Unreal Engine 4: A Simple Approach To Starting UE4 [DEV LOG #1]
Unreal Engine can be overwhelming if you are jumping into it for the very first time. Especially if you (or someone like myself), have no prior experience developing games. The whole experience can be downright exhausting. Trying to better understand where to start, with such a large palette at your disposal can often lead to not starting anything at all. And really, that is something we want to make sure we avoid.
An approach I use identifies the gestalt (as defined by a google search: an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.) before initiating a deep dive. I make sure I accomplish, at the very least, small tasks while continuing to build knowledge and experience. That way, I'm satisfying my long term goal to learn as well as satisfying my immediate need for instant gratification.
To start, I identified the gestalt to build a general understanding of how UE4 is organized. I separated out the same DETAILS properties of each class (brush, lighting, actors, etc) into a spreadsheet. Each class contains some of the same DETAILS that include transform, LOD, scale, etc while others like lighting and sound have other DETAILS not found in other classes. Any DETAILS that appeared in the other classes had a designated color to identify them, using conditional formatting. That way, any DETAILS unique to a particular class could be identified as well. You can find the folder and spreadsheets here.
You're probably wondering, why would anyone want to do this?
The simple answer, at least for me, is to be able to navigate through the number of tools available in UE4 and reduce the chances of getting lost on topics that either might not be the right time to learn as a beginner or more generally just to stay focused on materials that I particularly want to learn. Organizing the materials is very much like building a map and creating pathways to ultimately reach a destination in the journey of creation... I can honestly say, the areas I am focused on are in learning more about making sound work and having a good handle on the workflow. At the same time, even though I have a long view of what I want to accomplish, accumulating a number of small successes on getting things to work properly in UE4 eventually snowballs that can eventually come together to deliver an amazing experience, especially in VR ;).
After identifying the gestalt, the two tasks I provided for myself were using a box trigger to toggle a sound on/off whenever it collided with the player and the other (which I accomplished before identifying the gestalt) was to accomplish converting an existing asset into virtual reality using blueprints. I've definitely made mistakes along the way however this process actually helped with learning the workflow better even with many of the missteps.
I know many times the very beginning is the biggest obstacle that can seem impossible to overcome. If we can remove some obstacles or even modify them, maybe, just maybe we will see a final product after all :). I hope this information will be helpful to you in your UE4 journey. Good luck!
You can find the previous dev log here: DEV LOG #0.
If you have questions or comments, just post them in the comments section. Thanks!
An approach I use identifies the gestalt (as defined by a google search: an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.) before initiating a deep dive. I make sure I accomplish, at the very least, small tasks while continuing to build knowledge and experience. That way, I'm satisfying my long term goal to learn as well as satisfying my immediate need for instant gratification.
To start, I identified the gestalt to build a general understanding of how UE4 is organized. I separated out the same DETAILS properties of each class (brush, lighting, actors, etc) into a spreadsheet. Each class contains some of the same DETAILS that include transform, LOD, scale, etc while others like lighting and sound have other DETAILS not found in other classes. Any DETAILS that appeared in the other classes had a designated color to identify them, using conditional formatting. That way, any DETAILS unique to a particular class could be identified as well. You can find the folder and spreadsheets here.
You're probably wondering, why would anyone want to do this?
The simple answer, at least for me, is to be able to navigate through the number of tools available in UE4 and reduce the chances of getting lost on topics that either might not be the right time to learn as a beginner or more generally just to stay focused on materials that I particularly want to learn. Organizing the materials is very much like building a map and creating pathways to ultimately reach a destination in the journey of creation... I can honestly say, the areas I am focused on are in learning more about making sound work and having a good handle on the workflow. At the same time, even though I have a long view of what I want to accomplish, accumulating a number of small successes on getting things to work properly in UE4 eventually snowballs that can eventually come together to deliver an amazing experience, especially in VR ;).
After identifying the gestalt, the two tasks I provided for myself were using a box trigger to toggle a sound on/off whenever it collided with the player and the other (which I accomplished before identifying the gestalt) was to accomplish converting an existing asset into virtual reality using blueprints. I've definitely made mistakes along the way however this process actually helped with learning the workflow better even with many of the missteps.
I know many times the very beginning is the biggest obstacle that can seem impossible to overcome. If we can remove some obstacles or even modify them, maybe, just maybe we will see a final product after all :). I hope this information will be helpful to you in your UE4 journey. Good luck!
You can find the previous dev log here: DEV LOG #0.
If you have questions or comments, just post them in the comments section. Thanks!
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