Becoming fluent in Blueprint

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
1

Hey all, I would like to start by saying that I am new to the Unreal Engine Forums, and I just got here from crydev, so if I did happen to put this in the wrong place feel free to correct me.
I have been working tirelessly to try to become fluent in Blueprint, but no matter how many tutorials I watch, or threads I read, nothing clicks. I don’t want to give up on it because I see
the potential with UE4, but I am stumped here and this is not working for me, what I am trying to ask is - do any of you guys have any tips to help me on my way of learning Blueprint? is
there a good way to learn (In your eyes)?

It is a pretty broad question, but any help is appreciated. Thanks :slight_smile:
Preston.

2

Hmmm. Well I was just in your same position about a month ago. I wanted to stay away from coding but still accomplish things such as making a game.

What I could recommend is the tutorial playlist here -> A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki - Announcements - Epic Developer Community Forums

It really helped me capture a lot of what I wanted to do from tutorials. It helps if you have programming experience because you’ll know what to do in code, but instead you would rather do it visually which is what blueprinting is all about. At least that’s what it was like for me.

3

It took me approximately 6 days of using UE4 for around 5 hours a day before I would of considered myself ‘fluent’ in the actual usage of the blueprint system. Of course the insurmountable mountain of things you can do with them are another thing.

This is how I learn: I want to do this -> I can’t do this -> I find out how to do this -> Repeat.

That’s how I learned to code, that’s how I learned 3D, that’s how I learned everything I’ve ever taught myself. Unless you wuss out - it’ll click and you wont even realize it.

If the subject area is much less familiar to me, such as having not done much AI in any engine before, then I’ll find some ‘crash course’ type videos to quickly explain it and go off and do my own thing with it. A base for starting, if you will.

I don’t think it’d ever click for me if I had somehow managed to make myself sit through a bunch of videos. I learn things myself; maybe it’ll work for you too.

4

Hello,
What i did when i began blueprints learning is

1 : Choosing one thing to do.
But not blueprints ! this is like saying : ok today i learn materials. Of course you can have fastly basics and the illusion to be skilled. But each new situation will be an issue because you don’t look at it in the right angle. and sadly, fastly will come the moment were you’ll be too much disappointed and leave.

Choose one small thing to learn in thewhole blueprints possibilities : communication : how to do a switch /light

2 : Find the tutorial (in fact, you can set as 0 a list of tutorials video / forums examples or downloads and all the stuff gave by epic in which with a bit time you have most of all the things you will wonder (at least it is true for me)

3 : doing it. Not only looking, but doing. You didn’t understand ? Ok ! It is normal. Just try to learn and remember. As we did when we learned numbers before being able to calculate.

4 : If you really understood nothing. Do it a second time to remember more how things work.

5 : Choose another tutorial in your list and do it.

6 : come back to ever done tutorials (best way is to create a project : learn stuff and migrate in it all you need to learn from content examples blueprint examples and add stuff from other tutorial. It will grow but you’ll know where to find what you did and you’ll not pollute your main project with fails.

After 10 different tutorials, if you really did them with attention and remember what you did, the last ones will help you to understand the first ones. And the more you’ll learn new numbers and how they are basically use, the more you’ll understand how to use them in more situations, step by step.

Yes, this is boring, but if you don’t keep a time to learn arrays, you’ll never know what a powerfull they can be. If you don’t learn communications you’ll always wonder what is the best in your situation between cast or interface.

Learn all what you can even if you don’t understand and let the light come in by itself ^^

5

That’s definitely the other end of the spectrum from how I manage to learn things :slight_smile: It is good to say it since learns differently.

I can’t watch many videos; I have no patience for it because they cover things I know and most of the content could be in a much easier to search through text on a web page so I feel like I am wasting time, also I prefer to solve things myself but for me when I learn stuff it is usually filling in gaps rather than a whole new thing.

6

Just keep pushing. Hardest thing about blueprints is knowing how to find and create nodes you need.

Tip of that iceberg is cast_to and communication between player, hud , pawn, level and pickups/items. Just master this and everything else you will learn on the way.
Then there is small hiccup with vector math and esp rotation nodes.

Start with simple tasks, and remember when something does not work (for eg. camera or no key events processing) its usually because some property in strange place is not set correctly.

7

Thanks guys! This seems to be helping! What I am doing is just being persistent (Following Nawrot’s advice), and after I just decided to dedicate an entire night to nothing but trying, I actually made a good bit of progress and now something seems to be clicking, and I have also learned that you cannot make a huge and complicated algorithm in one sit, you have to create different things to support that huge algorithm and take it one step at a time, and those steps are baby steps. The problem with me was my though process rather than the way I was learning it I come to find out, ****, I am really surprised at how much you can learn of you just take the time to process it in your head. Again, thanks you guys!

8

Hi Prestonator,

It’s always good to dive right in and learn something new! I’ve found that, while working with blueprints, it becomes easier each time you use them to see the flow of logic. If you want to add two variables, for example, it is easy to create a X + Y node of whatever var types you need. If you need additional information or just want to see how other users are tackling specific tasks, take a look at the wiki, it has a ton of tutorials and videos, many of which are specifically for blueprints.