Blender to Unreal Material workflow....?

Question

I'm new to game development and the Unreal Engine and I have a general question.

I model my objects in Blender and import them into Unreal Engine. My question is, is it better to create and apply your materials and textures within Blender and then import them? Or is it better to save that work for Unreal?

Also does it matter which rendering engine I use in Blender? I use Cycles by default.

Answer 1

As per my knowledge, as of 4.21.1, unreal engine does not support texture painting.

For a simple 3d game, you would want either

• Vertex Painting for very high poly models in scene. Used in realistic graphics and creating terrains.
• Texture Painting for low poly models for transparency, normal maps, bump maps, occlusion maps, roughness, metallic.

If you are working on low poly models with large surfaces, you can go for

Blender -- Export with UV -- Substance -- Blender -- FBX to Unreal

some good practices would be:

• Use same mesh model multiple times with same base texture and different decals.
• Reuse similar meshes(such as doors, roof which nobody usually notices) in multiple assets to reduce gpu workload. You can have different materials/decals/textures in each of them.
• Make textures in high quality(2048x2048) but reduce size as much as permissible in game. When at a distance from player view, reduce map quality even further to improve performance.

If you are working on high poly models with small surfaces, you can go for

Blender -- Substance -- Blender(redcue poly) -- remap textures -- unreal

In this case, you would:

• Use high poly blender model to create all the maps.
• Use medium poly mesh and maps in game itself
• When farther from player, use Level Of Detail settings to use low poly models and maps.

Good Luck.