Confused/Lost on using BluePrint

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
1

Basically for a month i tried to slowly learn BluePrints in by watching the videos and using the documentation. The problem i have is that i just still don’t know what i should do.

When i open up any of the templates or look at the content examples, i just don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what each node does. No matter how much i try to understand what’s going on i am very confused at how things work or why they work that way.

For example i am trying to create a cover mechanic where the player leans against the wall but other than setting up the animation in a state machine, i don’t know how to do everything else in BluePrint or what to use.

Do you guys have any advice if possible?

2

[=Death_Skull_DX;142837]
Basically for a month i tried to slowly learn BluePrints in by watching the videos and using the documentation. The problem i have is that i just still don’t know what i should do.

When i open up any of the templates or look at the content examples, i just don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what each node does. No matter how much i try to understand what’s going on i am very confused at how things work or why they work that way.

For example i am trying to create a cover mechanic where the player leans against the wall but other than setting up the animation in a state machine, i don’t know how to do everything else in BluePrint or what to use.

Do you guys have any advice if possible?
[/]

You are basically in the same boat as myself. I spent 2 months re-creating the turtorials, clicking each button doing them exactly then trying to alter to my need. But still not getting the end results I desire.

Ill give you my basic understanding of what and how.

For example I wanted a Button on the Floor that types one onto a different object (That renders Text).

Now from what I am understand, you set up an Event (Something that’ll trigger your object to do something.) for e.g. Create Custom Event (Rename it to your event), then set the path of what must happen (Change Rotation, position, The component you would like to change).

Then you create an object that will cause the event to Fire/Start, Like if the player Overlaps (I.e. Touches the object).
The thing I think im getting stuck on, is you have to Create a Variable (Change the Variable to the object you want to change ) with the variable you can link that as a Target.

Im going to guess what you need to do here.
Your Character , find the MyCharacter BluePrint and edit it. Look for “E” and set it down the line on what must happen.

As I mentioned im very noob and perhaps I got this all wrong, but im gunna sub as perhaps the pro’s can cut the fine cheese.
I have noticed that sometimes Events just wont run, Now I need info as to why this would happen, if it were cause of you cant do X, because X is not the same as Y, or what ever.(As you can see my Event Fires, but the Object wont change textforums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?40552-My-Custom-Even-does-not-fire-up)
This Vid helped me understand the interaction between blueprints (https://www…com/watch?v=xu1a9jFZc7g)

3

[=Archiechoke;143157]
You are basically in the same boat as myself. I spent 2 months re-creating the turtorials, clicking each button doing them exactly then trying to alter to my need. But still not getting the end results I desire.

Ill give you my basic understanding of what and how.

For example I wanted a Button on the Floor that types one onto a different object (That renders Text).

Now from what I am understand, you set up an Event (Something that’ll trigger your object to do something.) for e.g. Create Custom Event (Rename it to your event), then set the path of what must happen (Change Rotation, position, The component you would like to change).

Then you create an object that will cause the event to Fire/Start, Like if the player Overlaps (I.e. Touches the object).
The thing I think im getting stuck on, is you have to Create a Variable (Change the Variable to the object you want to change ) with the variable you can link that as a Target.

Im going to guess what you need to do here.
Your Character , find the MyCharacter BluePrint and edit it. Look for “E” and set it down the line on what must happen.

As I mentioned im very noob and perhaps I got this all wrong, but im gunna sub as perhaps the pro’s can cut the fine cheese.
I have noticed that sometimes Events just wont run, Now I need info as to why this would happen, if it were cause of you cant do X, because X is not the same as Y, or what ever.(As you can see my Event Fires, but the Object wont change textforums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?40552-My-Custom-Even-does-not-fire-up)
This Vid helped me understand the interaction between blueprints (https://www…com/watch?v=xu1a9jFZc7g)
[/]

Thank your for your help :D. And yeah the problem is i just find it all confusing once i open up one of the content examples. For example i want to create a cover system but whenever i try to figure out how its almost impossible for me to figure out the rotations,translations and etc. I just feel very lost and i would say that i am in a similar situation but its not results for me but rather just knowing what i am doing. When i use BluePrints i don’t know what’s happening or what i am doing.

4

[=Death_Skull_DX;143193]
Thank your for your help :D. And yeah the problem is i just find it all confusing once i open up one of the content examples. For example i want to create a cover system but whenever i try to figure out how its almost impossible for me to figure out the rotations,translations and etc. I just feel very lost and i would say that i am in a similar situation but its not results for me but rather just knowing what i am doing. When i use BluePrints i don’t know what’s happening or what i am doing.
[/]

Start off small, like very small, what you are doing I would’nt even try, just seems like a lot of things you need to set up before you can actually get a result (Animation, Events, Timeline for Animation, etc.)

Try real small, Try the vid i posted and extend it. Instead of it just moving, have it change the base colour, then extend it further, like if player steps on this (Y), (X) will be destroyed. I think its all got to do with the amount of practice you have with blueprints. The function you are doing i would say its more for the guys who know blueprints like the back of their hands.

Oh and other advice, check your MyCharacter Blueprint, it contains many ticks that could have effects on other blueprints(i.e. “Can cause Events” https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/images/Engine/Animation/CharacterSetupOverview/PlayerController.jpg or likedocs.unrealengine.com/latest/images/Engine/Animation/CharacterSetupOverview/CharacterBPGraph.jpg)

Perhaps this vid should help you out with the Animation.https://www…com/watch?v=tyYTYF0G5Kk

5

Agree with Archiechoke.

Start small. Cover system is pretty advance stuff.

This is inline with the problem I seen of many new Cg artists. They spend a month on learning the 3D app of their choice, then find they cannot recreate their favorite Video game character, get frustrated. Characters are advance stuff in CG, & you need to have good understanding of human form, anatomy, proportion, & edge loops, to name a few things, before you can make a decent looking character. Start small, make ‘medicore’ stuff like table & chairs, Then move on like lamps, then something more organic like plants etc.

Its the same with programming language & well blueprint. You can learn most of the programming syntax within 2 weeks, but to master these & apply it to making high quality contents will take years of work & experience.

It will be hard (even very hard) before it become easy. I am also a newbie in blueprint (2 weeks of owning UE4), so I am taking things in small chucks. Some of the tutorials are liek 10 mins, some even less, but I often look much longer as I make sure I understand every step, & why each step were done before moving on.

6

[=starseeker;143329]
Agree with Archiechoke.

Start small. Cover system is pretty advance stuff.

This is inline with the problem I seen of many new Cg artists. They spend a month on learning the 3D app of their choice, then find they cannot recreate their favorite Video game character, get frustrated. Characters are advance stuff in CG, & you need to have good understanding of human form, anatomy, proportion, & edge loops, to name a few things, before you can make a decent looking character. Start small, make ‘medicore’ stuff like table & chairs, Then move on like lamps, then something more organic like plants etc.

Its the same with programming language & well blueprint. You can learn most of the programming syntax within 2 weeks, but to master these & apply it to making high quality contents will take years of work & experience.

It will be hard (even very hard) before it become easy. I am also a newbie in blueprint (2 weeks of owning UE4), so I am taking things in small chucks. Some of the tutorials are liek 10 mins, some even less, but I often look much longer as I make sure I understand every step, & why each step were done before moving on.
[/]

That’s maybe one issue I have the tutorials, they dont elaborate, for E.g. why you create a Variable and assign it to the object in question, then set it as Target (I now know why, but a week ago I thought it was irrelevant. )

7

That’s actually golden advice and i think i will have to agree that rather than trying to create a full blown stealth game its best i do things bit by bit. I think that i learned one valuable lesson form you, UE4 is like a tool, before you can build something you have to learn how to use it.

But for UE4, the Third Person character example is just all around confusing. I managed to create a node which allowed me to switch between walking and running but if i tried to create an animation where the player leans up against a wall and can move left and right, i don’t even know where to begin or what to use. Should i use an animation montage or a state machine and what do i do in the animation event graph. I am just very confused.

8

Hi ,

I do understand how difficult learning the engine can be. Do you have any tutorials in particular that gave you trouble as to why or how things were accomplished? Additionally it may be worthwhile to pop into the blueprint scripting forums. There are many in the community that enjoy helping new users! You can also find a lot of information in our documentation here:

and on the wiki here:

Finally, checking the blueprints section of the answerhub at http://answers.unrealengine.com can be extremely helpful for answers to specific questions.

9

Hello,
don’t forget to bookmarks ’ links. I use them quite everyday.
Don’t forget that unreal is a community too. Lots of people will try to help you if they can and have time for. Ask for help in forum when you are stuck, but only after a personnal research.
Don’t forget to download and look at free epic projects, especially content examples and blueprint office but the others have lots of explanation too like reflections / cave for lights and visual effects or elemental / matinee for nim/ movie or architecture for realistic rendering.

To do a comparison, i see a lot of people coming here trying to repair a car without knowing half the tools they will have to use to succeed in their repair and how using them.
Don’t make the same mistake. Do the tutorial that you didn’t understand once again and save it. Do other tutorials. And come back later on the first one and what you’ve learned on other tutorials will make the first one totally clear. Step by step.

I spent 5 monthes to learn tools and i am yet a rookie. But ue4 is so fun ^^ Don’t forgive. You are not alone :wink:

10

I think one of the thing Epic can do, is to have a blueprint guide for programmer or something.

Like how do you nest a While loop inside a for loop? Like how do you access a member from another class? When are variable passed as reference, when as value. These ain’t really clear from the documentation.

If you go through enough tutorials, you eventually find out, I guess, but it would be nice to explain better.

11

Thanks for support guys :smiley: i highly appreciate it. Its mainly a problem with the video tutorials (Better than Unity’s though) kind of because they don’t explain why you would do what you’re doing. I kind of feel as if when i finish one of the tutorial videos i still don’t know what happened or why and if i check the documentation i still feel kind of lost.

@starseeker I am using pre-made animations for game testing so its not about making characters look good, its mainly to do with using blue prints.

Other than that i will re-try the tutorials again. But i also agree with starseeker with the tutorials not being clear enough.

12

Howdy,

You mentioned earlier that you where having some trouble with rotations/translations etc. I’m just wondering how your vector maths/etc skills are? It might be worth stepping aside from UE4 for a bit, and spend some time looking at tutorials for Vectors/rotations/etc. It makes me a bit nauseous thinking about doing alot of the stuff I’ve done in the last week without having spent time previously doing vector/rotation stuff :slight_smile:

I’m a newbie to UE4 too (a week of actually using the engine, about a week before that viewing the video tutorials/etc :slight_smile: ), so I feel your pain: there’s sooooo much to learn.

However I’ve found that my previous knowledge of Vectors/etc has made learning things alot easier. It basically means I’m worrying about blueprints, the ‘UE4 way’ and what I want to do, not about how the maths works.

I’ve also found that when I was having trouble with my internal view of things vs what was happening, that adding a few ‘fake’ Multi Line Traces with visibility turned on, really helped me visualise what was happening – even if they don’t hit anything, they still display a line. A fair few times I’ve added that, and it has quickly made it clear to me that how I was doing things show me for an idiot :slight_smile:

If that’s not a problem, then I (like the others in this thread), recommend starting small. At least it’s worked for me so far. I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made in the last week, and had alot of fun seeing things start to come together, even though it’s kind of depressing that there’s stillllllll sooooooooooooo far to go.

Like you, I went through alot of the video tutorials, working along with them.

Then what I started to do was to choose bite sized pieces of what I’m aiming for.

Find the first thing you think you need/want. I wanted to add basic shooting, so for me it was adding a crosshair to the centre of the screen (in 3rd person shooter base). I hadn’t noticed that in a tutorial, so googled. I found someones solution, and so I adapted it to my needs.

Having done that one google showed me alot about how HUDs worked by inference (they didn’t go into details, it was basically a blueprint image). It was enough to get me started, and for any questions further on to be able to be more specific.

Note that really, imho, it’s not a good idea to use something if you don’t understand it. If it’s not clear how it works, I’d suggest trying to pare it back one part at at time, and/or asking on the forums. It’s much easier for people to help (and thoroughly explain) snippets rather than overarching goals.

Anyway, once that was done, then came shooting, then ammo pickup, then weapon pickup (diverging into skeleton sockets), then calculating hit targets, then which bone I hit of which character (for head shots etc), then enforcing the ammo/magazine limits/etc, zoom in/zoom out, followed by some basic AI NavMesh/Movement stuff, etc, etc.

Each part was a logical, but tiny progression from the last… Basically what I felt was most missing. And in each one (well most), I had to search around for some missing piece of information… I think the trick is choosing what you’re doing such that there is only one or two things that you need to learn for any particular item.

Also, it might help (at least, again, it works for me), is to think of your initial work as a prototype only, it’s not going to be the finished game, it’s where you learn HOW to make the finished game.

I’ve been programming for a long time (although not in graphics stuff since I was a teenager), so not sure how useful any of this is. Hope it made sense at least :slight_smile:

Thanks,

  • Mark
13

This was very helpful and yes my Vector maths is awful so i think i have to catch up on that.

But other than that. You’re correct 100% about what you said and i know what you mean by start small. That’s what i am mainly doing. I am trying to create a cover system and have broken it into small tasks.

But what highly confuses me is the event graph and character blueprint because if i wanted to make my character stick to a wall at a press of a button i don’t know how i would do this in both the animation blueprint and character blueprint and i don’t know what nodes to use etc. But as you said i think its best i ask on the UE4 answer Hub but i think i have to learn some Vector maths as well.

14

I have an advice, dont use blueprints. Use C++ code better.

15

@newbrofi Nope C++ is 100x harder than BluePrints and I’ve been there before and C++ takes a lot of time to learn. I’d rather use BluePrinnts since in comparison they’re a lot more easier.

16

[Accidental Double-Post]