How levels are built¶
A level is a floor plan made of modular meshes on one grid, lit only by lamps, and given its look by two actors: a fog and a post-process volume. The start room of L_Procedural and the rooms in Maps/Modules/ are built that way. Open them when you want to see a rule in practice.
- The kit:
Content/MPFriendslop/Meshes/Environments/Modular/ - The master material:
Content/MPFriendslop/Materials/Props/Master/M_Prop_Master
This page is the mental model. The pages after it are the recipes.
The grid¶
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| One cell | 400 x 400 cm |
| Half step | 200 cm |
| Floor to ceiling | 300 cm |
| Floor and ceiling slab thickness | 16 cm |
Every module is placed at scale 1. The player robot is about 180 cm to the head, so a 300 cm ceiling leaves a little over a metre above it.
The modules¶
| Folder | Meshes |
|---|---|
Floors/ |
SM_Mod_Floor_400, SM_Mod_Floor_200, SM_Mod_Floor_Hatch_400, SM_Mod_Floor_Corner_400, SM_Mod_Floor_Edge_400, SM_Mod_Floor_Extraction_400 |
Walls/ |
SM_Mod_Wall_400, SM_Mod_Wall_200, SM_Mod_Wall_Window_400, SM_Mod_Wall_Pipes_400, SM_Mod_Wall_Damaged_400, SM_Mod_Wall_Doorway_400, SM_Mod_Wall_DoorwaySingle_400, SM_Mod_Wall_DoorPocket_200, SM_Mod_Wall_CornerInner_400, SM_Mod_Wall_CornerOuter_400, SM_Mod_Wall_Pillar_40 |
Ceilings/ |
SM_Mod_Ceiling_400 |
Openings/ |
The door frames and leaves used by BP_SlidingDoor_Single and BP_SlidingDoor_Double |
SM_Mod_Floor_Hatch_400 is a closed decorative hatch with no mechanism. The window pane of SM_Mod_Wall_Window_400 is an opaque tinted panel that blocks the player on purpose.
Three props sit in Meshes/Props/: SM_Barrel_01, SM_Shelf_01 and SM_Trolley_01. They are decor, with their pivot at the bottom centre. The shelf has no back panel, so either long face can go against a wall.
L_Showcase lays out the template's meshes, sorted by family. It is quicker than browsing folders when you look for a piece.
Pivots, and where each piece goes¶
Floors and ceilings fill a cell. The slab covers X 0 to 400 and Y -400 to 0 from its pivot, so the slab of cell (i, j) goes at (400 x i, 400 x (j+1), 0), yaw 0. The ceiling uses the same location with Z = 300.
Walls sit on the edges of the grid, not in the cells. The pivot is at the foot of the wall, on its centre line, and the wall runs along +X, 300 cm high. An edge along X takes yaw 0, an edge along Y takes yaw 90. The wall is centred on the line, so it overlaps each neighbouring slab by about 12 cm. That is how the kit is meant to fit.
Corners replace two straight walls. SM_Mod_Wall_CornerInner_400 and SM_Mod_Wall_CornerOuter_400 carry two 400 cm branches and are placed on a grid node:
| Yaw | Branches go towards |
|---|---|
0 |
+X and -Y |
90 |
+Y and +X |
180 |
-X and +Y |
270 |
-Y and -X |
Use Inner when the room is inside the angle, Outer otherwise. When a node cannot take a corner, because one branch is already a doorway, a window or a decorated wall, close it with SM_Mod_Wall_Pillar_40, centred on the node. Without it, two straight walls leave a small notch on the outside of the angle.
The pipes of SM_Mod_Wall_Pipes_400 and the damage of SM_Mod_Wall_Damaged_400 are on the local +Y face only. Check which side faces the room before you place them.
Why the level is dark without lamps¶
The project renders without global illumination and without baked lighting:
| Project setting | Value | What it means for your level |
|---|---|---|
Dynamic Global Illumination Method |
None |
No bounce light. A room without a lamp is black |
Reflection Method |
None |
Reflections come from reflection captures only |
Allow Static Lighting |
off | Nothing is baked. Every light is Movable |
Shadow Map Method |
Virtual Shadow Maps |
Clean shadows on curved meshes without tuning each light |
L_Procedural and its rooms have no sun and no sky light. Every bit of light in it comes from the lamps of Place, switch and make lamps.
The two actors that give a level its look¶
| Actor | What it carries | In L_Procedural |
|---|---|---|
ExponentialHeightFog |
The haze that swallows the far end of a corridor | Fog Density 0.9, Fog Height Falloff 0.001 |
PostProcessVolume, with Infinite Extent (Unbound) ticked |
The locked exposure, the grade, and MI_InteractableOutline in its Post Process Materials |
Min EV100 and Max EV100 both at 5 |
The exposure is locked so the picture does not drift when you walk from a lit room into a dark one. A higher EV100 value makes the whole level darker.
When a map is too bright or too dark, change the exposure first, then Fog Density. They act on the whole level in one field each.
Warning
MI_InteractableOutline in the volume's Post Process Materials is what draws the outline on interactable objects. A level without it shows no outline at all, and nothing reports it.
Recolouring the level¶
The kit, the props and the loot are painted with Material Instances of M_Prop_Master. Glass is the exception: the window pane and the glass vase use their own glass material. Stripes, floor markings and dots are drawn by the shader from the mesh's own position, so they follow a module you move, rotate or duplicate. There are no textures to repaint.
| Instance | Used on | Parameters worth changing |
|---|---|---|
MI_SteelPainted |
Walls | BaseColor, StripeColor, StripeHeight, StripeWidth, StripeEnabled |
MI_SteelPainted_Floor |
Floors | BaseColor, MarkingColor, MarkingWidth, DotsEnabled, DotColor |
MI_SteelPainted_FloorCorner, MI_SteelPainted_FloorEdge, MI_SteelPainted_FloorHatch |
The floor variants | Same as the floor |
MI_SteelPainted_DoorFrame |
Door frames, and the ceiling slab | BaseColor |
The instances live in Materials/Environments/Modular/. Change one and every module that uses it changes with it, with no graph to open. Set StripeEnabled to 0 to remove the wall stripe.
The ceiling slab uses MI_SteelPainted_DoorFrame, which is why the ceilings are dark. For another ceiling colour, give that slot on SM_Mod_Ceiling_400 another instance: one change covers every slab.