Blender and the new Unreal engine 4

Taking a small break from The Remnant, to review the new Unreal engine when using Blender side by side. the ease of use for the new engine is absolutely astounding running through a few of the tutorials will have you creating Levels for your game in no-time flat, and for $20.00 a month for a subscription plan makes it an affordable option for those of us who wish to make games. Read the EULA carefully because if you publish any games you make using the Unreal engine 4 you are on the hook for 5% of the gross for any sales of the game you make.

Now i came to my decision to test the engine because it has the most beneficial EULA of all 3 engines i looked at, take the Cryengine, crytech wants 20%of your gross sales even if the subscription fee is around $10.00 or so, and the new unity engine subscription will cost you roughly $80.00 (note: i am rounding the minimum costs for these engines.)

Now Unreal 4 seems to be the friendliest in terms for the Indie game maker, and offers you the most potential for the money spent.

Ease of use between Blender and Unreal is still a bit stretched but possible, you will still have to export and import as Unreal does not offer a blender plugin. thankfully the people who have assembled Blender for us have made sure to equip us with the tools we need to port to the Unreal engine, with the export tools we have many unreal friendly file formats we can use to export from and to with little ease, not to mention the unreal import and export function that you enable in your user preferences, (note: i have not tested those functions as of yet so do not know how well they work, as time permits i will test this function and let you know.) for the time being you can use the export FBX file format and use that for importing to Unreal for the time.

Like Blender at first glance the Unreal engine looks a bit intimidating for new users, but unreal has posted a massive amount of tutorials on you tube as well as offer written documentation for you to browse on their website.

Creating assets from textures to static meshes using Blender and porting them to unreal will speed up the time it takes for you to create an exciting game, you are only limited by your imagination. I hope to see future tutorials on how to utilize these wonderful tools and hope to see many Blender users creating fun and exciting games.

Kevin Gardner

I believe i may have posted this to the wrong thread, if their is a moderator who could move this to the proper thread it would be most helpful and i apologize for posting this in the wrong thread.

CryTek actually just released the EaaS program, (Engine as a Service) which allows developers to create games for 9.90 USD royalty free. It’s also worth mentioning that CryTek specifically makes it difficult for Blender developers to import, because they don’t want our crowd. They want people using 3D Max, or other programs like that because those are the people who have money to make games professionally.
Also, while Unity is the most expensive, it is also the least capable platform.

Saika verry tru also Crytech also requires a 1 year subscription so if you cancel your subscription between the time you start to the end of the year your still on the hook for the remaining subscription, i believe Unity is doing this as well, but don’t quote me on that lol i could be wrong.

If you guys are really serious about making games , you should check out the opengl examples and tutorials , cause those have the highest framerate I’ve seen so far , way higher than Unity or BGE. I’m talking about the modern OpenGL tutorials not the old expired stuff. Last time I played with CryEngine I couldn’t get a sound file to loop seamlessly without hickups and Unreal Engine needs at least 12 monitors just to fit on the damn screen , not to mention that none of them are easy to use. You guys might want to check out the Source SDK from Valve but I’m not sure what are the limitations or prices on that one.

I almost forgot about Quake Engine. There are a few modified versions out there that include source code , like Cube2:Sauerbraten.

I already am a developer.
Honestly, Unity is terrible. They have monopoly over indie developers, and charge ridiculous prices for a product that isn’t that great. And now that the market’s best engines are opening up towards us indies, Unity’s gonna be in trouble.
Unreal Engine 4 is now available for 20 USD (Full open source) per month, with a 5% royalty. If you don’t want to keep paying it, you don’t have to, but you don’t get more updates. Unreal 4 is also incredibly improved. The amount of power coming out of it is…immense. And the interface is completely revamped- it’s now designed for more…practical uses. The only problem is that it’s currently very raw, so it requires a pretty hefty machine to handle it.
CryEngine requires a lot of expertise to handle. The interface and learning curb are very clean and easy, but it does take some effort to get used to, much like Blender. There are many things that you miss that you don’t know about, that probably should be automatic. But personally, I prefer more manual interfaces because they don’t waste code on a program that isn’t really necessary.
The Source Engine from Valve is not the way to go. Maybe if I wanted to make a game with a more…retro feel to it, I’d use it, but we’re working on a high quality game and require high quality rendering. Also, Source really just isn’t the way to go to make a commercial product.
As for Quake Engine, it’s seen many improvements and very heavily modified engines based off of it, as it itself was based off an old engine, but it really doesn’t entirely fit the needs of a developer trying to keep up with the times. It doesn’t really allow a freedom of creation that next-gen engines do, in terms of rendering and performance.

The thing is I wrote this as a review of what I have discovered, I recently decided to try the NEW engine, and your right the old engines were over complicated. But this new engine is simple to use and can be used with blender to help the young or in my case not so young aspiring game developer build really good games that are also multi platform capable. This is just one more tool available to the blender community who want to build games.

I’m pretty sure the current Source Engine could be used for a “High quality modern game”, as they have been still developing it and it wont be long when Valve is releasing the new Source engine (well actually we don’t know when since Valve never tells :wink: ). Current Id Tech 5 is not THAT old and is very capable engine too and also Id Software has Id Tech 6 around the corner.

I doubt Unity has a monopoly over indie developers since most of indie developers are just building their own engines or just use other basis rto run their creations on. But I’m talking about ALL the games, not just 3D games.

Sorry if I step on to your thread, but i would not limit creation on being high quality product only if using “this” or “that” engine.
Some 2D games have more complex code and systems and have higher quality visual look than many 3D games.

Not to mention that Titanfall is a Source engine game.

Getting stuff from Blender to UE4: Blender has a .psk import/export plugin – is that not the way to go? Seems like some of you have mentioned that it’s not easy to get stuff from Blender to Unreal Engine. I don’t know – just asking.

I’d really like to see some tutorials from some of you who have used these game engines, or maybe use forums like this to share your tips and such.

I am in the process of testing the new unreal game engine as as I get more proficient with it I will post some tutorials, but so far I find it’s ease of use it seems good.

I haven’t used Source in several years, so I don’t know what updates they have made recently. And to clarify, I would never insult Id Tech. It goes way back for me, but whenever I see it I just think of Enemy Territories: Quake Wars, which, while fun, wasn’t a great display of the engines capabilities.
The way I see it, Unity does have monopoly over us indies- I mean, I’d like to create my own engine, but that’s just not a luxury we have. Unless you have somebody who already made one and wants you to develop a game to showcase it, then there’s no way you can just create your own, especially if you want to compete with next-gen engines nowadays. To most indie developers, Unity is a quick way to skip on making their own engine, and they’ll just skip on making their own. That’s why, chances are, I’m using UE4 or CryEngine for their professional interfaces and high power rendering performances that topple Unity or any indie engine I could ever develop But it’s all up to my project leader. :spin:

Well, I don’t know a third of all the immense details but I have tried Unity. Blender is incredibly easy to use once you understand a few fundamentals and stick to them. I had reached out to game development group I found here through “Blender Meetups” and attended a meeting. Lets just say they had no interest in Blender. I had told the one of the guys there (a developer for a green lit game), that the only downside to the BGE or Blender, was that it had a tendency to crash on you. He replied “Oh they all do that”.

Blender is the same thing without some of the tailored tools. Even more you truly can prototype something from start to finish, I’ve been doing exactly this for roughly one and a half years with my project. Very basic at first, a mere prototype. Now I have some sort of sub engine that will be used for the next machines. Blender and its logic bricks can be a bit tricky. It took me a long time to figure out how to use a timer property as a delay. Heck just last month I figured out you can select two objects and link bricks between them (a 2.69 FPS Tutorial). I have not utilized that in anyway. Heavy on the logic bricks with very minute coding on the stuff I write. Currently, it runs at 60 FPS. Big companies like Autodesk are involved with dynamic tessellation, or a slightly more advanced type of LOD. That saves a lot of time and has many benefits to the game budget. It does lack some in areas but unless there is an absolute brick wall in implementing it, it doesn’t make sense to ever turn back or say the BGE is not good enough. It has been developed to the extent it is now, that is all that needs to continue. Logic bricks are great, we just need to tweak a few things about arranging them. If you moved the collapsed UP/DWN brick buttons over, there would be more room for the name. Some sort of way to color code the connection lines, helps to speed up overlook. A standard way to setup video options in game (coveted AA, Resolution, ect.) or maybe some python functions for it? I am still unsure of all the little details.

I subscribed to UE4 a few days ago, and I am very impressed with it. It’s much easier to use than its predecessor (the UDK - with Unreal Engine 3)

The first thing that caught my eye was (obviously) the new interface. It’s very nice to look at. Everything is easy to find.
All of the most important viewport-related tools are located right at the top of the viewport.
(hopefully some of the Blender devs are taking notes on this ;))

It appears that they gave every system of the engine a well-deserved update.

I won’t be selling any UE4 games any time soon, but it’s also nice to see the changes to their EULA and new royalties agreement. I also appreciate the amount of free tutorials and documentation they’re putting out, as well as their decision to put the UE4 source code up on GitHub.

I’ve only been using it for a few days, and I haven’t had a chance to make any 3D assets in Blender to export to UE4, but that’s the workflow I intend on using.

I would agree that the interface is vastly improved. Currently, however, it requires a rather hefty machine to get anything done. Other than that, it kicked up the power quite a bit. I’m looking forward to future updates.

Malicious Fiber, The BGE unfortunately, while Blender developers are putting some awesome work into it, it will never reach the quality of a high end next-gen engine. It will however, compete with Unity. :wink:

Riyuzakisan, you wouldn’t happen to have developed the MouseMove script?

My PC managed to run it at a fairly manageable frame-rate while doing very basic things, but when working with Materials, it took an unreasonable amount of time to compile shaders. It took 10-15 minutes to compile before applying even simple changes to a material. Building levels at anything other than Preview mode took even longer. (This encouraged me to finally order the parts to build a new and more powerful PC)

And yep, that’s me :yes:

I’ll probably get more into UE4 once I get a better machine (hopefully in the near future.)
And you can say that I’m a fan. I’ve used your script for a ridiculous amount of projects…

I have posted in the ‘News’ section, might as well post here.
Like some people here, I, too, subscribed just few days ago. I like everything about it.
Though I never have used UE before, from the UDK tutorials I saw, the UI seems very polished- user friendly.
Some of my ‘experience’ in Blender really proved helpful when trying to look around and play with the different tools.
Everything seems right on its place, some of the advanced stuff feel intuitive, and the tutorials so far are great.
Looking forward to wrap my head around this baby.

An enthusiast.

No-one remembers an artist by the types of paint he uses, they remember his style and his works.
I’m all in support of people trying different game engines, and have considered changing many times. Each time I realize that the engine is optimized for a specific thing. Generally FPS’s. Blender is the only game engine I have found that doesn’t require low level programming, but can make any type of game.

Also it has low system requirements, executables are small, it runs on Linux (I don’t do windows) and is well supported with a thriving community. It’s also completely free. Pretty much all I could ask for

I think that if we all get money flowing into the bge development, our dev team work harder for less money, because they love blender.

UE4 is a product,

the BGE is a child.

I would love to see more development for BGE, but until that happens using another engine to publish games makes it easier. Unreal took a big step releasing the source code and offering up their engine for so little i can respect that after all they are a company and they have to pay people as well as themselves. but i do like the new engine it is very easy to use and makes the work flow faster, i only have to create content and for that i use blender. the only really complicated issue is when importing static meshes to unreal from blender is the export file for .FBX is older so it could cause problems in unreal but as of yet has not caused me any problems.

also there are different blueprints in unreal 4 that allow you to use the FPS platform, Strategy, side scroller 3rd person and so on.

yesterday i was playing around with the terrain import and took a DEM in to Photoshop made a few small changes saved as a PNG and imported that in to unreal and ended up with a fairly good representation of the terrain in Stevensville Montana, now all i have to do is figure out how to put my river in to the model and populate it with buildings as well as roads and foliage, all of that will be built in blender.