Variant Manager Configurator | An Unreal Engine 5 Course

thank you [Music] foreign [Music] hey everyone welcome back in today's video we will further iterate on the use of lumen but this time we will be working on a fully usable configurator you will learn how to swap meshes change materials turn on and off lights how to add a UI and Implement smooth camera movements for those who haven't seen the Lumen course I will leave a link below make sure to check it out and now let's get into the video I opened up my blender file for those who follow the Lumen course might recognize this scene so let's see how we can enhance that scene and make a configuration within it the first step to create a configuration starts by preparing our 3D assets we need to make sure that everything that will be configurable should be exported as its own object with the pivot located at the center this is important because we can change the world position of a given object within the variable manager that we're going to set up inside our engine things can get slightly annoying when our pivot isn't centered correctly I'm personally going to configure a kitchen but feel free to configure whatever you prefer everything you will learn in this video can be applied to all scenarios as you can see I pulled the object that I want to configure to the center of my blender file I want to make sure that all the objects within this kitchen are separate we want to separate everything into groups that we would like to configure or that could be configurable in the future this is almost everything but let's analyze my kitchen I can have different door types syncs tabs kitchen frames and so on it's important to do this process beforehand even for parts of an object that you aren't planning on configuring if you need to configure them in the future this way you won't have to make all kinds of changes or edits to the source files now that we have separated all configurable options on our kitchen we can move on to see what options we would like to add I want to be able to select multiple tabs stoves lighting types and materials but let's start by focusing on the assets first all I must do is find assets that I want to use and fit within the current kitchen frame I'm personally going to add some options from the dimensiva library I will leave a link in the description if you want to check them out back in blender I'm going to fell import and import the file that I've just downloaded first I make sure to check if the dimensions of the mesh fit within my kitchen if so I'm going to swiftly check if the UVS and material slots are okay do this process for all assets that you want to configure when done you should have multiple assets that fit into the given space next let's move on to custom fixtures we might need to add some extra steps I found some spotlights on demon C4 that I want to use my current kitchen frame is set up with a strip light simply placing the spotlight on that mesh won't be enough you can see that there are no cutouts for the spotlight if I simply turn off my Spotlight you can see that I'm left with a hole we need to turn off the entire cabinet but doing that will leave us without a cabinet what we must do is make a copy of the current cabinet frame and see it as part of one object that we want to change with two cabinet frames I can configure what a frame should be loaded in depending on what lighting type I choose thinking about this logic is important no matter what you are configuring so keep this in mind a quick tip when working with duplicate meshes personally I keep my spotlights which in my case are meshes that I have duplicates of as only one mesh I do this so I only have one Spotlight mesh that I can copy in your engine as a prefab this way when I make changes to the one Spotlight all the prefabs will be updated within my scene if I don't do this I have to make identical changes to all the spotlights within my scene this can be quite tedious now that our assets are set up we have one last thing to cover before we can export which is materials we want to be able to change materials within our engine all we have to do with our assets is to make sure that wherever we want to have a unique material has its own material slot applied let's take the countertop as an example I want to be able to change the counter separate from the backboard this way I can make unique combinations we can achieve this by selecting the faces of the counter first going over two materials create new and apply new material to select it next I'm going to repeat these steps for the backboard and frame underneath the counter I can suggest writing down the options you would like to configure so you have an overview of the preparations that need to be done with all our meshes collected and prepared we can export to Unreal Engine I need to make sure that all meshes like mentioned before are set to the center we could do this manually but to save some time I'm going to use a free align tool that comes with blender we do have to enable this plugin by going over to edit preferences and here under plugins look for the Align tool make sure to set it to enabled before we can set all our meshes to the center I have to make sure that the origin of our objects are set to its mass we can do this by selecting all our objects decode to the object tab here at the top select set origin and set origin to center of mass for some object it's better to have the origin at the bottom of an object this really depends on the given object within your scene I suggest taking a good look at the different object Origins needed before exporting now that our origin is set we can start setting our origin to the center the tool that we just enabled takes data from the first selected object this means if we have an object 100 meters from the center other objects will go to the center of that object 100 meters away we don't want this what we can do is set the 3D cursor to the world origin by clicking shift plus s and select cursor to word origin now with shift a add a cube and make it smaller let's make sure that the cube is selected properly and then select the other objects that we want to set to the center if you've done this correctly you can see that the cube is the only object with the yellow outline with everything selected I'm going to my side menu if this isn't opened in the viewport click end on the keyboard here go to item and open the Align tool that we've just added here under align location click all you will see that all your objects are now at the center of your blender file now that all the objects are in the center we can export them to Unreal Engine here on the right you can see that they gave all my meshes appropriate naming this is important to keep things clean while working in a team for exporting I'm personally going to use Mr tripod's batch exporter if you want to learn more about this I can highly suggest checking out his guide on how to use the batch exporter I will leave a link in the description now I'm going to select all the objects that I want to export I'm going to my batch exporter and make sure it has a folder to save to next I set my mode to objects a limit to selected only now click export and we're ready to move on to Unreal Engine I opened the inner engine 5.2 launcher here we need to create a project with the automotive product design and Manufacturing preset I personally created a project with the arcvis preset I will show you how to get the right tools regarding what preset you're using so in the launcher select the automotive product design and Manufacturing preset click the product configurator and make sure that starter content is set to enabled locate a folder to save the project give it a name and click create once the project is opened and all the shaders are compelled we should be greeted by a guitar configurator let's click play and see what happens we have a complete configurator ready for use pretty cool but let's see how we can use this to create our own configurator out of anything we would like so for those who don't have a project already you can continue working within this file just make sure to create a new level if you already had a project just like me or you choose to create a project with a different template we need to add the configurator blueprint to the scene of your choice first open the unreal scene that you're working in now back to the product configuration template that we just created then in the content browser right click the product config folder and migrate this folder into the content browser of your existing project we can do this by locating our project and selecting the content browser in our Explorer now your project should have all the necessary files to create your own configurator with the configurator files ready I can import all my kitchen meshes into my scene I'm going to drag and drop the fbx files that we exported earlier into a created folder here in my content browser in the fbx import settings I want to make sure that generate missing Collision is set to false set generate light map UVS to false next set the material import method to do not create materials and lastly set the import textures to false now click import all with all my files imported I would like to create a blueprint where I put back together the kitchen that we took apart inside blender it is not required to make a blueprint I personally like to do this so I could add code using blueprints if needed besides that having a blueprint with my meshes in it keeps things nice and organized compared to having everything loose in the outliner so let's create a blueprint by right-clicking in the content browser and select the blueprint class pick the actress the parent class I'm going to call my blueprint kitchen convig open the blueprint when opened drag and drop all the assets that we've just imported into the components tab here on the left you can see that all our objects are now represented as we exported them in blender all I'm going to do now is put back together the kitchen by moving around all the individual assets within the blueprint viewport after moving around you can see that I have my kitchen back together if I zoom in on the tabs you can see that I have overlapping assets these are the objects that we've added that we want to switch on and off so for now this is completely okay the only thing missing now is the materials I'm going to add some base materials from qixel bridge to your meshes I'm going to search for my meshes in the content browser and open the mesh details one by one I want to make sure to apply the materials here this way when I make a copy of the mesh I will have the same base materials applied with everything set up let's drag and drop the blueprint within the viewport with the meshes imported and the blueprint setup we can start implementing the variate manager within our project the variant manager is a specialized UI panel in the unreal editor that we can use to set up multiple different configurations of actors within our level we can add the parent manager by right-clicking in our content browser go to miscellaneous and here select the level variant set if the level variant set isn't visible make sure to check if the plugin is set to enabled it should be on by default let's give the variant set a name I'm going to name mine VM short for Fairly manager underscore kitchen let's double click to open our variant set here we are greeted by a window I will refer to this window as the failure manager so let's go over it step by step the first thing we need to do is to create different sets we want to be able to change we can see our sets as the options that we want to configure for me these options are daytime camera position lighting mode on or off overall color options stove tap and finally the lighting type let's click create variant set and name it to the option you would like to configure keep doing this until you have all your options listed you don't have to do this right away options can also be added at any time of development I created all my options that I've listed earlier with those setup we can see that we can add subcategories these subcategories resemble the number of options we have under a given set for example my kitchen has three different tabs that I want to switch so under the variant set tabs that we just created I'm going to add three variations by clicking the add icon three times give each of them a unique name I'm going to do the same steps I just did for all my variant sets when done correctly it should look something like this we just created our options but so far we can't really do anything with these options this is because there is no data applied to the individual categories yet so let's see how we can apply some data to our variant manager in the viewport I'm going to select the kitchen blueprint that we've created earlier next in the outliner I'm going to drag the selected blueprint into the Varian stove and apply it to induction I set this under induction because I want my induction option to be visible if you drag and drop it correctly you should get a pop-up window with options these options resemble all the properties and values we can change within the object we need to think with some logic here I want my induction stove to be visible but if my induction stove is visible I need to hide my guest stove because both can't be visible at the same time therefore I'm going to search for visibility of these two objects I can simply do this by typing visible here in the search bar because I have all my meshes in one blueprint I can see all my options in this one list let's select the gas stove and induction stove if we now select our induction stove here under the stove variant set we can see that our kitchen asset has been added under the category actors when selected under properties you will see the visibility properties that we've just added when set to enabled the selected object will be visible when disabled the selected object won't be visible because this is my induction option I'm going to set the induction to enabled and the gas stove to disabled now do the exact same thing for the gas stove but this time swap the visibility of the two objects a quick tip is that you could also copy a subcategory and make the changes more quickly if you are a beginner however I recommend doing these steps manually again this way you will get more familiar with all the actions of the tools that are available to us now that we know how to set that up I'm going to repeat these steps for the remaining assets I repeated all the steps as shown before I have only done these steps for the meshes that I can change these are my stoves tabs and lighting types all of them have a visibility property applied what I can do now is double click a set that we've created and it will change all the values to what we have set our input to by clicking through all the options that I have set you can see that things can change now within my viewport the next steps are swapping materials change the actual lighting values and set up camera positions let's start by jumping into the materials previously I made a variant set named color in here I have created some options already these are just names of color presets that I want to load in if I click any of these options you can see nothing happens as I haven't set any data in those options yet to add material data we must do the exact same as before but this time instead of adding a visibility property we are going to add the material slots that are applied on our meshes and change the values in the property list let me show you how so again drag and drop the blueprint or mess that you want to edit on an option in the fairy manager and start the search by typing the mesh name which for me is kitchen counter this will filter out all the meshes that we don't want to change anything off now click spacebar and type material behind it this should show you all the available material slots on the given object it's not necessary to add all the material slots so we need to figure out what material slots we need to add I only want to change the backboard and the counter not the entire frame what you can do is open the mesh details and look at the material slots if you aren't sure what material corresponds to which part of the mesh just add a random material to see what changes when figured out check the material element number these numbers will be in the property list and correspond with each material back in the property list I'm going to select the material elements that represent my countertop and backboard if I now select my option I can find the two materials that I've added here under my property list these six options resemble six different color options that I can change my kitchen counter to if you want any other part of your object to have a different color without changing the other set colors then you need to make another variant set that only changes that part of a mesh so keep this in mind I'm going to repeat these steps to my other remaining 5 material slots in my case that's just copying the first option and renaming it to the material I'm going to change it to after copying five extra material slots you can see I now have six different options I also decided to add cabinet doors and Frames I did this because for the first three options I want to have a white kitchen and for the last three options I want to have a black kitchen with that set up we can add the materials to our properties I already have all the materials in my scene that I want to use I simply imported the materials from the qixel library all I must do is select the color option that I want to change in my favorite manager and drag and drop the new material into the right slot after doing this you can see that I can change my materials by double clicking on the variant manager set the final thing we need to add before we can add our camera is the ability to change the lighting intensity everything you learned so far comes together we need to change the visibility of the lamps that we're going to add and set an emissive material depending if the lamp is set to on or off the first thing we need to do is to add some lamps within our scene I added mine within my blueprint as you can see I added some simple spotlights to get lighting from my Spotlight meshes and I added one rectangle light to act as my strip light with the lamps added I'm going back to the failure manager where I need to set the visibility of all the lamps that we've added and all the corresponding assets so for me those are the two frames that we created earlier all the separate Spotlight meshes and all the lamps that we've added in our blueprint I'm going to set all the meshes and lamps that belong to my spotlights to be true and everything that belongs to my strip lights to false I'm going to do the exact opposite for the strip lighting now when I swap between the two you can see that I can select my Spotlight and rectangle light separately from each other we can take it up a notch by turning the lamps on and off cell photo realism we can also add properties that switch the materials on our spot and trim lights let's take the spotlight as an example right now you can see that my Spotlight has a simple metal interior when the light is on you would expect some emission from the light source what we are going to do is set the material to emissive when the lights are on and switch the material to a non-emissive when the lights are off if you don't use the on and off function that I'm about to show then your light source should already have the right material plight msf went on and non-emissive went off here in my fair end manager under the lighting tab I'm going to add the material properties of my lighting meshes and the intensity values of the spot and rectangle lights all I must do is set the right material slot of the light bulb to an emissive material and make sure that the lamps have an intensity factor greater than zero I want to set this to a number where the lighting looks realistic within my viewport now do the same for the off variant but this time set all the light intensities to zero and the materials to anonymisive material now when we switch between the two you can see that my lights react appropriately you can apply the same setup to create a day and night scenario all you do is turn the environmental light off when Knight is selected now that we are done setting up our failure manager you should have learned how to set up lighting different materials and how to switch object using the variant manager it's pretty cool to switch objects within our viewport but it isn't exactly a configurator yet for that we need to add a camera and assign the code that we have imported in the beginning let's start by adding a camera we can add a camera by going to the quickly add to project drop down menu go to cinematic and select the Cinematic camera actor for now I'm going to set my camera somewhere in front of my kitchen I want my camera to be able to track the interchangeable meshes within my fairy manager it would also be cool that while we could track those objects we could also automatically change the depth of field depending on the angle and the zoom of the camera for this to work we must import an empty actor too we can add an empty actor by going to the quickly add to project drop down menu this time go to all classes and select the actor from here here my outliner I'm going to name the empty actor as camera tracker now selecting the Cinematic camera that we've just imported I'm going to enable the camera look at tracking and set the actor to track the empty actor that we called camera tracker scrolling down under the focus settings I'm going to set the method to tracking and set the actor to track to our empty actor again in my viewport I'm going to set the empty actor in the general area of where my tap is located if announced like my camera we can see it's focused on that area if we want multiple camera positions within our configurator we must make use of the ferry manager once more earlier I created a camera variant set all we must add here is the camera and empty actors relative position we can do this by dragging the camera and empty actor into an option here under the camera variant set in the properties menu search for relative now at the relative location and rotation we could either update the numbers here in a property list or simply have the camera at the desired position and then add the camera out to our properties it will automatically pick the current location and rotation that the camera is set to in the viewport when one position is done you can move the camera in the viewport to its next position you won't lose the camera's previous position we just double click on the option we created and the camera and tracker will be back in that position now do this for all the desired positions you want to be able to focus on after that is done you should be able to view all options by swapping between the different variant sets for some camera options that we create it can be necessary that the given object changes with the camera for me this is my lighting you can see when I switch between my Spotlight and strip light camera that one of the other won't be visible what we can do here is make use of the dependency structure that comes with the variate manager when adding a dependency we can choose anything that we created in our variable manager we want the strip light to be visible when the strip light camera is selected so in the strip light camera add a dependency and set the variant set on that what you want to have control over for me this is the fair inside lighting type next under variant I'm going to select my strip light now we need to make sure to do the same thing for the spotlight otherwise it won't switch back when I select one of the camera options you can see now that the lighting option switches correctly now that we have set up our Barbarian manager in its entirety we can see that we can switch all the options perfectly but when we hit play here in our viewport you can see that the very manager doesn't translate to a usable configurator to do this we must add the fair manager to our viewport first now we need to add the configuration code if we don't have this I recommend checking out the timestamp under the video called importing configuration data so let's open the product config folder then navigate to Blueprints and drag and drop the blueprint configurator into the viewport with the blueprint configurator selected in the outliner moving over to the details panel under default add the created variant manager as the LPS actor make sure to set the camera that we created as the camera actor you can see we can only add one camera as our main actor and this is why it's necessary to only create one camera and change its position rather than creating multiple cameras with that set up now let's click play again look at that we have a workable configurator it's amazing how easy we can set it up using epic's provided code but while in play mode you can see that our options aren't displayed nicely what we need to do for this is head over to the ferry manager and right click on the set here you see a thumbnail option you can either set one from view or add one from a file I'm personally going to import some files with the files added you can see my favorite manager displaying the right thumbnails now when I hit play you can see that it translates perfectly to our configurator while on my configurator you can see that I can move my camera you can move the camera by holding down alt and the left Mouse button to zoom hold down alt and the right Mouse button and press G to hide and unhide the UI we reach the end of this course I'm very pleased with how fast we can iterate on design choices using the Vari manager and free configuration template I highly recommend pushing the boundaries of the very manager we just discovered the basics but there's much more we can achieve I hope you got a grasp to an understanding of how the ferry manager can be used and I can't wait to see what you create I'm always happy to check out people's work so definitely show me you can send me a link on my Instagram I'll leave a link in the descriptions below lastly I want to thank everybody for supporting the channel and a special thanks to Martin gervain Aaron Miko Henrik saviel geraldes and Laura Bello Panza for being a channel member you guys are awesome have a great day everyone and hope to see you in the next video [Music] foreign

Channel: Wessel Huizenga

Views: 37,482

Keywords: unreal engine, realism, archviz, 3d, lumen, configurator, lighting, tutorial, ue5, interior, photography, animation, post processing, real-time, real time, rendering, render, vfx, metahumen, ue4, realistic, interior design, material, megascans, course, ue, unreal engine 5

Id: Xzbw1PWGqa4

Length: 30min 51sec (1851 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2023