Creating a modular kit
I have decided to create a basic modular kit to help with the development of level designing.
Before I started I read lots of articles on modularity in games and looking at existing sets on turbosquid.
Here are a few of the things I looked at:
I started to note down some important notes to help me later such as:
Max should be set to metres and I should export in centimetres for use in UE4
grid should be set up as 0.25 metres for every square on the grid (this is to help with snapping)
All walls and doors should be exaggerated because they need to be bigger in-game to help with collision, cameras, etc...
Note the maximum step height of the character (in this case mine was 45cm)
Also note the maximum jump and climb heights
Cylinders should be modelled with a number of sides divisible of 4 to help with even rotations, etc...
I then went onto model lots of different pieces looking at my previous research and then tested them my assembling them into a test environment.
I took this environment into UE4 where I tested the scale of the items. Originally everything was too small, I adjusted the size in engine until it seemed right, I then went back into 3DS Max and ended up sizing everything up by 50%. This now means that my base unit that was 1unit=1metre was now 1unit=1.5metres.
At this point I also decided that the walls and pillars needed to be thicker so I went through and adjusted everything accordingly. Below is all the pieces that I made for the basic kit:
Here's a list of all of the items:
After importing them all into engine I made a quick test environment to make sure everything worked the way I needed it to.
After testing the pieces myself and James decided that it was a good idea to use them more as block out pieces so that we weren't too restricted with the shapes and sizes in the kit. I went onto model a quick idea of what the base of the tower would look like, as shown below:
Here is the tower blockout in engine:
We have decided that we are going to use the kit to block out levels and anything that isn't in the kit will be blocked out in engine, I will then take these back into 3DS Max and decide what should stay modular and what should be unique.
Another thing to note when making any other modular kits is that the walls pivot should be in the middle of the wall not the edge; as this becomes a problem when making corners, junctions and curved pieces as you have to make 2 different orientations for anything to match up smoothly.
(Above is the wrong place to have your pivot. Below is the correct place to have your pivot.)
There should be more environment pieces made in the near future but at the moment I am working on concepting the environment.