Designer Level Mods

From update 4.3 onwards, Automation supports the creation mod levels that change the environment around the car or engine being designed by a player.

Overview

A Designer Level is a collection of Unreal Levels with a name, description, preview thumbnails and a year.

Players have the option to select a different Designer Level to show when they enter the car & engine designer, or the engine designer.

Usually, Designer Levels combine Photoscene Mod Levels with an additional level containing locators to position the cars and engines that are spawned by the car & engine designers.

Workflow

1. In UE4:
   1. Set up a mod.
   2. Create and fill out a Designer Level file.
   3. Create your aesthetic level (or reuse a Photoscene Mod Level).
   4. Create your car and engine locator level
   5. Assign variables in Designer Level to your newly created levels
2. In the Automation Workshop Publishing Tool:
   1. Set up a workshop item.
   2. Share your mod.

Create your Designer Level Mod

Create A New Mod

After setting up the modding SDK from Here, create a new blank mod:

Create A Custom Designer Level

In your mod content folder, right-click and add a new Designer Level file. This is the file the game uses to load the levels.

Open the Designer Level file. It has a few parameters:

• Name - This is text displayed on the preview of of the environment that shows in game.
• Year - This is the actual paint itself. The material instance defines how the paint looks, what parameters are available, and how it looks when exported.
• Designer Types - An array containing the possible uses of this designer level. It should either contain Car & Engine Designer and/or Engine Designer
• Description - Additional text shown when mousing over a preview of a designer level in game.
• Levels - An array of UE4 Levels, usually comprising of 1 Photoscene Mod Level and 1 level with several blueprints within in it.
• Preview Images - Images shown as thumbnails when the player is selecting a level. They should show off what the player should expect to see from the environment around the car and engines.
• GUID - The unique identifier of this level. This must be regenerated if you copy an existing designer level.
• Family GUID - Not used. Click generate for a unique Family GUID anyway.

Create An Aesthetic Level

If you already have a Photoscene Mod Level created you can skip this step.

Right-click the content browser again, and create a new Level. This is the actual designed level.

Open the material. UE4 uses standard PBR Metallic-Roughness workflows. What this means is you define a material by giving it:

• a colour (0,0,0 - 1,1,1)
• telling it how rough it is (0 - 1, 0 being shiny)
• how metallic it is (0 - 1, 0 being plastic)

as well as a few additional things that help optimise parts of the rendering process, such as: