• Post category:StudyBullet-13
  • Reading time:21 mins read


Complete Guide To Learning How To Create Foliage & Plants in Blender and Then Export to Unreal Engine 5

What you will learn

• Enjoying the foliage modelling to game environment transition from Blender to Unreal Engine 5 – the only one out there like it

• Creating 12 different foliage types with over 30 variations, including plants, grass, water lilies, and reeds to create environments unique to every student

• Using Blender 3 and understanding its new interface and shortcuts

• Maximising the potential of your references to develop strong game asset concepts using Pureref

• Importing and setting up custom alpha brushes for texture painting

• Creating vegetation from a simple plane and turning it into 3D foliage (i.e., modeling from a 3D plane)

• Making use of Blender’s particle system to model foliage including flowers

• Using weight painting techniques to get better control over foliage position

• Learning how to create clusters of foliage to get the best results in an environment

• Learning how to use HDRIs as 3D model backgrounds for your portfolio

• Utilising rendering to improve the quality of presentation for your 3D environment by rendering out in Blender’s rendering engine Cycles

• Choosing to continue your 3D modelling to game engine journey by completing the second (independent) part of the course in Unreal Engine 5

• Optimising 3D foliage ready to export them into Unreal Engine 5

• Preparing foliage asset collections for UE5 integration and setting up material instances for them

• Exploring different transparency materials that will help you set up cut-out decals, partially transparent decals with PBR values and two side-faced textures

• Creating materials for the foliage using UE5 texture customisation and the wind system

• Learning how to paint water foliage into a scene and how to get more depth out of its volume, painting plants on top of the water, inside the water, and under

• Setting up a foliage asset pack that can be easily imported onto any Unreal Engine 5 project

• Presenting your foliage pack in an Unreal Engine 5 prepared environment (provided in the course resources)

• Complete the course which is going to be the first stepping stone to creating different 3D worlds

Description

Have you ever wanted to breathe life into your game world through foliage like plants, grass, water lilies and reeds?

  • ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ is very different to any other 3D modeling course out there! Our focus is to create an entire foliage pack completely made in Blender – one of the top open-source and free 3D modeling software out there.
  • We will not be using any other software to create all that you see in the thumbnail, except Blender. You will also learn about plant and grass animation, and as an added plus, you will learn about how to integrate foliage into a game engine – Unreal Engine 5.
  • This is great because it means you will get to see how we make foliage from scratch and import it into video games. I am sure ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ will be the one course that you will want to keep handy anytime you need to create variations of foliage.
  • Our ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ top 6:

1.   Creating vegetation from a simple plane and turning it into a 3D foliage (i.e., modeling from 3D plane)

2.   Making use of Blender’s particle system to model foliage including flowers

3.   Learning about optimisation and the importance of low poly modeling to get a best performace out of a dense foliage setup within any scene at the same time as maintaining the stylized visuals of custom painted foliage

4.   Using weight painting techniques to get better control over foliage position

5.   Creating materials for the foliage using UE5 texture customisation and the wind system

6.   Learning how to paint water foliage into a scene and how to get more depth out of its volume, painting plants on top of water, inside the water, and underwater

Now, there are courses out there that can show you how to create grass that reacts to wind, but there is nothing that covers the entire process from flowers and plants to grass, and even water lilies and reeds. ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ is intended to be the complete guide to creating foliage in Blender.

  • Blender: 3D Modeling

‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ will see you creating 12 different types of foliage with over 30 variations. We start our journey from a simple cube and we through all the techniques you will need to create flowers and stems. This will include low poly modelling techniques as well as more advanced Blender functions using the Bezier curve functions.

As we progress through ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’, we will be increasing the difficulty of the foliage we are creating. You will also be learning about the most fundamental 3D modelling skills, including how to properly UV plants ready for adding materials to them.

You will be learning about Blender’s powerful texture painting workflow. I will be supplying some of my very own custom alpha brushes which you can use in your 3D models and scenes. The texture painting part of ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ is huge and has a lot of depth to cover, showing you everything available in Blender. This includes custom brushes, cavity masking, and different map types.

‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ will introduce you to particle system setups. This will show you how to populate an area with plants and grass in a natural way, with complete control over placement and smaller variations.

  • Blender: Animation

Finally, creating your foliage pack which will include grass, flowers and stems, reeds, and water plants, you will be animating all parts using Blender.

We will be going through the entire process of bringing the foliage to life by creating realistic movement. This will consist of adding wind and turbulence to our blender scene.

This will add a massive amount of realism to any Blender renders you might create using the foliage you created in ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’.

Best of all, we will also be covering how to light your scene using real-world lighting techniques. To finish off the Blender section, I will be showing you the correct way of exporting foliage to game engines like Unreal Engine 5.

  • Unreal Engine 5: Game Engine Integration

This section of ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ has as much depth as the Blender part. We will cover everything from importing foliage to setting up vertex painting and creating materials. Finally, we will be looking into the foliage tools available in Unreal Engine 5 (UE5), including setting up realistic wind animations.

You will become a master of using the foliage tool in Unreal Engine 5 (UE5). With it, you will be able to set up foliage with all of its settings. You will find out how to change and randomise scale, how to change allignment, and how to make adjust foliage density to achieve nice variation over an entire foliage painting process.

Finally, the Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) part includes a full environment scene composition guide for to enhance your environment without cluttering up the terrain.


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Since ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ has two parts based on Blender and Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) respectively, your UE5 milestone project will be to present your foliage set in Unreal Engine 5 using a prepared environment included in the course resources and render out a scene.

‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ is unique because all the foliage is made entirely in Blender. That means it can all be created entirely for free once you realize the true power of this amazing software.

So, come join me on this amazing course and you will never be stuck again when it comes to bringing your scene to life!

Your project will be to model, texture, animate, and optimise 12 different types of foliage with over 30 variations. Of course, you could set yourself a challenge and diversify aspects or details of foliage like plants, grass, water lilies and reeds. You could change the textures, and add different variations or more types of plants, such as different wall-climbing plants, bushes, and shrubbery, to make your environments more alive.

I imagine you using flowers, plants, water lilies and reeds in the fields surrounding the farm in 3D Tudor’s ‘Blender 3 The Ultimate Medieval Scene Course’!

To get you pumped, imagine how well this 3D foliage set fits in with your other 3D Tudor projects.

Be creative! Feature your foliage set around a medieval castle keep with ‘Creating a Modular Kitbash in Blender’. Also, think about using them in other medieval environments such as:

– Around a gipsy carriage in ‘Substance Painter to Unreal Engine 5 Masterclass’;

– All around the ‘Unreal Engine 5 Beginners Guide to Building an Environment Course’ course scene to transform its landscape;

– Next to a river running by a medieval wind and water mill hybrid with ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 5 Ultimate Course’, or;

– To populate and make ‘Blender 3D Modelling & Animating A Stylized Oriental Scene’ even more beautiful.

This course will give you access to just over 15 hours of 3D art in around 82 comprehensive lessons.

Course Resources & Freebies

The ‘Blender to Unreal Engine 3D Plants and Vegetation’ resource pack includes 6 custom brushes (alpha textures and other Blender preset formats), 9 image references and a Pureref reference file, and an environment example (.blend file and .fbx file inclusive of 15 textures).

Join this course and come be part of a game design journey of over 15 hours of learning that will see you creating all the foliage you might want in just 82 lessons.

I am excited for you to share your renders and turntables of how you used your foliage in different environments for your portfolios with me. Go beyond the taught material and make new foliage types to represent the flora of different continents.

Check out the free introduction and I am sure you won’t be able to put this course down!

Until next time, happy modelling everyone!

Neil – 3D Tudor

English
language

Content

Download Pack & Blender Setup

Introduction
Lesson 1 – Blender Setup [+ Download Pack]
Lesson 2 – Blender Basics
Lesson 3 – HDRI Lighting

Section 2 – Shrub Plant 3D Modeling

Lesson 4 – Setting up Vegetation Form in 2D
Lesson 5 – Creating 3D Thickness for Plants

Section 3 – Shrub Foliage Texturing

Lesson 6 – Setting up UV for our First 3D Vegetation
Lesson 7 – Texture Painting 3D Foliage
Lesson 8 – Painting 3D Stylized Texture on 3D Asset Edge
Lesson 9 – Creating Roughness Texture for PBR Material

Section 4 – Creating Shrub Foliage Variations

Lesson 10 – Creating Shrub 3D Vegetation Clusters

Section 5 – 3D Modelling Grass Foliage

Lesson 11 – Creating 3D Grass Stem from Cube
Lesson 12 – Creating 3D Grass Variation

Section 6 – Creating Texture Detail for Grass

Lesson 13- Painting 3D Grass
Lesson 14 – Adding Grass Texture Detail

Section 7 – Creating Grass Cluster Variance

Lesson 15 – Turning Digital Grass into Organic Shapes
Lesson 16 – Modifying Vegetation Clusters
Lesson 17 – Applying Adjusting Colour Textures

Section 8 – Creating Wild Grass 3D foliage

Lesson 18 – Creating Mesh for 3D Wild Grass
Lesson 19 – Using Bezier Curve for Plant Stem
Lesson 20 – Texturing and Setting up Wild Grass Mesh
Lesson 21 – Creating Wild Grass 3D Cluster
Lesson 22 – 3D wild Grass Forming Organic Silhouette

Section 9 – 3D Painting Texture Detail for Wild Grass

Lesson 23 – Adding Texture Detail to our 3D Wild Grass
Lesson 24 – Using Colour Overlay to Adjust Texture Tint

Section 10 – Creating 3D Yellow Flowers in Blender

Lesson 25 – Starting the Modeling Process for 3D Stylized Flowers
Lesson 26 – Modeling a Flower Petal
Lesson 27 – UV Unwrapping Flowers
Lesson 28 – Adding Textured Depth to our Flowers
Lesson 29 – Painting in Detail to our Flower Petals

Section 11 – Using Blender Particle Emitter to Create Foliage

Lesson 30 – Using Particles to Populate 3D Flowers with Petals
Lesson 31 – Setting up Weight Painting for 3D Particle Flower Petals

Section 12 – Finishing touches for Blender’s Yellow Flower Foliage

Lesson 32 – Fixing Foliage Mesh for Blender Texturing
Lesson 33 – Creating Roughness PBR Value for our 3D flower

Section 13 – Purple Flower 3D foliage

Lesson 34 – Using Modifiers to 3D Model a Flower
Lesson 35 – Overlaying Colour Texture to get Greater Flower Petal Depth
Lesson 36 – Giving Additional Detail to 3D Foliage Flowers
Lesson 37 – Finishing Touches For our 3D Purple Flower

Section 14 – White Flower 3D Plant Creation Within Blender

Lesson 38 – Reusing Mesh for White Flower Foliage
Lesson 39 – Lowering Texture Resolution for Optimised 3D Foliage
Lesson 40 – Texturing Pattern Based on Blender Perspective
Lesson 41 – Setting up White Flower Petals

Section 15 – Flower 3D Variation Foliage

Lesson 42 – Using Sculpt Tool to Relax our Vertices
Lesson 43 – Setting up 3D White Flower Variations

Section 16 – Blender Water 3D Foliage

Lesson 44 – Setting up Mesh for Water 3D Foliage
Lesson 45 – Making Long Foliage with Customised UV Unwrap

Section 17 – Water Foliage Reed Texturing

Lesson 46 – Texturing Reed
Lesson 47 – Setting up Bump Values for 3D Detail

Section 18 – Creating Reed 3D Plant Variations in Blender

Lesson 48 – Setting up Reed Grass 3D Variations
Lesson 49 – Setting up Reed Foliage for Water Planes

Section 19 – Lilypad 3D Modelling and Texturing in Blender

Lesson 50 – Sculpting out Lilypad Shape
Lesson 51 – Drawing Custom Plant Stems
Lesson 52 – Texture Painting Water Lily Pads
Lesson 53 – Setting up Lilly Pad Foliage Clusters

Section 20 – Creating Underwater Plants in Blender

Lesson 54 – Creating Smaller Water Plants
Lesson 55 – Texturing Underwater Vegetation
Lesson 56 – Creating 3D Formed Underwater Vegetation Clusters

Section 21 – Creating 3D Lilypad Flower Blossoms

Lesson 57 – Creating Lily Flower 3D Model
Lesson 58 – Painting Water Lilies with Colour Overlay Functionality
Lesson 59 – Creating Water Lily Clusters

Section 22 – Organising 3D Foliage Collections in Blender

Lesson 60 – Organising Project

Sections 23 – Planting Foliage Within 3D Environment using Blender’s Particle Sy

Lesson 61 – Setting up Grass Foliage Particles
Lesson 62 – 3D Foliage Particle Setup
Lesson 63 – Setting up Terrain Scene with Grass Particles
Lesson 64 – Adding Flower Field for Terrain
Lesson 65 – Planting 3D Water Foliage

Section 24 – Animating and Rendering In Blender Software

Lesson 66 – Animating our 3D Foliage
Lesson 67 – Blender Rendering

Section 25 – Setting up 3D Plants for Unreal Engine 5

Lesson 68 – Adjusting Textures and Exporting UE5 Assets

Section 26 – Unreal Engine 5 Basics

Section 26 – Unreal Engine 5 Basics
Lesson 70 – Viewport and New Map
Lesson 71 – Importing Assets Creating Materials

Section 27 – Creating PBR Material in Unreal Engine 5

Lesson 72 – Setting up Water Material
Lesson 73 – Setting up UE5 Material Instance Controls
Lesson 74 – Reassigning UE5 Materials
Lesson 75 – Converting Bump map to Normal Texture in UE5

Section 28 – Creating Wind System for UE5

Lesson 76 – Vertex Painting Wind Motion for UE5 Foliage

Section 29 – Using Foliage Mode in Unreal Engine 5

Lesson 77 – Setting up Foliage Mode in UE5
Lesson 78 – UE5 Painting in Terrain Grass
Lesson 79 – Setting up Flower Composition
Lesson 80 – Setting up Water Foliage
Lesson 81 – Creating Depth in our Swamp

Section 30 – Unreal Engine 5 Rendering

Lesson 82 – Render Unreal Engine 5 Video