Importing the House [UDK]

Importing Steps

1.      Open UDK

2.      Open content browser (ctrl + shift+ F)

3.      Right click ‘New Packages’ then select import.

4.      Select the file e.g. Street_Export

5.      Right click the mesh you have imported

6.      Select ‘Edit using static mesh editor’

7.      Click ‘Collision’ tab

8.      Select ‘Auto convex collision’. Adding collisions to the mesh makes it a solid object. When you play the level with the house you would be able to run straight through the house without an collisions set to stop you.

9.      You will get a box with 3 slider options. Move them all to max, then ‘Apply’.

10.   Click the house model and drag it onto the map

11.   Close the box with the sliders. On the right of the static mesh editor window select the dropdown option ‘LODinfo’ – [0] – Elements. You will see numbers [0] to [16]. (Note: [0] doesn’t do anything if textures were applied to it). Each of these numbers represent a part of the house e.g. windows, doors, lamppost, roof etc.

12.   To apply a texture to the house, click on a texture in the content browser and then click the green arrow next the box within one of the numbered dropdowns.
13.   After texturing the house, we looked at adding a light source to the lamppost. Right click the surface or ground and select add player – add light (point). You can then drag, rotate and enlarge the light source to whatever seems to fit with the lamppost.


I enjoyed working through the Unreal Development Kit because I had used it before on my previous course. Though I never imported a mesh from a software related to Maya. I previously used Blender to create models and import them into UDK, yet I think I've completely forgotten how to do that now.
Learning to import meshes from Maya to UDK has really inspired and motivated me to continue with Maya, because both those softwares are easy to access and I could practice it at home over the holiday.


The only tricky part with this tutorial was which number was which part of the house, when I was trying to texture it. Good thing we were given the solutions to each number otherwise it would have taken forever.