Tools Used In Maya and Unreal - Pros and Cons, Why I Used Them (#5)

In Maya I used a number of common and simple tools when there was an advanced library of tools open for use by me. However i didn't really touch most of those tools and in retrospect I probably should of tried most of them to find out if they were better than the simple more 'core' tools that i was using. However it is hard to know which tools to use when you didn't know those tools existed in the first place.

Some of the tools I used in Maya:

• View and object - Focus
• Face
• Vertex
• Extrude
• Connect
• Three-View Editing
• Outliner Window
• Duplicate
• Target Weld
• Bake Simulation
• Game Exporter
• Hypershade
• Primitive Objects

Some of the tools I didn't use:

• HumanIK
• Skinning
• Rigging
• Netwon
• Other particle FX
• Volume Manipulator
• Edge
• Pivot Point
• Multi Cut
• Boolean
• Mirror
• Edge Loop
• Transparent View

Why did I use the tools i did?

Focusing on objects allowed me to move the camera around everywhere but ultimately allowed me to keep track of where my original view was.

The Face tool allowed me to interact with objects faces and manipulate them or extrude from them.

The Vertex tool allowed me to interact with objects corners and manipulate them by moving them around in order to create slope-like shapes.

The Extrude tool is pretty useful for creating objects off of another one without having to start from a single shape. It helps to make shapes and models faster.

The connect tool allowed me to add or subtract faces/edges/vertices and fill in holes.

The three-view editor, the outliner and Game Exporter are tools that don't help towards manipulate objects of your models however they are just as useful, maybe even more-so than those common tools, the three-view editor allows you to see your model from all angles at the same time to keep the perspective of the model correct, the outliner keeps every single object organised, and if you use it correctly and name your objects correctly it allows for easy access of certain objects. It didn't happen in this project but when you have multiple people working on a single file, having a well organised outliner allows others to come and navigate their way through the model without feeling completely confused and overwhelmed. And finally Game Exporter. This tool is what allows you to export the model in to your game engine. Without this it'd be pretty useless in making any sort of model since you wouldn't be able to use the model without this tool.

The duplicate tool was pretty much essential for easily creating my model. I had a lot of parts which were exactly the same just in different positions and using different rotations. The duplication tool allowed me to easily recreate these objects whilst keeping the same scale.

The Target Weld tool helped keep my model nice and tidy because I used it to clean up some useless vertices.

The Bake simulation was used by me but I didn't use it correctly. What it allows the user to do is to key in every frame in an animation and of course, i didn't have an animation. What I meant to use was the Boolean tool which merges all the objects together.

Finally the Hypershade tool and the Primitive Objects. Primitive Objects is pretty understandable, they give you a basic object to work off, for example cylinders, cubes, spheres and pipes. These are all very useful shapes that can pretty much be used to make a lot of simpler models such as my Gravity gun. It requires quite a few cylinders, a few cubes and a couple of spheres. The other parts were extrusions. The Hypershade tool was a pretty cool tool I found. It's sad it didn't work as I wanted it too in the end. It allowed me to make a glow effect without having to go in and work with all the particle effects i didn't understand properly. However after i exported the model in to my game it didn't glow even though it did in the Maya Render. I don't understand why it didn't work.

As for the tools that I didn't use. Why didn't I?

I didn't use HumanIK as that tool provides a skeleton for your model for you to manipulate when doing animations. I didn't have any animations for my model though which made it useless but it is an interesting tool that I'd use in the future.

Skinning is the process of telling a model what parts can be manipulated during animation and by how much. Volume Manipulator is the tool which provides the heatmap which allows you to affect this process. I didn't use this because i stated before I didn't have a skeleton as I didn't do any animation.

The Newton tool is just one of many particle FX tools that allows you to manipulate how your particles act. However I didn't understand how to setup and use particles effectively so I ended up not using particle FX at all.

The Edge tool is one of the common tools like Face or Vertex. However I just had no reason to use it. The only thing i manipulated were the faces and the corners.

Pivot Point is a tool that i kick myself for not using. When I was creating my model I had to create 3 claw grabbers. The first one was difficult, there were a lot of individual fiddly parts that had to be angled and positioned correctly to portray an accurate representation of the Gravity Gun. However when I tried to copy and paste the claw for the other 2. When i rotated them they would rotate around their own separate pivot points. The way i got around this was crude. I just made them child objects of the object i wanted them to pivot around. If I had remembered this tool it would have been so useful as the Child-Parent idea was decent, it wasn't exact and I spent a lot of time properly aligning up everything.

Boolean is another tool I'm annoyed at myself at for not using. I had meant to use it but I mixed it up with Baking Simulation.

The Multi-cut, Edgeloop and Mirror tools are all useful tools however I just had no use for them as I was more proficient in other tools and if I had tried to use these tools it'd just make the model creation process more complex and complicated than it needed to be.

The transparent view would have been useful if it wasn't for the fact that as soon as I had finished making the basic outline of proportions I turned of the schematic. There was no use for it as I never really spent much time using my schematic except from the very start.

Some of the tools I used in Unreal:

• Outliner
• Basic Shapes
• Blueprint
• UI Widgets
• HUD
• Gamemodes
• Levels
• TriggerBox's
• Geometry
• Extrusion
• Lights

Some of the tools I didn't use:

• Visual Effects
• Cinematics
• Volumes
• Brush Clip
• Pen
• Lathe
• Landscaping
• Foliage
• Paint

Why did I use the tools i did?

The Outliner, as explained from the Maya section, is incredibly useful in organising all of your objects and pretty much anything in your viewport.

Basic Shapes are basically Primitive Objects that I discussed in Maya, they are useful for simple object creation.

Blueprint was pretty much fundamental for me. I don't know any C++ whereas Blueprint pretty much let me code using the login i posses without having to learn too much syntax. It's quite crude in some cases and really limits how much you can do in the same amount of time when hardcoding. Writing in actual lines of code you could probably write 1 line of simple code like Int1 = Int1+Int2 whereas in Blueprint you need to have at least 3 nodes not including anything before the actual addition. And if there was anything else like conditions for that to happen you would need many more nodes compared to how many lines of code are needed. Maybe it is also affected by my proficiency in Blueprints which is ridiculously low compared C# but still, coding normally seems faster.

UI widgets is basically how you display text in Unreal and honestly I prefer it a lot more compared to how Unity does it. Unity's UI and HUD creation seems to be comparatively lacking when compared to Unreal. Not just in options but in design intuitiveness.

The HUD is the tool which helps set up widgets. It's indispensable when using UI.

Gamemodes and Levels are the same as HUD, they are fundamental tools that allows one to customise core concepts about the game.

TriggerBox's were my saviour this time around. I was wondering how exactly to destroy my walls when I found out about TriggerBox's. They are incredibly useful and simple to use.

Geometry was pretty nice. It allowed me to create some stairs and the Extrusion tool that came with Geometry was nice for extending my stairs. Finally Lights was a nice tool, when my whole game is dark I thought it was pretty good design to light up the actual ojective. The Cube.

As for the tools that I didn't use. Why didn't I?

Visual Effects, like Maya, I didn't use them because I don't understand how, and although I watched tutorials I still find it difficult to execute what was taught in them.

Cinematics is the same as Visual Effects. First off I didn't need any cinematics. Like how you would get in a tutorial. And secondly I don't understand how to use it correctly and I'd do more harm than good to my project by trying to implement something I don't understand how to use.

Volumes. Sound wasn't something I focused on too much. The only thing I changed was the sound of the gun shooting so it wasn't the default sounds.

Brush Clip, Pen and Paint. I had absolutely no need of these tools. They were not something I was looking to use from start to finish.

Landscaping is an interesting tool, however my Game Design doesn't allow for any sort of original landscape. It's all just walls of the same size and variety.

Lathe sounds interesting. It allows you to create new geometry by rotating the selected brush shape about the current pivot point. However I had no reason to use it so I didn't. The same goes for foliage.