Should i use "Generate Unique UVs"?

Development Rendering
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Hey Folks,

so i am a bloody starter with UE4. I watched a few tutorials to get started and now have some unanswered questions.

For example i made this series of tutorials and followed along: PLZlv_N0_O1gaCL2XjKluO7N2Pmmw9pvhE

He is building the walls with brushes included in the UE4 Editor. After this tutorial i started creating my own test map using brushes:

1928×1048 269 KB

Then i saw some shadows looking very weird and i tried to figure out why. I came to the “you need proper UV channels” part and i tried to read and watch as much as i can find to this topic.

But i have some problems now:

  1. Should i convert all brushes i used to Static Meshes?
  2. What size should i use? 1 Wall? The whole Complex?
  3. How do i work with them properly? Which settings in the Mesh editor are important?
  4. Do i have to create SM in UE4, then work on it in 3DsMax, then reimport into UE4?
  5. Some tutorial (…from UDK Lightmapping) told me NOT to use "Gene
  6. What Lightmap Resoulution should be used?

rate Unique UVs" for creating 2nd UV as Lightchannel? True, false, why?

I am really trying to understand the basics and could need some help :slight_smile:

Thank you very much!

2
  1. yes, because you are pretty limited with using brushes and the performance wont be so good
  2. When you don’t adjust anything in the end (so after you have converted it), you can convert the whole building/room to 1 mesh
  3. You have to setup a collision (), type in a higher lightmap resolution (just when you get bad shadows)
  4. When you want to adjust something , then yes. But you always create complex models in your 3d program.
  5. I also dont recommend you to use “generate…” it’s better to do that in your 3d program (://www.youtube/watch) but sometime the “generate…” will work correctly → so just try it out ^^
  6. I always build the light once, then when the quality is bad (dark spots on the mesh) I increase it to 128
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Thank you very much. This helps a lot.

Now i am facing a different problem maybe you can answer as well:

  1. when converting a brush into a static mesh, no lightmap will be created in UE4, so the best option isto import this into my 3D tool and create one? Just to get you straight.

  2. I created a cube (for testing) in 3dsmax 2015, and followed many different tutorials on creating a lightmap (://www.youtube/watch?v=BY-nKxyHKRc for example). Things wont work at all when i try this method. I always overrides one of my maps and i cant figure out why this happens.

I dont know if this belongs in this forum, but maybe a 3dsmax user knows what to do :slight_smile:

Big THX so far!

4

  1. yep, but you can also try it with the “generate …” and when you get a good result you can keep it like that

  2. Normally this happens when you generate your lightmap onto the first uv (so the one with the texture) → but unfortunately I don’t have any experience with 3ds :frowning: