build the least amount of pieces possible, and then assemble them into larger prefab chunks that you can quickly snap huge chunks of buildings or hallways/rooms together without having to duplicate 40 individual wall pieces for each room, but 2-3 large clumps of modular pieces already assembled in a pre-fab ;) that saved me SO much time in the past. nice video :)
@Unreal Dz yea you have to manage your drawcalls, current gen you can easily have around 3500, so a modular kit isnt too bad if you are smart about how many materials you use, but in general that's the way most games ive worked on have built their worlds, with kits.
I teach an introduction to environment art for games in our local college. I gotta say this introduction to modular is really great. A wide spread of examples and all of them are crystal clear. Thank you, will be showing it to my students, too. :)
Damn that's unbelievable helpful of getting a grasp how easy or difficult modularity and trimsheets can be. It also helps me to figure out where to start :)
This was a great video! I've been doing modular buildings and environments for a while now, but still, your breakdown and explanation was so interesting that I kept on listening! Thanks :)
Sounds like I could learn a thing or two from you then! My videos are, for the most part, meant for beginners but I'm glad it was still interesting for you. I take some pride in being able to articulate information in interesting and logical ways so your compliment is good affirmation I'm on the right path! Thanks
Same haha At my education they spent 2 years on very very basic poly modeling and then pushing us to do that really fast while ignoring technical flaws- ending up with a bunch of students that make ugly models with bad uv's, no normal maps and topology issues that can make this /really/ fast.
TL;DR COLLEGE SUCKS same, here i study (suffer) at ICAT Hyderabad India, no one in my class even know what a nGons, that's how ridiculous my college faculty is at teaching, whatever i have learned (i can say my self intermediate at maya), not even .1 percent came from college, and here i am complaining about my college cuz im frustrated cuz nothing is happening in my life, i wanna learn and college is blocking my potential, i have 10s of tutorials from top learning sites and don't have the time to learn cuz college and exams interfere.
This video is so incredibly underrated. I'm so glad that I came across the term "modular building" because originally every single tutorial I went to would show how to create whole assets, which I felt would be tedious when creating an entire open world map. THANK YOU for this video. Thank you so so much -- you've saved us countless hours of modelling.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I've seen some of these tutorials on other sites, but wasn't explained in a way I could understand. You on the other hand, made this easy and very clear!
Cheers, good video; however I have a question. In this workflow one unavoidably ends up with a massive draw call count (I believe the equation is something like 1 draw call per mesh * number materials per mesh). I actually bought an asset pack from one of the artists you use as an example, and the small town in the example scene he provided approached (from memory) 100,000 draw calls, which even with occlusion culling dragged a top-end 2016 GFX card into low single figure frame rates. Are you able to clarify how games that use this workflow cope with this problem? Many thanks!
Every project is different, as well as every engine. This much is obvious. Some games create art that is meant to push the system to its limit while other games keep things simple. Keep in mind that marketplace content isn't always optimized for lower end systems. The authors of said content just want to sell content and pretty content sells. Every game that tries to push the bar has to deal with performance and optimization issues. Guerrilla Games the makers of Horizon Zero Dawn had to use all sorts of tricks to make their game run smoothly (example kotaku.com/horizon-zero-dawn-uses-all-sorts-of-clever-tricks-to-lo-1794385026 ). Modular building is a technique to quickly plot out otherwise generic content. There will still be custom models scattered about that are only one object as opposed to many small objects. You can't make everything modular, you have to learn a bit of balance. If you actually study most game content, with few exceptions, most of it is simpler than it appears. It's all about smoke and mirrors with the game industry. I don't have all the answers, but I do know everyone handles it a bit differently so there is no one size fits all solution. One thing is for sure, though, Unreal is an engine capable of destroying computers so the solution is often times the simplest answer, just don't use so many models, make some complete objects as opposed to fully modular.
Trim Textures are your friend. I planned on doing a video on them myself but Polygon Academy has a great one already found here: czcams.com/video/IziIY674NAw/video.html
So is it wise to just always have a trim to cover seams to allow for more flexibility in tile sizing? For my current project ive got all wall pieces to be 4x4 or 5x4 do they always tile horizontally. Would it be wiser to instead just have different sized wall pieces? Eg (v x h) 5x4, 5x2, 5x8 and 5x10 with trims to cover it up where neccesary?
With a little math you can always "find" a solution to making everything fit, but to be fair, what you are mentioning, is a smart way to go. I'll admit when I was working on a AAA game project I'd have several situations where too many textures all came together in one spot. The solution? A big rock...ha. Yes, having a trim piece that allows for some flexibility in how objects are lining up is a great idea.
@@MatthewMarquit alright, thanks! Was worried having everything be made to have uv's as wide as the uv space was gonna make things look very obviously modular Glad to know how to work around it now. This video was great, not a lot of places where you can see multiple modular sets broken down
No way! Its me Justin Donovan your former student. I was recently getting back into Unreal tutorials and I was watching suggested clips and then when you introduced your self I was like what are the ODDS!
Long time, man. I hope you're doing awesome. You know, even now I still show off your Skyrim level (with the walking statues and everything) to students in level design as what amazing set design looks like. Also, as a UAT Alumni, don't forget you can audit classes for free.
@@MatthewMarquit I have been a way from the dream for far to long lol but it auditing a class sound like something I need to do. I still landed in the software Industry as a QA analyst for commercial software which I do enjoy and It pays well so I am doing fine but I would be lying to say I don't miss it a lot. Is the UAT campus closed?
@@jaydonovan9491 You're too talented to not be making games, but at least you're still successful. Regardless, right now we are closed to the public, but, auditing classes don't require in-person attendance. All classes are streamed over Microsoft Teams. You could do all that from home. We were actually already doing that before the whole COVID thing, so the transition to remote was insanely easy. Just call the school, ask for student services, and ask them about the audits.
Does anyone have a link to the original post of the breakdown at 5:49? I think it's shame the original links to the artist's posts weren't included in the description. This video is great for an overview but the links for the breakdowns shown as examples would have been a great continuation for anyone wanting more information. Plus giving artists credit and all that ;)
Thanks Matthew, for showing up the different concepts of modular building. Do you know some tutorials about how to model modular parts and would you tell me who created the parts which are shown in minute 4:25 and 8:10?
In the link below you will find a tutorial on how the artist produced this models and link your gumroad. Sorry for the English I used the goolge translator. polycount.com/discussion/144838/ue4-modular-building-set-breakdown
I like modular design but I'm always worried about poly count. One approach is to make the pieces hollow with certain solid pieces being used for the ends. I'm curious to what other options are out there though.
You're right, optimization is always something you should consider. Modular building is supposed to be done this way. If one model will be used from every possible angle, then model everything out. But, if there are areas that will never be seen then don't model it. Smart modular building is about saving time AND being efficient. They aren't mutually exclusive, one doesn't forgo the other. This takes time and practice to master but everyone should be doing both.
Games now adays have more polygons so as long as your fundamentals are in check you shouldn’t worry. A common practice for example is beveling every edge (lots of polys) but you use face weighted normals to crate a almost rounded corner affect! From I understand polygons are cheaper than textures. But don’t go slapping high poly assets in :) but ya if there are faces that will never be seen ever then no point having them in there also. -side note for lifting. If you have a interior scene you might need to add just simple boxes on the outside to avoid light bleeding from skylights and stuff. :)
I get decorative assets design, but what about modular level design game flow? If games like Oblivion taught us one thing it's not to abuse boring modular level design when it comes to the flow of the gameplay itself. I'm looking into making a parkour flying map for Rocket League aerial practice and speedrun challenges, but there isn't a lot of level design tutorials surrounding this type of game flow I'm guess it's more similar to racing although there is a difficulty component to it that should increase from very easy to very hard for an ideal progression. I played a lot of surf and kreedz and bhop maps back in counter strike so I'm familiar with this skill based challenge type of solo progression maps but truly grasping what it would take to make modular assets fit for a good game flow in that environment feels like my inexperience is making me overlook a ton of things, I don't even know where to start. I'm thinking the map will be set in space/stargate so probably having some kind of tunnel-y segments maybe of an underground facility on the moon or inside of an orbiting space station would help break down the flow, but I'm worried about how to connect segments so it doesn't become straight tunnels with the same angles everywhere. Is it a bad idea to try and use full room segments or is it just about how I should go about it? I don't know how I want to build the level yet. In a brush based engine like source engine it was no problem to be creative on the spot, but for modular assets it poses a challenge that could waste a lot of time and make the map bad if I overlook certain details relating to game flow...
I feel like modular building and modual texturing from substance designer (or other softwares) are the missing pieces that I need to focus on if I ever want to get into this industry. Spent too much time in archviz (where you almost never take the modular path) because where I live, there are no video game / animation studios, literally the only chance to find work is to focus on archviz... which is a shame, it's pretty limiting.
these old workflows seem to fail to deliever complex looking environments, at least texture wise... its a shame we're still using them. isn't there anything better? trimsheets ALWAYS will feel like repetitions, no matter what. the alternative is away too much texture space needing to be used for variations and etc. there is nothing else we can try? like, look at 20 year old games like Silent Hill 2 man, how the hell did they even do that? it looks better than most of these modern, slick, normal map fests.
build the least amount of pieces possible, and then assemble them into larger prefab chunks that you can quickly snap huge chunks of buildings or hallways/rooms together without having to duplicate 40 individual wall pieces for each room, but 2-3 large clumps of modular pieces already assembled in a pre-fab ;) that saved me SO much time in the past. nice video :)
Polygon Academy I just that video of yours where you talk about this xD
Russell Stone hahaa dat youtube algorithm ;)
@Unreal Dz yea you have to manage your drawcalls, current gen you can easily have around 3500, so a modular kit isnt too bad if you are smart about how many materials you use, but in general that's the way most games ive worked on have built their worlds, with kits.
A video on trimsheets for making building ??
I teach an introduction to environment art for games in our local college. I gotta say this introduction to modular is really great. A wide spread of examples and all of them are crystal clear. Thank you, will be showing it to my students, too. :)
Interesting video. I've found it hard to find tutorials on modular building so a follow up video on your workflow would be great
Damn that's unbelievable helpful of getting a grasp how easy or difficult modularity and trimsheets can be. It also helps me to figure out where to start :)
I just got a spark of inspiration for how to solve a geometry problem I was having with making my modular kit. Thank you.
Great work! I'm looking forward to the next one
Supercool summary and well chosen examples. Thanks!
Thank you very much for that very nice modular design overview !
Thanks Matthew this is really interesting stuff! More please :)
Wow, this is the explanation of modular techniques I was looking for, thank you very much!
Excellent video... loved the final example (unreal 4) I would love to be able to skill-up to that level. Amazing. Thanks.
great introduction to modular building, thanks for the insight!:D
i didn't think it like this because it results in repeated textures, but some lighting and little changes literally changes everything.
Amazing...
this is a really good overview about modular building and why to do it - thanks!
This was a great video! I've been doing modular buildings and environments for a while now, but still, your breakdown and explanation was so interesting that I kept on listening! Thanks :)
Sounds like I could learn a thing or two from you then! My videos are, for the most part, meant for beginners but I'm glad it was still interesting for you. I take some pride in being able to articulate information in interesting and logical ways so your compliment is good affirmation I'm on the right path! Thanks
i can tell that you have Greatness in teaching. thank you so much!
very nice stuff here! Now I following you and like this. Keep going!
beautiful video!! Thank you !!!
excellent presentation, I learned a lot, thank you!
Very nice video mate.
great explanation :) really helpfully for me
I learned a ton here. Thank you very much for sharing.
If I knew how to do this I could've saved a Ridiculous amount of time with my College work, I find it absurd How I am not taught this in College.
Same haha
At my education they spent 2 years on very very basic poly modeling and then pushing us to do that really fast while ignoring technical flaws- ending up with a bunch of students that make ugly models with bad uv's, no normal maps and topology issues that can make this /really/ fast.
TL;DR
COLLEGE SUCKS
same, here i study (suffer) at ICAT Hyderabad India, no one in my class even know what a nGons, that's how ridiculous my college faculty is at teaching, whatever i have learned (i can say my self intermediate at maya), not even .1 percent came from college, and here i am complaining about my college cuz im frustrated cuz nothing is happening in my life, i wanna learn and college is blocking my potential, i have 10s of tutorials from top learning sites and don't have the time to learn cuz college and exams interfere.
@@devjitpaul1191 preach
College is old world...now everything online!
@Riyad Ahmed sadly where i live you basically have to
This video was very helpful, thank you!
This video is so incredibly underrated. I'm so glad that I came across the term "modular building" because originally every single tutorial I went to would show how to create whole assets, which I felt would be tedious when creating an entire open world map. THANK YOU for this video. Thank you so so much -- you've saved us countless hours of modelling.
Really thankful for this informative video.
good vid man, thanks
This was fantastic and I learned a lot here. Thank you
Yo man !! Thanks for the tutorial. Great Job !!
amazing content Matthew. How did you get acces to the Outpost 23 map? would love to fly around and take a look how they constructed their shaders.
excelente, me ayudo mucho con un diseño de niveles estilo steampunk que no podia manejar bien
Thanks Matthew, great progression through the degrees of complexity. I wonder if anyone looks at outpost 23 and doesnt go ooohh that's nice. :)
Thanks. Yeah, it's a pretty epic level. These concepts are fairly simple to understand but Outpost 23 is this perfect example of this in application.
Wow!! Great!!
thank you for making this
Thanks!
Hi, great video :) . Can you please inform me where I can find the Outpost 23 map on the editor?
Hello, what is the method used so that the textures of the different pieces of the module fit together perfectly?
Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I've seen some of these tutorials on other sites, but wasn't explained in a way I could understand. You on the other hand, made this easy and very clear!
Thanks. I'm glad I can help. I try to teach in a way I'd want to learn so it helps form the style I present my information in.
2 minutes in. Cant hit that like button hard enough. Thanks
It's basically how Bethesda's creation engine works
I built a huge scene using modular parts. Bricks are sometimes hard you have to make sure they line up and don't have seams.
Thank you for explanations! Can you upload the tutorial for how to create these modular pieces? It would be really helpful.
How did you get the unreal tournament levels in UE4?
Very good ivdeo
Where can i download this Unreal Tournament map to inspect by myself? Haven't found it on marketplace...
hello Matthew do you know where i can get this level of unreal tournament i would love to dissect
it and learn from it?
Cheers, good video; however I have a question. In this workflow one unavoidably ends up with a massive draw call count (I believe the equation is something like 1 draw call per mesh * number materials per mesh). I actually bought an asset pack from one of the artists you use as an example, and the small town in the example scene he provided approached (from memory) 100,000 draw calls, which even with occlusion culling dragged a top-end 2016 GFX card into low single figure frame rates. Are you able to clarify how games that use this workflow cope with this problem? Many thanks!
Every project is different, as well as every engine. This much is obvious. Some games create art that is meant to push the system to its limit while other games keep things simple. Keep in mind that marketplace content isn't always optimized for lower end systems. The authors of said content just want to sell content and pretty content sells.
Every game that tries to push the bar has to deal with performance and optimization issues. Guerrilla Games the makers of Horizon Zero Dawn had to use all sorts of tricks to make their game run smoothly (example kotaku.com/horizon-zero-dawn-uses-all-sorts-of-clever-tricks-to-lo-1794385026 ). Modular building is a technique to quickly plot out otherwise generic content. There will still be custom models scattered about that are only one object as opposed to many small objects. You can't make everything modular, you have to learn a bit of balance. If you actually study most game content, with few exceptions, most of it is simpler than it appears. It's all about smoke and mirrors with the game industry. I don't have all the answers, but I do know everyone handles it a bit differently so there is no one size fits all solution. One thing is for sure, though, Unreal is an engine capable of destroying computers so the solution is often times the simplest answer, just don't use so many models, make some complete objects as opposed to fully modular.
2 Words: Dynamic Batching and Static Bathing
These 2 fix the drawcall issue.
Can you make the blue mosque in Istanbul?
Id like to know how to texture those assets, the entire process!
Trim Textures are your friend. I planned on doing a video on them myself but Polygon Academy has a great one already found here: czcams.com/video/IziIY674NAw/video.html
So is it wise to just always have a trim to cover seams to allow for more flexibility in tile sizing? For my current project ive got all wall pieces to be 4x4 or 5x4 do they always tile horizontally. Would it be wiser to instead just have different sized wall pieces? Eg (v x h) 5x4, 5x2, 5x8 and 5x10 with trims to cover it up where neccesary?
With a little math you can always "find" a solution to making everything fit, but to be fair, what you are mentioning, is a smart way to go. I'll admit when I was working on a AAA game project I'd have several situations where too many textures all came together in one spot. The solution? A big rock...ha. Yes, having a trim piece that allows for some flexibility in how objects are lining up is a great idea.
@@MatthewMarquit alright, thanks! Was worried having everything be made to have uv's as wide as the uv space was gonna make things look very obviously modular
Glad to know how to work around it now. This video was great, not a lot of places where you can see multiple modular sets broken down
Whats the point of making interchangable modular pieces?
No way! Its me Justin Donovan your former student. I was recently getting back into Unreal tutorials and I was watching suggested clips and then when you introduced your self I was like what are the ODDS!
Long time, man. I hope you're doing awesome. You know, even now I still show off your Skyrim level (with the walking statues and everything) to students in level design as what amazing set design looks like. Also, as a UAT Alumni, don't forget you can audit classes for free.
@@MatthewMarquit I have been a way from the dream for far to long lol but it auditing a class sound like something I need to do. I still landed in the software Industry as a QA analyst for commercial software which I do enjoy and It pays well so I am doing fine but I would be lying to say I don't miss it a lot. Is the UAT campus closed?
@@jaydonovan9491 You're too talented to not be making games, but at least you're still successful. Regardless, right now we are closed to the public, but, auditing classes don't require in-person attendance. All classes are streamed over Microsoft Teams. You could do all that from home. We were actually already doing that before the whole COVID thing, so the transition to remote was insanely easy. Just call the school, ask for student services, and ask them about the audits.
Does anyone have a link to the original post of the breakdown at 5:49? I think it's shame the original links to the artist's posts weren't included in the description. This video is great for an overview but the links for the breakdowns shown as examples would have been a great continuation for anyone wanting more information. Plus giving artists credit and all that ;)
polycount.com/discussion/144838/ue4-modular-building-set-breakdown
Thanks Matthew, for showing up the different concepts of modular building. Do you know some tutorials about how to model modular parts and would you tell me who created the parts which are shown in minute 4:25 and 8:10?
In the link below you will find a tutorial on how the artist produced this models and link your gumroad.
Sorry for the English I used the goolge translator.
polycount.com/discussion/144838/ue4-modular-building-set-breakdown
No problem ;) Thanks for sharing the link
Thanks You
Old video but the concepts are still the same
I like modular design but I'm always worried about poly count. One approach is to make the pieces hollow with certain solid pieces being used for the ends. I'm curious to what other options are out there though.
You're right, optimization is always something you should consider. Modular building is supposed to be done this way. If one model will be used from every possible angle, then model everything out. But, if there are areas that will never be seen then don't model it. Smart modular building is about saving time AND being efficient. They aren't mutually exclusive, one doesn't forgo the other. This takes time and practice to master but everyone should be doing both.
Games now adays have more polygons so as long as your fundamentals are in check you shouldn’t worry. A common practice for example is beveling every edge (lots of polys) but you use face weighted normals to crate a almost rounded corner affect! From I understand polygons are cheaper than textures. But don’t go slapping high poly assets in :) but ya if there are faces that will never be seen ever then no point having them in there also. -side note for lifting. If you have a interior scene you might need to add just simple boxes on the outside to avoid light bleeding from skylights and stuff. :)
I get decorative assets design, but what about modular level design game flow?
If games like Oblivion taught us one thing it's not to abuse boring modular level design when it comes to the flow of the gameplay itself. I'm looking into making a parkour flying map for Rocket League aerial practice and speedrun challenges, but there isn't a lot of level design tutorials surrounding this type of game flow I'm guess it's more similar to racing although there is a difficulty component to it that should increase from very easy to very hard for an ideal progression. I played a lot of surf and kreedz and bhop maps back in counter strike so I'm familiar with this skill based challenge type of solo progression maps but truly grasping what it would take to make modular assets fit for a good game flow in that environment feels like my inexperience is making me overlook a ton of things, I don't even know where to start. I'm thinking the map will be set in space/stargate so probably having some kind of tunnel-y segments maybe of an underground facility on the moon or inside of an orbiting space station would help break down the flow, but I'm worried about how to connect segments so it doesn't become straight tunnels with the same angles everywhere. Is it a bad idea to try and use full room segments or is it just about how I should go about it? I don't know how I want to build the level yet. In a brush based engine like source engine it was no problem to be creative on the spot, but for modular assets it poses a challenge that could waste a lot of time and make the map bad if I overlook certain details relating to game flow...
How do you open the Outpost 23 map in the editor?
In the Unreal Tournament Version of the UE4 Editor:
File>Open Level>RestrictedAssets>Maps>DM-Outpost23
Found it - thanks a lot! My issue was that I was in the regular UE4 editor, and didn't download the Unreal Tournament Editor. Lol
Ha, it's a common mistake. They look pretty much identical.
My smallest unit of modular building is vertices.
i want to be like you
The modern game artists are rediscovering the tile maps and palette swaps of old.
In one word Modularity = Lego...XD
Bookmark 2:38
Legos in a nutshell
you sound like .... Markiplier
Recording at 2am lol
I feel like modular building and modual texturing from substance designer (or other softwares) are the missing pieces that I need to focus on if I ever want to get into this industry. Spent too much time in archviz (where you almost never take the modular path) because where I live, there are no video game / animation studios, literally the only chance to find work is to focus on archviz... which is a shame, it's pretty limiting.
these old workflows seem to fail to deliever complex looking environments, at least texture wise... its a shame we're still using them. isn't there anything better? trimsheets ALWAYS will feel like repetitions, no matter what. the alternative is away too much texture space needing to be used for variations and etc. there is nothing else we can try? like, look at 20 year old games like Silent Hill 2 man, how the hell did they even do that? it looks better than most of these modern, slick, normal map fests.
Thank a lot!