We’ve teamed up with Diana, Steve, Tom, and James from the Epic Games Education Team to discuss all things academic! We’ll be answering questions about the Unreal Engine ecosystem for teachers and students—where to start learning UE, classroom resources, in-demand skills, and how to launch your career after school.
Do you have a question for us? Ask away in the replies below!
Diana Diriwaechter, Education Lead, helps post-secondary institutions, educators, and students adopt Unreal Engine pipelines as powerful yet accessible tools for creativity and innovation. With a diverse skillset and over 25 years of industry experience, Diana has worked in the animation landscape in a wide variety of domains including post-production, medical simulation and animated feature films. Diana worked at Blue Sky Studios for over 18 years. She is also an educator, instructing students at NYU and SVA with a pedagogical focus on the intersection of CG and storytelling.
Steve Isaacs is the Education Program Manager. His mission in this role is to support educators and students in exploring career opportunities that leverage interactive 3d skills. Prior to his role at Epic, Steve was a public school teacher for 28 years, teaching game design and development as well as other courses related to creative uses of technology. His hobbies include video games, biking, snorkeling, hiking and live music.
Tom Shannon, Technical Program Manager, oversees the development of resources for students, educators, and individuals learning and teaching UE. Tom authored the Pearson textbook, “Unreal Engine for Design Visualization”, and acted as Technical Director at Imerza, Lead Technical Artist at 3D Realms on Bombshell and Rad Rogers, and Lead of Interactive Visualization at WSP where Tom developed interactive visualizations of massive civil engineering projects such as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the One World Center remediation and revitalization. Tom has been developing games, simulations and visualizations for 20 years, specializing in UE for over a decade.
James Butcher has been working for Epic Games for five years as an Unreal Engine trainer until recently where he took over as Education Development Manager for EMEA focusing on post secondary Education. He has a history of working in education and training having previously worked as Senior Lecturer in Higher education and within the video game industry. James has been working with UE for over 10 years both as a hobbyist and professionally.
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Hello,
I’m a Game Dev student. I really like programming stuff with blueprints. Just in rare cases, I have to use c++ to complete a task for an exam. However, since now I’m working on a multiplayer project I saw that some stuff has to be done with c++. So my question is what % of c++ methods are already implemented on blueprints and if the % is low or half, is it planning for UE5 to have more unique c++ methods implemented with blueprints?
Thank you
Hi Alberto! Have you joined our educator discord community? We hold office hours the first Tuesday of every month and tech tip tuesdays the second Tuesday of every month. Join us!
Gumax, That’s a good question, and one that’s a bit complicated to answer with a hard percentage. It’s maybe better to describe why some things are exposed and others aren’t. BPs are primarily meant for artists and designers to quickly implement functions and classes that are developed using C++ for performance and scalability. So, lots of properties and functions are exposed to ensure that designers can make network-friendly content without having to involve a programmer.
If you are using the systems we’ve developed and shipped with the engine, you can lean on BPs for the vast majority of your needs. However, those systems are meant to be extended in C++, so customizing the systems or creating your own would need you to work in C++
A great resource for learning how this works is the Lyra project, or the Action RPG sample project. Both use C++ and BP.
Also, check out this presentation by Chris Murphy on how to start writing C++ functions to be used by designers: C++ for Blueprinters - Unreal Engine
A great place for Educators to get started with Virtual Production is the Virtual Production Educators Kit, which is a collection of classes, guest speaker presentations as well as links to class project files, Field Guides, Syllabi as well as general content recourses.
ArtStation would is a great resource for a portfolio. You should only include your very best work. Don’t post work in progress work in your main portfolio. Make sure that you post only high resolution images of your work and try and create work that is targeted at the companies you are interested in applying to. Where possible include breakdowns of your work that give essential information that indicated your understanding of workflows and pipeline. Its always good practice to seek feedback on your work from practicing artists and there are lots of communities where you can engage other artists.
Where is the best place to showcase student work? Follow up on the portfolio question.
With so many social media options, students at times focus on sharing work in spaces that are not getting the right eyes on it and not helping them progress their career goals.
What would you say are the best places to recommend students focus on sharing? (Artstation vs LinkedIn vs Twitter/IG/FB/etc…)
EDIT: looks like James answered part of this above as I asked it *
We also have a channel in our discord server for showcasing student work. This is an especially great place to share work with other educators in the community.
Please check out the “For Educators” section of the developer community. We have great resources to get started using Unreal Engine 5 and our other tools.
Where is the best place to showcase student work? Follow up on the portfolio question.
With so many social media options, students at times focus on sharing work in spaces that are not getting the right eyes on it and not helping them progress their career goals.
What would you say are the best places to recommend students focus on sharing? (Artstation vs LinkedIn vs Twitter/IG/FB/etc…)
Another place for students to showcase their work is in competitions and game jams such as the currently running Unreal Challenge: Spellar Performance which has a special student category. There are many of these kinds of opportunities year round for students to get involved in.
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