UDK brush method

[shadowmancer471]

So Ive been meaning to make a UDK level out for ages, got all the required props and most custom textures
Only gripes Im having with is the UDK's method of brush making.

What I'm doing is making a brush (usually in pen mode), then resizing it to the required form and then clicking 'csg-add' (or whatever). This is then repeated all the way across the surface. Only problem is this method is slowly killing my sanity.
Being used to the source method of brush drawing, it seems to be a horrifically slow and tedious process, futher made problematic when other brushes become invisible on the viewports (except camera), making it nigh impossible to match up the brushes.
For instance was trying to create a diagonal brush along a wall, but the other brushes appeared to be invisible on my viewport, making it very hard to match up the brush to the correct height.

I understand UDK is a lot less brush based than hammer, but surely there is an easier and quicker way to draw brushes no?
Am I doing it wrong?

TL;DR: How are you supposed to go about doing brushes properly in UDK?

[DonPunch]

you got it right,

UDK isnt focused on brush based levels, so don't expect an easy answer. A tip for you though, is while out of geometry mode, you can right click on a point of a brush, and it will snap it to the grid. The best meathod to make sure things line up, is to get used to the unit sizes, match your grid to a power of that, and write down your dimentions, or use a stand set of numbers. Powers of 2 are always your best bet in any modeling program, which is what brush building in unreal is basicly.

[BattleGrunt]

Yeah, my professional experience with using the Unreal engine's Geometry Mode is it's a gamble the geometry will not be corrupted. I've tried to make arches and other complex geometry for blockout levels and inevitably the BSP fails to hold.

The engine really prefers simple BSP primitives made from the builder brush. Hence, the BSP output of most Epic's levels is negligible and consists of 90% models and terrain meshes.

[marks]

You aren't supposed to be making complicated BSP geometry in UDK. It is a mesh-based engine. BSP is mostly used for occlusion culling.

[shadowmancer471]

Noted
So if I were to make these walls and stuff entirely out of models, how would I make it so that stuff matched up?
OK, so I have a model of a window frame in blender, which is a separate model from the wall the window frame sits in.
How would I easily make it so that the two cohered together?
Generally my problem is it's difficult to reference two model sizes together (mostly due to my limited knowledge with blender)
Making walls and stuff out of brushes meant it was very easy to make this stuff fit, as I could resize both things easily at once. How could I do the same in model form?

[marks]

http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryEnvironmentModularity

[Ennui]

UDK really isn't built for using CSG brushes for much of anything besides occlusion like marks said. You will run into all kinds of performance issues and whatnot if you try to make anything complex with them. UDK isn't Source - you basically need to use meshes for everything, even simple level geometry.

As for keeping things the same size/scale when it comes to aligning meshes and stuff, just set up your blender or 3dsm or maya to use Unreal units. It's been a while since I was using UDK but I know this can be done, there are probably tutorials on Youtube or whatever. It's also quite intuitive to place meshes in the editor as opposed to CSG brushes since you can see their wireframe in 2d views and can scale them freely.

[Knights]

You aren't supposed to be making complicated BSP geometry in UDK. It is a mesh-based engine. BSP is mostly used for occlusion culling.

Like he said... The bsp in Unreal should REALLY be ONLY for blockouts.. Source like brushes... An example like this
http://knights.interlopers.net/images/d ... t_Dock.jpg
then
http://knights.interlopers.net/images/m ... enshot.jpg
then
http://knights.interlopers.net/images/m ... n_game.jpg

UDK is great! Exporting models is a cinch, hl2 not so cinch...