UE4: What are BSP Blockouts in Unreal Engine 4?

BSP blockouts are one of the most important beginning phases of level design and environment art creation.

It is a process of using BSP brushes (cube, sphere, cylinder, planes etc.) to block-in your level designs and environments.

There are many other terms used for blockouts such as blockin, whitebox, blockmesh, greybox and they mean the same thing.

The purpose of BSP blockouts is to create the initial layout of the environment or playable level. It is to determine size, scale, proportions and composition of your environment. If creating a playable level you also must focus on playable space, flow, pacing, gameplay implementation, scripting so you can start play-testing.

Blockout’s purpose is NOT:

• NOT to finish a level or game environment
• NOT to make it pretty
• NOT to texture
• NOT to light
• NOT to detail

Nothing is final in your blockouts and the blockout WILL change.

The blockout phase often starts very rough.. You have to be flexible to change things around, working the whole map, determining the scale and size of your creation. This is why it’s important to use BSP geometry in UE4 to iterate very quickly.

As you work, iterate, update and refine, blockouts will eventually become the frame or the skeleton of your level or game environment hat you'll use to build upon and ultimately finish.

Blockouts become your foundation.

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