Getting ready to dive in. Any advice?

[anonymous_user_0df12f74]

@DSIS;118270

Just created an account today, but have been lurking the forums since UE4 release learning as much as I can from the community and the devs. (I think its great that almost every post here has a response from someone at EPIC. Truly “EPIC” customer support worth the $20/mo entrance fee alone!)

Couldn’t agree more! The forums here are really welcoming! And by that I mean welcome to the forums!

1. I understand that UE4 and Maya are set up well together, but almost every tutorial I see for game design for UE4 deals with 3DS . Having access to both, which one would you use with UE4?

I personally use 3dsMax for almost everything, but it is just my preference. 3dsMax is easier for me to make models in, as well as create the rigging for characters. However Maya is much better for creating animations (for me anyways, you can use for too), and UE4 also has an A.R.T. plugin for Maya (animation and rigging tools) to make even easier. So it depends what you are looking to create, but either one will give you the same end result, so go with the one you feel more comfortable in.

2. I still cant get my head around scale. Is that something I need to worry about when modeling, or just when importing to the engine?

In 3dsMax/Maya, under the customization menu, make sure you have the scale set to centimeters, as 1uu = 1cm by default (uu = unreal unit). Another good way of getting the scale right is to create a box that is the height of a slightly taller human (I use 6ft = 180cm), and use to judge the scale of objects when you are modeling, using the box as a guide, so that everything looks right when it is imported into UE4 and you walk around.

3. Would it be best to create the ocean scene in the 3d software, or in UE4 itself. If in UE4, can be done with blueprints?

There are a few ways to do , no “out of the box” ways currently, but there are many tutorials on creating water/ocean simulation, here are a few to get you started:

Dynamic Physical Ocean by Handkor:
Youtube - ?v=PBWLfpm0K0o
Forum Thread: https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?7440-Dynamic-physical-ocean&p=117586#post117586

Parametric “Beaufort Scale” ocean by: https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?26317-Parametric-quot-Beaufort-scale-quot-ocean

FluidSurface Plugin by JamesG - https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?3609-Project-FluidSurface-Plugin

VaOcean Plugin by ufna - https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?4181-Plugin-Ocean-surface-simulation-plugin-(VaOcean)&highlight=vaocean

And many more, there are many youtube tutorials on , let us know if you need some more examples!

4. While in the process of building “game”, if there is an update to the engine should I update or stick with say 4.4 until the end? Could say 4.5 for instance break anything that I have done in 4.4

Whenever there is a new update, you do not have to remove the old version, it adds a new version slot to the launcher. From there, if you want to convert to a higher version in your project, you can create a clone of the project, and open that in the new version so you still have a backup in case anything changes, but for the most part I have not had any issues with my projects converting them to the newest version. There will be major updates coming (parralel rendering for example), but Epic is trying to make the change as seamless as possible, so unless you are modifying the engine code in C++ (engine code, not project code), you probably will not notice any difference.

Hope helps! Good luck!