawned a grid on the floor and I can go ahead and click drag to select an area and then using these shortcuts on the left side if I go ahead and push and pull so e and Q I can go ahead and quickly build a platform and guess what just like referencing there's something else in 3D that is super handy if you want to go ahead and create a scene a world right and you have multiple houses and apartments before actually bringing in all those confusing complex assets the best thing to do is to block out your scene set up your camera block out your scene and no exactly what you're trying to create and so this is what Cube grid is good for I can even go ahead and change my blocks per step to something like three so I can build things quicker so check this out e now I have this nice platform I want to maybe actually make it taller here yeah a tower and then I can go ahead and extend this even further and just like that if I go ahead and click accept I have now created the base of My Level so if this was the scene I wanted to create where there's a staircase and then you can go on top and then there's a tower I now have that and then I can use contr l check my lighting and see what my world actually looks like wow pretty cool right yeah right so far I think we covered all of the basics of Creation in the modeling tool there are some other options we're not going to cover it right now we're going to go straight into the function that we need to create our spaceship our hanger spaceship right so let's go ahead and quickly delete this we're not going to need it anymore hit delete now the one option that we're going to use is called extrude path now don't think to yourself that we magically know the perfect way to do this farad how many times have you created this this is the result of more than 10 times recreating the spaceship failing crashing and now you're here yes so this is not the first time we're doing this so don't think we are some sort of magicians who magically know how to do the spaceship okay we don't now in path extrude we have this grid that's going to help us draw out our shape more accurately the problem is right now I actually can't use it and you'll see why in a moment what we have to do is use our cursor to place down points on this grid and these points will be connected to each other using lines so I'll just draw it out for you so you'll see and once we select the last point we bring it back to the origin that's where we can actually pull out our shape I'm going to hit escape to undo everything just to show you guys how you can actually snap to the grid Farah what can we do we should use the snapping tool that we told you guys in the previous chapter so if we go to the top right here using the snapping tool for our transform for our movement right the first one not this one not the scale not the rotate we can actually turn this to a larger number like 100 we've already tested this before that's why we know the number and what happens is that the grid actually aligns with the bigger one that we have set up here and if you notice that little dot that was attached to my cursor is now only snapping to the points on this grid so that we can draw out an accurate shape if he changes to 500 far what do you think will happen every five grade you will move every five like five squares right so it becomes bigger and this is for a bigger shape exactly right so we want to go back to 100 we know that works for us and far this is the exact shape we're trying to draw right the hexagon we need to draw this precise shape so how do we do it let's start with the top Corner put your cursor right there yes so we have to put that in our grid and start drawing so how do we do that okay let's go so this is our origin right yes okay so we go up three units go up three units to the right yes we are exactly right there so this is our first point exactly again we've tested this multiple times with like four squares three squares this seems to be the perfect fit for us you can follow us exactly all right so this is our first point so left Mouse button click and now we have the line so we have to go now right down three squares right yes so write down so one square two squares three squares click again yes and then leftt down three squares right so one two three exactly so this is what you should have right now look around look around the scene you can move around perfect now we just have to follow this shape so we have to go six to the left 1 2 3 so now we're in the middle exactly 1 2 three perfect now we have this one right here right this this one right here and now we have to go three up left yes one two three do the exact mirror to the other side so right up left right no right up so one 2 three yes and it should be six in the middle now perfect so now all the all we have to do is just go back to the origin when we hit the left click button we have now completed our first part the shape and then don't touch anything you'll see why in a moment so once we click this now if you move our Mouse what is it asking us to do choose the width so far out right now there's a problem because I can only change the width to a few different units I want I want to move freely it's our snapping tool again turn it off okay so if you go all the way to the top turn this off look at what happens it becomes smooth again cuz we're not snapping anymore right we don't need the snapping right now at this point I mean maybe you do if you're trying to be precise we want to just choose a with ourself by any chance if in your system it is not rounded Corners you can go on the left and turn rounded corners on you can turn it off now see how it looks this is by default going to look like this but because we've done this before our one already had rounded Corners AR so while you're actually in the middle of this procedure you can go ahead and turn this to rounded corners and then you'll see that it's automatically rounded we can now in The Next Step go and choose how round we want it to be now I just have to let you guys know in case you have already changed some of the settings like interactive what these settings do we've done this before it makes the slider available so that you don't use your mouse and cursor to control the size you will use the slider there's currently a bug with this where if you turn it to fixed it will crash your engine don't touch it so don't don't do that go with interactive right now right so if we use this width far I'd say that's about right I think that's good Okay cool so I click my left Mouse button and right now since we have rounded corners on it is going to ask us to tell the engine how round we want it to be and we want it to be really round yes right so we're going to Max this out and then we're going to click again again the last thing we have to do I'm just going to move my mouse is if we bring our Mouse up and down we are actually choosing the Extrusion the height of our shape so I would say somewhere about here far what do you think yeah we're going to change the size later anyways okay so perfect we will now do our final click to prepare our mesh boom so guys this is precisely how you create your Hangar congratulations you've you've done the basic shape I will just quickly for anybody that was confused show you guys since this is still there I'm going to make my mesh complete check this out so complete means confirmed my shape is created extrude path has a few things that you can do so remember when you create your shape right don't think that you're immediately done you're going to first select the width then you're going to select how round you want it to be and you're going to extrude it right so there's three clicks involved as you saw earlier all right we're going to control Z we don't need that anymore we have our shape let's go back to the selection mode and now farad let's rotate this guy bring it back to the normal position cuz no one's walking againsts gravity in here so let's rotate this by hitting e 90° and it's perfect right so the thing I'd like to do is first understand how big our spaceship is because far we have absolutely no idea if this is the right size no based on our research we should go with the numbers of around 180 m in length and around 30 to 40 m in height okay so in order to actually measure something in Unreal Engine you probably can't use the perspective mode that we're using right now because use your finger let me no that doesn't work no no it doesn't work I mean you can try it I bet you can try but don't don't do it you want to go out to a flat out angle right right now we're watching this with a perspective and if you want to confirm that check this out top left bar the three lines that is just a few settings that you can enable for your viewport right such as show FPS like this is just a tip we want to give you guys right now click that I always click it in the very beginning of our project on the right side you'll now see if you click your viewport left click you'll see 20 frames and it's capping it actually can go to more it's just capping it because it doesn't want to go crazy but that means our scene is extremely light and our graphics card is extremely powerful 4090 baby so you can always enable that to see if your scene is getting too too heavy or not but actually the reason why I wanted to show you guys this is because right now we are controlling our field of view it's at 90 so if I were to change this you'll see that I'm changing the field of view of our camera so right now it's super wide and you can edit like this like if this is your preference you can do that I'm going to take this back to 90 but the reason why I showed you guys this is because with this field of view it's not going to be precise for you to measure anything that's why we're going to another option right here which is PR perspective this is the default view but you can change this to an orthographic view which is basically top front right left bottom all that stuff so if you change it to something like left you will see I'm going to change this to wireframe this should automatically change to wireframe I don't know why it's not don't worry about the warning basically in an orthographic view your sky and everything doesn't render so that's why you're supposed to go to wireframe mode wireframe mode is basically showing you guys the skeleton of your meshes so that's that's another option now I guess you'll have to learn it in lit this is where you see everything in colors with the materials with the light reflecting we're going to go to wireframe mode this is the mode you want to be in by default when you're going to orthographic views this happens all the time I don't know why in this time it didn't again it's good they learn how to change the wireframe exactly there's a lot more modes we're going to cover all of that later on so don't worry right now in the left side right this is the side of our Hangar we can view it from the top let's zoom out cuz I can't see it this is this is our uh hanger from the top we can view it from other angles if you like like the front and we'll get to measure it from the front so how do we actually measure it well the button for that is on your middle Mouse click right here if you just go to your desired location to begin measuring somewhere like here the floor we want to measure it all the way to the ceiling we'll just hold our middle Mouse button and then you'll see that a ruler appears we'll just drag it all the way to the top and far we need to change the measurement units yeah right now it's like 515 that's ctim yes so how do we change it to meters let's go to editor preferences Okay cool so this is the time where we tell you guys about the settings right there's two main settings that you can change in un engine one of which is screaming right at you at the top right corner and you're probably asking us why haven't you told me about this yet well because it wasn't time for it it's still not time for it by the way just want to show you that your project settings is right here there's a bunch of other settings that you can change the project settings is concerned with things like rendering right for this specific project and we'll be touching this later on but for now we're going to go to the other settings that you can change which is in edit editor preferences the editor preferences is mostly for your interface right your shortcuts things of that sort and what we're looking for on the left side there're the categories and on the right side are the details of each category we want to go to viewport that's what we're looking for viewports right here click on it the settings here change we're going to scroll down until we see measuring tool units we're going to change the centimeters 2 m 2 m yes and we're going to escape this we don't need it anymore and right now if you go ahead and use the same middle Mouse button pull it up oh my God only five m is that 50 or five five wait oh that's five1 yeah make it bigger that's so small what is our length Okay let's go to to left and then try to measure the length Okay from the front to the back 10 m this is the smallest hanger ever nothing's going to fit in there okay okay let's make it bigger okay so in order to make this bigger we don't even have to escape the wireframe in the left you know perspective view that we sorry left orthographic view that we have we can just select our hanger right here and far out let's just use the scale right to what eight eight okay we can do that just make sure you have your luck right here the lock selected right it's locked lock your lock is already locked so that you're increasing the ratio of all of the axes at the same time so far what was the number the magic number eight yes let's see if this works eight boom yooo that's huge let's check the height let's pull it up pull it up right here and let's see first of all the length let's see what we got so from the front to the back 85 not bad not bad okay okay let's go to the front I want the height to be around 40 m that's my desired height 42 not bad not bad we can do you want to make it slightly bigger just slightly yeah we can we can go for now we are eight let's go for 9 or 10 I think 9.5 let's do 9.5 okay 9.5 should give us a length of uh 100 which is good and for the front side we're getting a length sorry a height of 50 which is perfect go so we're going to go back to the perspective mode right again you can use these shortcuts like alt G you can learn them they're all there we never used it we never used it but you can use it and be faster than us but congratulations you have now constructed your hanger and the size is perfect this is a large hanger and you know the thing is right now you probably don't notice how big it is because you have nothing to compare it to but don't worry as we start bringing items into our scene we're going to look at the scale and understand how big the hanger is now naturally once you get better at unal engine you'll be able to bring in items really quickly what we like to do usually is just bring in a human character to scale to find out how big the the place is but right now because we haven't got into that yet we don't have that comparison but we're going to do it so don't worry Farah the next thing I really like to do and I always hate this is changing the origin point and the pivot point of my object cuz right now you see what happens if we try to rotate this it's rotating from the front right and I I I don't like that and if I were to reset the location of this to bring it to the middle of my scene from these arrows using these arrows look at what happens it comes to the middle but then the front part is in the middle and because the origin point is that also the middle part of my hanger I get half of my hanger below ground level I do not like that so I'm going to go to control Z and what I want to do is change my Pivot Point let's do it in the modeling tab that's right it is actually in the modeling tab that's why the modeling tab becomes really handy right and a lot of people need to start using it in unreal so if you go to the modeling tab right here click modeling and this time whilst we have the hanger selected we're going to go to x form right and then we see something called edit pivot pivot pivot pivot pivot pivot and when we go here we have the option to manually change the location and rotation of our pivot point so it's originally here we can go ahead and move it using these sliders to anywhere we want or hit contrl Z undo use some of these already calculated positions by unreal and more often than not they work really well so it defines the center bottom top left right back front and world origin of the mesh but sometimes they might just be different just looking for the very edges of my mesh right and the one I'm looking for is actually in the middle bottom section that's where I want my origin to be so I'm going to try Center Center works but it's in the middle I can pull this down but I want it to be exact so we go to bottom no top no left no right no back no front that's it front that's it front is the one now I actually see that it's literally at the very bottom here I'm actually going to even pull it up and just bring it it to the very surface that's what I want so I think this is this is perfect so this is the middle floor level of my mesh and right now that is going to be my origin if I go ahead and hit accept right the origin is now changed so if I were to rotate it's rotating from the bottom middle part and if I were to reset the location of my hanger look at what happens it comes to the precise world origin the 0000 of my X Y and Z and that's what I usually like to do with my models and plus we wanted to look for an excuse to teach you guys how to edit your pivot Points perfect hold on did you guys know you can speed up your workflow by using poly Cam's photogrametry instead of modeling and texturing yeah you just snap a couple of photos a voila plus your objects will automatically look photo realistic because they're actually real shout out to polyam for sponsoring this course and giving you guys 30% off the Pro Plan promo code and Link Link in the description so fireart what is next we have to close one end of our hanger right yeah cuz I feel like it's too open yeah we have two open ends and that's not good so first thing we'd like to do is go ahead and hide this floor cuz it's unnecessary you can go ahead and delete it if you want and then what I like to do is just close off one end so since the since the sun is just shining from here let's close off this end now you can go ahead and model this precisely and then have the end actually be part of the mesh but since this is used for cinematic even for games I guess sometimes people do that we can get kind of dirty with it and no one's going to even realize we can just go ahead and bring in a cube and block off one side and then use material on that Cube later on to act as the wall right so we don't have to make it part of the mesh the wall can absolutely be separate to save us time so we're going to go to place actor panel and then we're going to go to shape we're going to spawn a cube right drag it and then bring it right here it's fine if it's just sticking somewhere random you can use the reset button on the location to bring it to world origin and then what can I press vir to find this f f to focus yeah it's perfectly set in the middle of our scene so now we're going to use we're going to move back we're going to use the W key to bring out our transform Gizmo and then bring it all the way to the back here and then we're going to go to R for and make it big scale and then we're going to make it big so drag one axis perfect then we're going to drag the z-axis all the way perfect and then we're going to go to w move this up right a little bit more on the x-axis and then we're going to just move it up so that's somewhere in the middle and then we're going to go back to R and then we're going to scale it on this axis so I'm I made it big enough Fara just so that I know it's covering everything you know no light links yeah I don't I don't want to I just want to make sure there's no holes you know so that there's light coming through that's why so contrl Z and now I'm going to even make it a little bit deeper again just for safety I don't want any light leaks right just make it a bit deeper like that and then just pull it that's thick that is thick but I think it's fine I think it should be fine and I'll just let you guys know okay far you know that some people might be uh you know looking at a different design they might have actually not chosen this shape or maybe their shape looks slightly different maybe it's a bit longer or shorter so in any case you can just quickly hide this and then select your hanger if you're unhappy with the length just go to R and then just make it larger right you can you can do that we're not going to do that cuz we're happy with what we got we're happy with the size does size matter yes it does it does absolutely does absolutely does control L just to move the lighting a little bit and yeah I don't like the material you don't y do we want to change it yes okay cool let's do that you know what I think it's a good chance to also explain the two icons over here oh the two very important buttons okay cool how about that let's do it okay so now that we have this this hanger the problem is we're using this default material called the if you select it we'll see it in the details panel that it's called under materials for this for this uh spaceship hanger it's called world grid material and I don't like that as farad said it's too dark it is very basic and for the time being until we go ahead and actually create the materials for our hanger we can turn it to this white color so that it starts reflect ing light even more so that we don't get this pitch black dark areas we get to see our hanger more clearly so in order to bring in a material of course we already taught you in the first was it the first chapter yes how to go ahead and actually use the starter content and go ahead and take a material and drag and drop onto a mesh and that works but we want to teach you guys as farad said these two very important buttons you will use them all the time all the time so it's a good chance to learn it right now there's two buttons the folder with the magnify icon says hey whatever this material is I want you to find it for me in the content drawer cuz I have no idea where this is I honestly don't so click that icon and it pulls up your content drawer and it tells you hey it's right here in the engine content folder basic shapes when you bring in any basic shape it comes with the basic shape material so it's right here now I want to go ahead and steal this so yes I can go ahead and drag it drop it onto my model yay but there's another button to do that that's this Arrow right here so let's say I find this material okay I find it by going to this icon find it as soon as I've selected it I can then go to my hanger and then use the left Arrow to bring in whatever is selected in my content drawer and apply it to my material so do that and boom congratulations you've now learned the two most important buttons in onreal engine 5 you're going to constantly use this when you're going around different windows Windows you can steal materials meshes and switch out things using these two buttons so one to find the item in your content drawer and the other to replace it with what is already selected in the content drawer and just like that you see light is reflecting even more with a white material and we can see what's inside our handker more clearly okay congratulation guys the basics of modeling is finished yeah that's actually amazing yeah right we've we've learned how to model out the basic shape of the hanger and you guys probably can now create any sort of shape that you want the next chapter though we're going to go deep yes we're going to talk about the advanced tools in the modeling tab yeah see you there

Channel: Bad Decisions Studio

Views: 56,369

Keywords: unrealengine, unreal engine 5, unreal engine, ue, ue5, Unreal Engine Tutorial, Unreal engine for beginners

Id: nXOwczODahY

Length: 33min 39sec (2019 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 05 2024