Thanks!
I usually work on multiple projects at once (this is one of 3 or 4 others I have going). But there are times that I focus for weeks only on one.
It’s hard to give very generic advice for organizing your self. It depends on many factors: from how your brain works to what kind of projects you are doing. Maybe the best one I can give: check different workflows and see what is best for you?
So, yesterday I took a day off from this project. But today I’m in full swing.
First thing first… I broke my priorities and modelled 1 character… for 2022 Collab: Week 17 “Character & Posing"
This is him in viewport view:
And here he is posed:
And he can even dance!
To colorize him I extended the color palette:
Than I reorganized my scene, so it’s easier to navigate it. I am still figuring out how to do everything modular, esp. that I want to have verticality (i.e. stairs, corridors going up and down, etc.). And I’ve prepared multiple wall modules variants:
I extended my script for mass exporting to put files in correct paths (the same full path I have in my scene collection). So I imported walls and pillars into Unreal and it works! I replaced test meshes with “target” meshes on overview view map:
And I’ve also replaced them on my test map. And I’ve added default FPP and TPP character controllers for checking the map. And did a few tweaks like made stuff interactable. Here is the current result:
Today can be summarized as ‘floors’.
I made 4 ‘types’ of floors, that are perfectly tillable. All having 3 variants.
Imported into unreal:
And example how nice it matches (this is mix of all the 3 variants in 3x3 pattern, for ‘cobblestone’ type of floor):
I was thinking that finishing floors will be easy and quick… But it was hard. Making tillable (low poly) floors is hard. I am sure there is some very fast workflow for it, but I cannot figure it out. I tried a few approaches, but failed… And ultimately I had to manually match vertices, so the floors are tillable.
I still need to do some floor variants (like 1/4th block size) before moving on to next ‘easy’ thing - ceilings…
I’m really liking the cobblestone floor and how you tiled the 3 patterns. 
Oh and your “dancing” character’s looking real good. 
Very small actual progress. But I did finally cofigure git server and moved my projects there. Also I’ve realized that trims on some floors are different between sets… and for smooth transition between them I should keep them standardized. So I fixed it. Plus I added some half sized floor modules (for those narrow corridors) and 1/4 sized (for platforms or small corners). Though for platforms I still need to add bottom parts to them. How they look in blender:
And that’s how they look after importing them to unreal:
it was funny when i first did the dragon I was like “ugh references” and stopped doing it then realized they are as important as having skillz. I have about a hundred on pureref for my ogre and used even more from searches I didn’t put there!
Yeah… our minds are so imperfect at remembering the true form of things… It gets better with practice, but still one would need to have really great photographical memory to remember all the things. Pureref ftw!
Today… was a lighting day… Didn’t really plan to spent that much time on it… It took maybe 8-9h to get it to the stage I like it in unreal. The good side of it is that I will be working soon with lighting that will be approximating the final one.
UE5 changed some things about lighting… so none of the tutorials, even Epic’s livestreams, are correct. Documentation wasn’t fully updated yet as well… Plus this is “night” scene, so it’s inherently harder to do. I had to learn a bit of Niagara (new UE particle system) and wrote my first particle system for increasing density of volumetric fog in places that I want to have light shafts. But to do this I had to refresh my shader knowledge and wrote my first volumetric material in UE5 for that particle system:
Again, I have additional examples that one need to be very, very precise with modular pieces. For example, to avoid overlapping faces Grant in one of the lectures simply moved top part of the wall down. And I forgot to adjust it. So now, I tried stacking walls on top… and light was bleeding through this 1-2 pixel gap. So I had to fix all the walls and pillars.
I feel that the end result was worth it:
Question: What do you think about this lighting setup? What can be improved?
Last, but not least - I started doing ceilings modules:
And in Unreal:
I am making ceilings one sided, but as I want to have multiple stories - floors fit perfectly on top of them. For convenience I’ll make some two sided meshes merged from them (as seen in the screenshot from unreal).
Very quick update, but information might be important for people wanting to move assets to game engine.
Example of correctly build wall:
3 variants for better variety. They tile from both sides, even when rotated 180. Can be stacked on top without any light bleeding issues, etc.
tl;dr: I’m redoing all the walls. Almost done, just couple of variants remins…
Update time! First thing first, I fixed all the walls.
And than I diverged from my plan to work on 2022 Collab: Week 18 “Low poly art style game props" - VOTING ! !!
I’ve added a window:
A table:
And I broke it 
Next, I’ve broken my skeleton to some parts:
And made a candle out of it!
Showing in unlit mode, the room is very simple:
I added props to the room:
And last, but not least - lighting and composition. The emissive materials finally in unreal can emit light, but it wasn’t enough to illuminate the scene. So not only sun (or rather moon) was required, but also additional lights everywhere:
I was running out of time so I had not enough time to really work on composition. So I basically took a few shots and asked 
#blender channel for help. I got some help and feedback there, esp. I sent my thanks to unimportant (user name).
And here is the final render:
And I recorded a short video from that room:
What weapon do you plan to have? Looks promising so far, good job!
So far I have those ones:
And I did rough outline in my checklist of what more-or-less I want to make:
I will probably end up with 50 or more models for weapons
Great progress and so many problems overcome.
Definitely stay in Blender!
Just need a game engine back in it! For those as want it.
Dark is stylish and fancy looking but an asset pack would probably be used in a variety of lighting, so much is lost in the dark.
Thanks!
Ha! There used to be a till 2.79, wasn’t it?
I actually don’t mind this separation of purpose. That way Blender can focus on what it does best and add features around it’s core purpose and game engines can focus on pumping as much triangles as possible each frame :).
But who knows… maybe such convergence will come at some point…
That’s a good point! Maybe I’ll need to add some ‘daylight’ levels or otherwise some parts of the map with bright lighting… I have to think how to achieve it 
Ha! I was looking at this the other day and have this course wishlisted on udemy. Too much stuff going on at the moment to start new courses… and the new environment course has priority!.
For some reason, I assumed the player will only have one weapon but you got a nice selection there!
May I suggest adding spikes to the club? It looks more like a bat at the moment. Or you could make the top larger.
By the way, you can add a torch for the player to get through dark levels. When I finished that part of the course, I made 4 levels in Roblox (it’s just an easy platform to test games/assets lol). I based the gameplay on switching between the sword and the torch. There was a dark level with holes in the ground that triggered the death event if stepped on. You could implement something similar rather than adding well-lit areas. Darkness suits the concept of your game better in my opinion!
All good suggestions! Thank you!
Right now I didn’t scope the ‘game’ part of this project… I have only a rough scope for the ‘asset pack’ part of it (which I am specifying more as I go). The minimal scope of the game will be a simple character controller that allows for walking through the dungeon.
After I finish that I will consider what kind of game I want to make out of it… at this moment the possibilities are endless… from TPP action game to turn based RPG like Ishar/Eye of Beholder/Might and Magic. I will probably try to make it rather small (couple of weeks of dev time) though.
Just a quick update… I hit the wall… Literally… Moved on to make doors… and realized that the doors in the course were not designed with gameplay in mind. Why this is a problem… tl;dr: FoV in games vs ours (longer explanation here: Why the doors in games are huge - YouTube)
So I started to do 4m tall walls… This will slow the progress down by a few days.
Here is the beginning:
Made out of the 2 modules:
This is how different rooms with 3m vs 4m walls fee (with still ‘too small’ doors):
The relative scale of objects in game is something I never considered, thank you for that.
And respect for working on such a project. How is it doing in terms of performance in Unreal Engine 5?
Yeah, I wish Grant would have a lecture on it… or at least point that this might be a problem…
Thank you!
It’s ok… This is low poly stuff, so by itself it is quite performant. Ofc. the volumetric lighting and such will cost some performance, but this can be manage by quality setting (and just turning it off or faking it with simple planes+textures). I doubt that I will go crazy in optimizing every little bit of it, but managing ‘quality levels’ is not hard in unreal.
And for such a project (low poly) I think any modern engine would be ok to do it in.
