Immersive Sim - Tram Station Blockout using Blender

 Yo!

Today I'd like to talk about how I used Blender in level design. Unreal's in-engine modelling tools are great, but there's just no beating the speed of a dedicated 3D-Modelling program. Blender is the modelling program I'm most familiar with, since it's free and open-source. I've been using Blender for Level Design for a bit now, as it feels very quick to iterate on complex designs. A lot of LD's start with very boxy rooms, which is okay, but it feels like in real life, rooms always feel more complex. That, and square rooms can definitely get boring. 

Here I have the level for the game. I have one main mesh which contains the walls and floors of the level. I'm not sure if this is a "smart" or "professional" way to do it, but it's what I usually do. For me, it makes creating doorways, very easy, and allows me to be sure that there aren't "Cracks" in the level geometry. Not to mention, it is SO fast and extremely easy to edit later down the line. If I need to make a room larger in Unreal, I need to move the wall, then resize the floor, then redo the textures, probably. In Blender, I can just drag the wall and the floor here will more with it, and the UVs will fix themselves. 

Another benefit of using a 3D modelling tool to build levels is that you can make whiteboxed objects that look more indicative of their actual purpose. Whiteboxed models that are just cubes or cylinders can be confusing to look at for playtesters or reviewers. Something just a bit more detailed like this: 

I think models like this can really help your level's intentions come through, and in Blender it took barely any time at all. Curved cylinders can be a mega pain in Unreal, but they're a snap in Blender. 

One last thing- People often complain that it's such a chore to export updates to a level if you build it in a different program, but that's a complete misconception. In Unreal, if you make any updates to an FBX, you can just right-click "reimport" and it'll update in a single click. (You could set it to auto-reimport if you wanted!) In Unity, you can even just drop your .blend file right into the project and edit it in there, and every time you save, it'll update automatically. The pipeline for getting models into game is super efficient these days, so there's really no excuse!