Author: Austin Pereira

2/29/2024

Blockout Level Scale & Material Conversion

When I initially imported the Blender .FBX file of the blockout level, both the scale and the materials had issues. When it came to the scale specifically, once it was imported the level itself was massive compared to the size of the player. With the materials once imported removed a lot of the saturation on the materials and had a lack of detail on the material itself. Both of these issues caused a situation where the map was insanely big and looked wrong. If unfixed it would have caused many issues for the user experience, both in terms of actual gameplay and appearance to the player. 

This was a major problem since if the level remained the way it did, the player wouldn't be able to explore the whole map without it taking multiple minutes (close to a range of 10+ minutes to get from one end to the other at full speed). Additionally, if the material issue wasn't solved then the game wouldn't look appealing to a player. Both of these issues had to be fixed as soon as possible or many testers and users would complain about the situation with the map looking the way it was.

After trying multiple different solutions in Blender that didn't work, I decided the only way to fix it was to remake the level from scratch in Unreal. While time-consuming, considering I had to remake the whole level from scratch again, it would solve both issues. I was able to correctly make the scale so that the map would fit the size we wanted for the user to be in. Remaking the map in Unreal also fixed the material problem, as that allowed me to set the correct material color without having to worry about any problems arising from importing from Blender to Unreal. With both of these issues resolved, it helped users see just how big the map actually is and what it should look like material wise.