Best books learning UE4, Making game from scratch, Making 3d models etc?

Development Character & Animation
, ,
1

Hi,

Tried making a game around 2016 but was struggling to find how to create 3d models (i’m not an artist, too poor to hire someone) and struggled with understanding how to make a game from ground up.

I found out i’m short sighted (keep getting headaches from reading but getting glasses for first time so i really like to get down and get stuck into reading and learning) I really want to start making games, If C++ is more powerful than blueprints then i’ll start learning about C++ too.

The books i like to learn from are:

  1. Books based on about making a game (like the fundamentals that i have to know).

  2. Learning Unreal engine 4 too e.g Menu’s, how to create basic stuff landscapes.

  3. How to create 3d models (i’d like to work in blender), i’m not really good at art that’s only problem i have making a game on my own, is there way around this? is there a way to use maybe reference images maybe? Also i books on painting the models? Exporting the mapping texture etc ? it all confusing to me right now

  4. Animation

  5. Coding Ether blueprints or learning how to code in C++

  6. Finally Game Audio (I’m a Sound Designer, Make music) but not sure how to place it into the world in UE4 if there’s any books on this too be amazing

2

i have yet to find a good book on these things and honestly a book isnt the best medium to learn these types of things. when i started out i was in a similar situation of not knowing much. what i did was to watch a ton of video tutorials online. for learning blueprint and about the engine i would start with the unreal engine youtube channel, then theres also dean ashford, titanic games, and nebula games channels (and many more). for learning modeling id go the same route, check out grant abbitt, blender guru, and gleb alexandrov youtube channels. those can teach you the basics and some more advanced techniques. theres a ton of channels out there dedicated to working specifically in blender and some dedicated to specific styles like low poly. if your not skilled in art then you may want to go with a low poly style. also once you learn modeling basics you can get into things like photogrammetry which turns pictures of real world objects into 3d meshes. or you could just buy meshes from one of the many marketplaces. for resources specifically about animation i dont really have anything specific but theres a few videos on Sebastian Lague channel in the making a character series where he shows how to animate a walk and run cycle. beyond that just do some googling. theres also many online courses out there that are self paced, check out sites like udemy where there are courses on getting started in unreal that regularly go on sale for about 10$. for game building theory in addition to the previous mentioned i would check out extra credits youtube channel, they have a beginner series which is helpful in making your first few games.

bottom line here if your just starting out keep things simple, dont go for perfection, be open to changes, and google has the answer to most issues.

3

The only books that I recommend are ‘Game Engine Architecture’, which starts with how game development works in general and gets pretty hardcore about programming in later chapters and ‘Real-Time Rendering’, which describes Rendering Pipelines and common math. Both books are not very cheap, I lend them from my library, but some people say they are worth the money.

For learning Unreal read the docs, watch the countless online tutorials, maybe you are lucky and another person can drop a very good tutorial link in here. From time to time, people and Epic bring out new tutorials that are up to date, so it’s really difficult to point to a specific tutorial that is good. Always make sure to read the comments and check if people ask the creator of those videos something and if he responds. That’s why I can’t recommend a video that I watched 3 years ago, because chances are high that newer versions are better, but I don’t have the time to watch them again and check if all those newer tutorials are actually good.

Same for Blender, watch youtube tutorials or if you are savage, you can actually read the Blender docs, if you have a grasp how things should work, like how does the engine know how a character should move, e.g what are vertices, bones, where is the animation data, how can Blender manipulate those etc.

About programming, you can learn how to do simple stuff with the countless Unreal Engine tutorials, but if you want to learn how to code, start with how to code in C++ in general. You can also watch Tom Looman’s Udemy tutorials or his youtube channel in general, he teaches you how to use the Unreal Engine framework, but expects that you already know how to write some C++ code.

About Audio, no idea, but there is a lot of cool software out there. Some people start with ‘FL Studio’, it has a nice library that you can use for a range of different music.

All in all, you are asking for a lot of different things brother/sister. To learn everything I listed you will spend an uncountable amount of time and it’s really recommended to focus on 1 field.

4

unreal engine channel

titanic games

sebastian lague

grant abbitt

blender guru