Unreal Engine Level Design and Character Rigging In Autodesk Maya

Gabriella Krousaniotakis / January 29th, 2021 Blog#10

This week I spent a lot of time building a map in Unreal Engine from scratch using Unreal Environment Speed Level Designs tutorial to recreate the city map that I have fallen so madly in love with.

I have also continued to learn and thoroughly enjoy learning how to rig a character in Maya.

In addition, I took a refresher beginners course in Unreal Engine by Bernhard Reider which lead me to utilize importing 3d models from Sketchfab using the Datasmith plugin that is built in to Unreal Engine.

Now that I have more options regarding 3d models, I feel as if so many new creative ideas are opening up!

Unreal Engine Level Design

Thanks to an amazing speed level tutorial shared by Pierpaolo a.k.a. Unreal Environments Speed Level Design, I recreated the City map from scratch. All of the assets were included in the Unreal project, so all I had to do was assemble the entire city with my own spin.

After going through the entire speed level, I realized something. Pierpaolo is a true artist. My creation does not even compare to the level of detail he added to this map. Every time I open up his project, I discover more things.

Sketchfab Models & Datasmith

After going through the beginners course in UE by Bernhard a.k.a. The Fatty Bull, I decided to utilize what I learned about importing 3d models from Sketchfab using the datasmith plugin.

Sketchfab has so many different 3d models that are just amazing. I especially love the car models. This has inspired me to make my next video with lots of cars and to learn how to animate them inside of sequencer. In addition, I also want to learn how to incorporate Niagra effects into sequencer, to make the car animations more realistic.

In the video below, I added some smoke and engine effects to the cars to add more realism.

Maya Rigging

Thanks to an amazing tutorial series on rigging by Monica from Academic Phoenix Plus, I got as far as painting weights. Once the character skeleton was created, I added controllers, and then painted weights to various parts of her body.

When you do not have painted weights, certain areas of the body that are moved, are influenced by other areas that they should not be influenced by. One example is seeing the skin stretch in areas where it does not make sense.