Unreal Engine: Understanding Maps, Levels, and Sublevels using the Levels Tab.

welcome back to my friends in the vfx animation and virtual production industries we're going to continue some basics of unreal this time going a little deeper specifically into what i've titled my project here as maps levels and sub levels and how to create a little bit more complex setups not that you need to but you need to understand how those three things work together what's similar what's different and it's really just a way so that you're familiar with what's possible you don't have to work this way at all but it is important that you understand how it works so you can decide if you do want to work this way so when i say this way what am i talking about let's make sure we're understanding levels versus maps first they are the same this that we're looking at here this is the map called third person example map the map that you have open will be named up here in this tab your map is also your level that's open same word same thing map level map level same thing this is a level this is also a map let's look at that here in the uh content folder if i look in my third person bp this is just the standard third person game template and i'm also pulling in some starter content which is as you set up a new project checked on there and if i go into this maps folder notice generally your folder is going to be called maps where you hide your levels so i'm going to go into this folder and here you'll see this thing called a third person example map if i hover over it it tells me it is a level see it in parentheses there i can't move my mouse over it but you can see the word level after a third person example map meaning they are the same thing so let's go into this starter content folder which came in again with this template that i chose and turned on with starter content there is a again a folder called maps here with three levels i have a starter map is the name of it and it is a level and so i'm going to double click that and when you double click that will load in that map now notice up at the top here it says starter map so this is what i just double clicked to load you can only have one level open at a time when you're working in unreal similar to maya you can only have one project open or one scene open at a time kind of the same idea so now i have the starter map open uh my game is completely gone and now i'm just have this uh this starter content map loaded let's double click this one here minimal default let's look at this level and i just have a couple a table and a couple chairs here is the outliner is updated to reflect what is in my current open level and that's this stuff here right so there's that chair there's the other chair and let's look at this advanced lighting level i'm going to double click to load that one and i just have a few things in this nothing nothing crazy there right so all of these are different levels there are different collections of things uh put together in these levels i'm gonna go back to this minimal default one for a moment and you'll see uh it's just got some stuff in here so now let's go over this third so that's maps and levels same word let's talk about uh sub-levels and a sub-level it's not necessarily you'll see this word around but it's kind of a common thing that's referred to think of your car and how you organize your trunk the things that are in your trunk or your boot depending on what country you're in watching this so all the things in your trunk you might have one trunk full of just stuff you got your jumper cables you got your spare tire you got your on a windex or whatever you do to keep your windows clean and you just kind of just throw it all in the back your your trunk that's kind of what we're looking at here i have this level open and it's just got a bunch of stuff in it yes there's some folder structure here but in terms of all the things in there it's just one big collection of stuff right that is totally a valid way to work people work that way i did my project that way uh it's there's no reason that you necessarily need to change that but there is a feature that we need to go over which allows you to work differently and to organize differently and that's using sub-levels so let's talk about what that is if we add a new tab here called the levels tab for managing all this if you go to the windows window drop down go to levels and open up the levels tab mine goes here because this is where i always keep it yours might come out floating for the first time you use it so if it is just click and drag drag the name levels to right there the level that you have open which for us is minimal default is shown here and that is always going to be called your persistent level so just think of think of it meaning like the open level the one that you opened your main level that you opened again if i for example double click on this starter map right and switch over to this one i just opened that level and now that is referred to as the persistent level so the persistent level means the level that you opened all right so that's that's kind of a glossary definition there that we need to be aware of so whichever one you open so again back to minimal default here all right so we have this level open now i could add if i want to add a mannequin to this level i could do that you know i'll just throw one in the back of the trunk just like all these things are in there and let's do that so i'm going to go to the mannequin folder go into character go into mesh and i'm going to put female mannequin right there totally doable she is now part of this persistent level called minimal default level and if i save current now she is part of that level which is fine you can totally work that way so i gonna hit delete and go over a different way to work you can pull in other levels let's let's make a new level with just a mannequin in it and then we'll come back and and show what i mean so i'm going to go to file new level make a brand new level and i want this new level to be totally empty nothing in it so i choose empty level i made a slight change to this minimal default level by deleting the mannequin out of it after i had saved it so it's just confirming before i switch and do a different level do i want to save the changes i've made sure so save content or save selected all right so now i have a brand new level there's nothing in it right it says untitled i haven't even saved it yet there's nothing in here nothing in the outliner it is currently the persistent level because that's what i have open let's save this new level let's save this new map i'm going to do file save current as and i'm going to make uh you know this the pro and con about unreal is you can kind of make as big a mess or a little mess or highly organized as you want i'm gonna make yet another new folder called map remember i have one here under starter content which is all the maps for the starter content i have one here under third person bp which is the map for the game content that came in the default now i'm going to make yet another folder for my own custom map that i'm making at the content level i'm going to right click new folder i'm going to call it maps because even though it's saving levels it's just the standard you should get used to that you put your levels in maps full folders all right so i'm going to double click to go into it and i'm going to call this my solo girl mannequin right so i'm just that the name will make sense in a minute so i'm going to save that all right so now i made and saved this just to confirm where i put this i put it in the new maps folder and i have this level open currently called solo girl confirming that's the name of the level i have open and there's still nothing in it it's it's just an empty level so i'm going to go to my content browser go to the mannequins characters mesh and i'm going to put my female mannequin in my empty level i'm going to go to the details tab and put her at 0 0 0 because for me that's where i want her so i'm going to hit this little button here there's a little shortcut to zero all this out so i don't have to type zero zero zero and now that puts her at that location so this level has just the female manikin while i'm in here i'm going to go ahead and throw a point light in here as well in case i open it and i want to have some light in there i'm going to put that also at 0 0 0 by clicking the button there pull it forward a bit up a bit back a bit right so hit f to frame on her and the light is affecting her in this level so there's two things in the solo girl level i'm gonna say that's good enough for this particular level and i'm gonna save that all right save current why might you do this so let's let's go back for a minute why might you even mess with this whole sub-level business again you don't have to but it's a feature you can use if useful if you're working with a team of people and maybe one person's a lighter and they're taking care of all the lights and another person is doing all the effects another person is maybe building the environment you could all be working in your own levels and concurrently using source control and then use a master level use a master persistent level to pull all those things together for kind of a final assembly of the project of the work so that that's kind of why you might do this again you don't have to do this but you do need to know how this works so you can decide for yourself if you want to do this in the in the trunk example talking about the car this is the idea of putting a bunch of little boxes in your trunk maybe one box has your cleaning supplies another has tools another has i don't know what else are your groceries you could throw it on the trunk by itself or you could put it in separate boxes which is kind of what we're going to talk about next and go back to this where are we here we're going to go back to the starter content we're going to go back to the minimal default map so i'm going to double click it's going to load that other map again it didn't ask me if i wanted to save the loaner girl because i already saved it prior to just double clicking right so now we're back to this minimal default map it is the persistent level because that's the one we just opened i want to now pull in or reference that loner girl level and the way you do that is you go to levels here in the levels tab go to levels and you add an existing level that already exists not the one you have open but another one so i'm going to add an existing level it's going to pop open a browser i got to go find it so i know it is uh did i not didn't i save it in here uh where'd i put am i blinking did i not save where did i put that level oh well okay so check this out blinking here on i thought i put it here didn't i put in this maps folder are you all think i'm crazy all right here's how we're going to confirm where i actually put that map i did save it didn't i yes i did so this is perfect this this is not a setup this is legit i don't know where that level is so here is a super handy tip so that you can also find levels when they go missing i'm going to go to the content top level and i'm going to use this filters tool you can see i actually already did it here once but let me remove that so it's not there i'm going to go to filters and i'm going to look for all my levels from the content folder on down so it searches recursively and i'm going to check level and i must have not saved that level after i added her and swapped it i'm surprised it didn't ask me if i wanted to save that all right then let's just do that again and retrace my steps because i don't want to restart the video and it's good for you to see how this happens again i'm going to have to watch the video when i'm done with this and see what i did why that didn't save so uh let's back to the so it's not here right so these are the only levels i currently have i'm gonna turn off the filter i'm going to make a new map again or sorry yeah new level i'm gonna do an empty level i'm going to go to the mannequin folder go to characters go to mesh put in the female mannequin all by herself and hit that little button to switch that over maybe i didn't save it after i did all this strange i totally thought i did anyway we'll come back and look in the video and see what happened and then again i'm going to put a point light in here i'm going to zero that again and i'm going to put that out in front of her a little bit totally exactly what i did before and then i'm gonna save this current level i'm gonna put in the maps folder i'm gonna come down here and call it solo girl this time caps save right weird it says it exists uh sure i'll replace it something got a little wacky here um i'm not sure why but that's fine this is good for you to see that things do go wacky in the real world so i'll replace it sure uh let's confirm i'm gonna go to my maps folder and there it is so it definitely exists now and if i look at my levels tab this is currently the persistent level so all is good there i'm going to leave all this as is because again i think it's good for you to see you know things aren't always canned and work as you would think they would so this level exists this level is saved i'm going to go back to my minimal default right so we've reopened this minimal default is the open level it is also the called the persistent level because that's the one that's open now i want to reference in the solo girl level so i'm going to go to levels add existing wow that is unexpected wow something is a little wacky um let's do one more thing i'm going to add so pretend all that worked i don't know why this isn't working at all again i'm going to leave this so that you can learn along with me uh unexpected pre-plan non-pre-planned example here so let's let me show you another way to make a level if i am in the uh if i'm in this open level and i want to create a new one from here see how it says creates a new level i'm going to create a new level i'm going to create an empty level from here i'm going to again put it here i'm going to call this my new level save it so it created this new level i haven't saved it yet but it created a new level and a important thing to recognize here is that if i double click persistent level that becomes what's called the current level if i double click this new one i just made that's the current level so even though i'm referencing in another level it is live or it can be added to when you make it current when you double click or you can right click and say make current or you can hit the enter key so even though i'm referencing in a different level so my persistent level is this one with two chairs and a table i made this new empty one here if you want to bring in content and add it to this level it just needs to be made current and so i'm going to go to the mannequin folder i'm going to go to characters mesh put in a female mannequin and that got added to my new level which is being pulled in to this current level and if you look here i've switched this drop down from it defaults to type what type of asset is but i switched over to level to tell me what level is this object coming from and right now the female is coming from this my new level uh that got created here so i'm going to save everything i'm going to do a file save all i'm also going to make this level uh there's two ways you could have the content come into your persistent level you can have a blueprint control it like if it was a game and you're running in a certain area you want to load it once you get there you can do that in this case for animation and such i'm probably just going to want it always loaded i'm i'm not trying to optimize i'm just trying to combine things together so i would just choose always loaded that's what that little blue dot meant if you if you leave it on blueprint you get a little blue dot if you put it to always loaded then there is no blue dot so notice it is bold that means it's my active level if i double click persistent level and put in a mannequin you'll see the female mannequin 2 got added to the minimal default which is my persistent level because that's the one that was current alright hopefully that is making sense i'm going to delete that one so again file save all so there's nothing necessarily about this my new level that makes it anything special or not special compared these are two levels there's nothing special about it it's not uh a partial level if i go the maps folder here is my new level say i want to load this level by itself right i this one i want this to be my persistent level so i'm going to double click my new level and you're going to see it load and there's nothing in there and you might say why is there nothing in this level when we know we just put the female in there because something again is acting totally wacky so i'm going to go back load this there she is she is in the my new level i'm not sure what the orange means uh let's so here's another thing that might help all this i'm going to go to the content level here i'm going to right click and i'm going to choose fix up redirectors in folders so there's some kind of referencing wackiness going on and this sometimes fixes everything so this is another important tip this is good to show because probably wouldn't have showed it if it wasn't active wacky so i'm going to say fix up redirectors and folders right and i'm going to confirm my new level this here shows that female mannequin is in my new level i can do a file save all right everything's saved so i'm going to go to my maps folder which is where i have my new level i want to load this by itself double click there better be a female mannequin in here and there she is shoo now you'll say wait where how come she's not in here so big tip all this wackiness probably just got fixed by doing this option here fix up redirectors and folder that is good for you to see because that seems to fix everything uh what it doesn't actually fix is whatever happened to my level called solo girl don't know software is weird sometimes but as long as you're understanding the concepts of levels and such then we're all good back to my new level and it has the female by yourself it's really dark in here because there's no light so if i switch to unlit then you'll see her let me hit the f key where is she there she is all right so she was off screen so if i go back to lit you don't see anything because it's really dark so unlit because she's all by herself and just so i can see her i'm going to put in a point light zero that out again bring it forward and up a little bit all right so there she is a point light a female mannequin that's all that exists in this level called my new level if i look in the levels tab that is the persistent level because that's the one that's open and that is the one i'm currently working in if i want i can add other stuff while this individual level is open i want to add bringing this to a close i want to add one more important point about levels and sub-levels and how they work they're only one level deep let me explain that a little bit right now i have this level open i'm going to add to it and hopefully not make a mess i'm going to add a new level here as a sub level it's going to be empty and i'm going to call it um lamp only and you'll see it comes in as a sub-level here it is a level just like this is a level but it's you know being referenced in here i'm also going to make it uh always loaded so it is current meaning it's bold if i double click this one that one's bold if i double click this one that one's bold whenever i add a new asset to the world it's going to go into that particular level so let's go to the starter content and props and i'm going to add this lamp all by itself in the scene here i'm going to zero it put it next door here right so now i have this this lamp in its own level called lamp only and it's being referenced in or it's being pulled into my persistent level which is the my new level which is the female and the light by itself notice here what's in the content and i'm going to save all file save all everything gets saved i hope so now let's finish this conversation i have this level with the sub level coming in let's go all the way back and see what happens when i go to my starter content map of the minimal default that was pulling in the female all right so now i have my minimal default as the persistent i'm also streaming in the female and a light in this level i called my new level you can always hide and turn that on and off to see the effect of it you'll notice also it's when i turn it back on right so here the world outliner always reflects everything that you have coming in not just the current level that you have loaded the persistent but also any sub-levels that you have pulling in as you can see here but then if i eyeball it it goes away and then the important point here there's our grand finale is what happened at that little light that i added as a sub-level to my new level when you pull in a level it does not trickle down and pull in any sub-levels that it has so it only goes when you when you are adding a level to a persistent level it's only going one level deep it won't tunnel down through that one sub-levels and then if that one has sub-levels and if that one has sub-levels it's only going to get what's at the surface what's at the persistent level of this one hopefully that makes sense all right so wackiness aside uh from creating the this female and and such uh we're going to leave this video as is and hopefully it's useful to you in all its bumpiness and all of its concepts so that you're a little more familiar with levels of maps being the same thing word wise and then how you bring in additional levels into your persistent level if that helps you with organization again you don't have to but it's important that you understand how it works so you can decide for yourself how you want to organize your your scenes and your projects all right that's it sorry for the bumps but that's the way things happen and it's good for you to see that too all right so hit me up on linkedin if you have any questions bye

Channel: 3D Education with JC

Views: 23,806

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Id: o7JVENd7Jq0

Length: 26min 26sec (1586 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 18 2021