Before this task, I knew that blocking out was the equivalent of sketching before inking. My aim for this task was to learn how to block-out in unreal.
The first thing I learnt when completing this task was how to import materials. You cannot drag it into Unreal and instead you must copy the file into the content folder in your windows files. This is extremely useful to know as importing materials into Unreal is a huge part of designing and creating an environment.
The material I imported was a master material. You can then create instances of this material which have the same values and nodes, but can be altered (such as the colour).
Before creating an instance, however, I experimented with the camera in Unreal. The bottom right shows the camera’s view of the scene. When the camera is moved or rotated, the view in the bottom right moves accordingly. This is extremely ready for final renders of the scene.
After experimenting with the camera, I created a material instance and changed the colour. It kept the same values as the master (e.g. the roughness value) apart from the colour.
I then looked at the brush editing mode which allows you to manipulate the geometry. Selecting the edges and vertices to manipulate the object was very satisfying and I was surprised at how easy it was to change the geometry. The extrude option took me awhile to figure out as it was greyed out whenever I selected an edge or vertex. I finally realised that you needed to select a face to be able to extrude.
These tools are very useful and I can see how it would be quick and efficient to create a block-out of a scene to get an idea of the scale and where certain things will be placed.