My first FIEA level design assignment

 Level Design blog 8/30/25

For this entry I will be going over my first Level Design assignment at my masters program FIEA. 

Concept and Planning 

In this assignment we were tasked with recreating a real world location using the block mesh tools provided in Unreal Engine 5.6. 

Planning out this project I was deciding what location I would like to do. A lot of people did classrooms on campus or their bedrooms. I wanted more of a challenge to gain a better understanding of the block mesh tool in UE 5.6. With that I decided to go with my office area from my internship at Limbitless Solutions. 

    Once I picked my location I went out to get some good reference images to be able to start blocking out a accurate version within Unreal Engine. Below are some of the reference images I took 

 









Development process 

Now that I had my reference images I went and create a new level in unreal engine and started to block out my environment. I first start with making the windows using the modeling tool in UE5. I changed over thought to using UE5 cube grid tool to quickly create the floors, walls, windows, ceilings and more within the block quickly and effectively. I used the cube grid tool at different sizes when cutting out different parts of the environment such as the windows putting it down to size 10 and punch out holes to make room for the window panes. I was really shocked how much and how fast I can block out with cube grid. Not only is the structure made out of cube grid but I also made all the cubbies and cabinets out of cube grid! When it came to applying materials to the parts of the block out made with cube grid I utilized creating different faces to apply the correct color scheme to each part of a given object a good example would be small cabinet in the meeting room. I used faces to correctly add the top of it being made out of wood (so a brown color) then a black outline around the top and finally the rest being white.

When it came to the more finer details in a simple block out such as tables, chairs, TVs, and monitors I used the modeling too in UE5 to quickly create those objects. Utilizing edge loops, faces, and extruding I was able to great very simple but accurate version of the furniture in this office. One thing that was really cool that I haven't messed around with before was the bevel tool that allowed me to create the round smooth shapes of the chairs and the round side of some of the desks. Each piece I had to bevel differently with the small black chairs requiring more sub divisions than the tall bar stool chairs. For the lights I again used faces to add a emissive material to the lights that I modeled using cube grid. Lastly something I did to make the space feel more accurate was get pictures of all the graphics you see on the walls and bring them into Unreal Engie. With them in Unreal Engine I create a new material making those images into decals allowing my block out to also have the wall graphics that the real world location has! 

Challenges and Solutions 

During the development process of this block out I faced a couple of different challenges. My first challenge was I didn't have much experience with UE5 modeling tools so I had to find my way around it as many of the features are not the same (or are named differently) than those in Maya. For this I resolved this by experimenting and getting into a good flow which allowed me to find my way and increase how fast I was blocking out. Another challenge I faced was there were certain sections near the end of development that I realized were a little out of scale so I had to readjust the environment with bringing in the back walls a little then readjusting the objects in the space. The last challenge I face was when putting in the decals the color of the walls wouldn't match up 1 to 1. For example the small kitchen area the fair life decal has a back wall of white and blue, however my wall was only blue. To resolve this issue I knew there was a way to cut into a face to create a new custom face as I couldn't use a edge loop as this needed to be angled. After find what the tool was called in Unreal Engine I was quickly able to make a new slanted face and make the wall look more inline to the reference image. 

Final result

Here are some images showing off the final result of this project!!!














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