5 Great Unreal3 Level Design Tips

I've been working on a new unreal3 level CTF-Faultline. Its a vertically oriented map that has a castle on a cliff chained to a part of the cliff that's floating away with the rest of the castle.

This was my first time using Unreal3 and I learned so much I almost wish I could start over and do some of these things right the first time!

So anyway, here is my list:

1. Sketch sketch sketch!
You won't realize it until you actually start modeling and putting things into your level that you didn't preplan enough. Everyone wants to get down and dirty and start making things but you have to plan! Not just one drawing or floor plan either Mr. Lazy. That means at least thumb nail views of the different points of interest in your level. What's that you say? You don't have anything that stands out? Then you have a problem my friend. For example, I did not draw up enough detailed drawings of my castle interior and that's why I started wondering why it looked so empty.

While a floor plan is essential, having actual drawings of how the level looks from different angles helps immensely.

2. Build it all FIRST.
This is a big area I lost a lot of time in. I learned I should have built up my whole level in 3ds max first. The whole thing. Instead I made props individually and thus a lot of it didn't fit properly. This also caused issues with scaling pieces as well.

On this note, build it all then break up the pieces into chunks that make sense to import. Think hard about occlusion. In my level the floating island had a lot of geometry. You don't see the whole thing though all the time. Only from some specific angles do you actually see it all. So I broke it up into quads and pieced it together in unreal again. This way if you only see quad1 from one angle it doesn't have to calculate for the rest of the island because it's a separate mesh.

3. Normal Map it
After looking into some materials made by the folks at Epic I noticed everything had normal maps. Everything. Its ok if you don't really know how to make them. There is an amazing program called CrazyBump that will do all the hard work for you, and it does it very well. Check it out and be amazed.

4. Use the Post Process Volume, but don't rely on it.
This volume will do wonders to tweak the look of your level. You can adjust saturation and color levels and distance blur among other things. If your level looks like crap without it, it probably will look like crap with a bow wrapped around it when you're done. This helps give your level that last oomph! to make it good. Its not a magic wand to fix bad static meshes or textures (but oh how I wish it did).

5. It takes time.
You may be thinking, "Well duh!" but seriously it takes a lot of time. If you are using all unreal assets then you have a lot less work in front of you. If, however, you are like me and made all your own meshes and textures then its going to be hell. Prepare to spend countless hours just trying to make your assets look good let alone worry about level design and flow, weapon placement, bot pathing, and lighting.

Have others test it too. Even if its only one other person a fresh perspective may surprise you with things you over looked.

I hope this has been informative in some way. I still have a very long way to go before I'm happy with what I'm out putting but I hope my mistakes will help you avoid some of your own.