I’m a stay at home dad and I feel like this is the time in my life where I get to try to live my dreams. I’m unsure where to start. I’ve done a few blender tutorials and I’m ready for the big leagues. I’m hoping I can learn how to do some stuff. If someone could recommend some tutorials I’d appreciate it.
Will try to answer… You tend to see a general consensus on here sometimes that goes something like this… Start with the basic official Epic tuts (learn your way around the editor)… Then try to make a very simple game…
The other option which I’d favor over that in your place, is download some of the free packs from Epic that interest you, and take them apart. Then try to make a game out of them, like an FPS shooter or something like that…
What you do after that is trickier to answer, as BEST is pretty subjective and more about your own goals / expectations and likes / dislikes. Maybe you’d like to create your own unique worlds / levels, or maybe you’d prefer to work on characters / vehicles, or maybe none of that all all (think films / anims).
But remember Unreal Engine is a beast. So take a moment to be sure this is really the direction you want to go with your time. As the investment even for those who can code or have 3D skills is absolutely HUGE (multiple years)…
It all really depends on what you want to create - so the best I can do is tell you my experience.
I use Unreal for XR, generative art and some architectural previz. After following some of the basic tuts by epic, I got a bundle of GameDev.tv courses from Humble Bundle. They were game-centric, but tought me a lot about the flow in Unreal (it is very different from 2D, 3D, Motion or UX that I had experience with in the past).
One tip I can offer is this - before you build something, google it. Very often I ended up learning the tool / blueprint / function / command already existed for something I was about to spend days making from scratch. (Other times, the engine lacks some very basic things one would think surely are there…)
Best of luck! UE is an amazing tool to learn.
GameDev.tv seems to always claim their classes are super pricey, but have a deep discount somewhere 90% Black Friday at the moment.