@Suthriel
I hope I’m wrong,
But from what I’m reading between the lines I think upper management thinks it’s a good idea to add some BS paid certifications so you can call yourself an “unreal developer” just because you shelled the $250 or whatever will be required to “earn” that badge.
And to be completely clear.
Currently unless you build the editor from source (.27.2) is unusable.
The documentation is a problem.
So is the Learn tab.
But if they put money into some real QA for releases, I for one would be much happier…
Badges skill tree all that is just fancy stuff, do not drop it, remember it until later.
But first focus on learning and materials for learning.
There are two (maybe more) types of future students:
people that know unreal, and seeking some specific information.
for them good database (no current unreal docs is terrible) would be enough.
Current unreal docs should be updated (and keept up to date), also every single doc entry should
have small example or direct link to bigger one. Just keep them as small as possible.
and ones that come to unreal.
For first time comers. Best Would be series of tutorials in video format but also exactly same tutorial in text based form with information to exact timestamp and video tut link. So if somebody cannot keep up with vid he/she can always pause it and read doc.
I think there is one more group of students that needs tutorials and examples:
advanced users that for eg. dip into animation trees for first time (or whole AI system etc)
for those simple project that covers topic together with text based explanation of every single aspect there. And please ask actual game developers to make those tutorials (even your templates are messy and do not show good habits for making new projects). I would love to have tutorials made by people developing fortnite, or Genshin Impact or any other major game based on unreal. Yes outsource those advanced tutorials to other dev studios. And make proper tutorial, with text and video also ready to download project (sometimes i know most of that stuff, all i need is explanation and code example to look into, no need for me to go trough everything).
And then you can make skill tree with tests that corresponds to all tutorials.
And yet again:
keeping all documentation up to date is essential.
ps. Iremember your static mesh tutorial/doc on your old webpage, that helped me a lot back then.
Thanks so much everyone, this has been really helpful, and as usual really in-depth and serious answers. Thanks so much again!
Over the coming months we will make a number of other threads (first one tomorrow) to outline the various plans and changes that we are going to make, which will cover more info on the learning topic too, but let me meanwhile answer things directly via this thread too already:
We hear you that you look for more or other things in the documentation than currently available. The engine is so big, it is not always easy to get the documentation right across the board, but yes it is crucial to do it as good and accurately as possible. It is not our team who handles documentation internally so it is hard for me to speak for the process on their end, but I have passed on the thread to them to review.
What we can control are however most other parts of the online learning experience. So that means we are looking at doing following - Most of the stuff below is already actively in development - as discussions are currently standing and everything subject to change:
What kind of material
Going forward ensuring that all technical content video or related content is seen as a form of learning material. To combine the courses with the content we have on Youtube and ensure all of it is searchable, browseable in one location.
That includes technical content from others - to allow and invite schools, universities, game studios, and other such users to create and share learning material, tech talks, post mortems, and whatever else, with the wider community.
And that also includes the ability for anyone else, anyone in the community, to create tutorials and share those with others. All within the same site.
Content Access
All content is to be available for everyone everywhere. No barriers should exist. No gating. No login is to be needed to access or view anything.
Search engines should be able to find all the content
Getting Started pages per industry or engine area (TBD) that has a handpicked list of docs/samples/videos/courses that a new user should probably look at first for that given topic.
Learner Progression
We recognize that there are two distinct groups of users - those experienced or otherwise familiar with game engines/3D tools/programming/etc. and who are self starters and primarily need content, information, and easy and wide access to it all.
And beginners who are new to real time or 3D overall, and have a steep learning curve. They need additional tools to help them get going, like progression features.
Right now, we plan to go forward with no learner progression. In part due to the above discussion, in part due to not having enough time to build out a robust progression system in the time we see available. Our focus to start off will be wide access to as much content as possible.
Further down the line we wish to return to the topic and build out a form of learner progression system, and it is currently looking like the skilltree concept is the best candidate for that.
I am very new and I can already relate to this , there are no proper courses at the moment and youtubers don’t explain in detail either , its just following their clicks , which in the end , i might have a nice scene ect , but when I go to create one myself I have no clue where to go after the first 5 mins as I don’t understand the individual steps . I found a video the other day showing all nodes in blender and what they do , but unreal only do showcase videos , no in depth tutorials . if there were an industry professional on skill share or anything , it would be great , charge me monthly 20 pounds/dollars , and I’m all in , every day . Microsoft teams live classes ect , there’s money to be made here too so just do it already , those tutors got to be paid some how , stop thinking , completely free on everything , education takes time therefore money , look at skill share , 10 dollar a month and boom , loads of content , just not enough on unreal engine
I like the skilltree, or at least a set of packages of courses, so you know which part of the engine or path you’re looking into. Also currently I’m using the Like button to mark the courses I want to see, so probably a To watch later marking button would be the most helpful now.
I don’t know about the portfolio, I like the quizzes now and how there’s a text with a tip when you fail a question.
@Hourences I think the content that you guys should start with are the essentials that keeps the game running. Like how to set up a save system and a title screen before you start diving into any particular genres.
@Hourences
Given all the changes that happened for it - the Engine needs:
New animation documentation.
All animation assets in all templates corrected.
A proper tutorial line on how to PROPERLY do animation - with optimization fast path in mind.
This is the most important thing as it directly affects new comers, and experts alike.
To use fast path, you have to think differently.
While you cannot really teach people how to think, You can start by pointing out that almost ALL the official samples do it incorrectly. And providing ways to do it “right”.
Also, while on this topic…
Fixing up the animations distributed along with the mannequin so they are actually correct and do not purely rely on re-target settings to work may actually be beneficial to Everyone.
This has been factually broken as shown by various tutorials since before 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYFeFUxU6DI
(Meant to share the full playlist which eventually even shows the dropped shoulder error present everywhere).
If the team is interested in a proper “learner progression”, I think that maybe first things have to be scripted up so as to follow your own standards. No?
No. Then how about the standards that work providers REQUIRE ? like fast path ?
Thats good to hear, however, are there any links to their work, their tutorials, their youtube channels etc?
Because, for example, this weekend, i needed to create a 2D array, a 3D array or a 4D array… and it was a nightmare to get info, about how to do it, because… you cannot do it, if you use blueprints, which i do.
So after a long search, i found a code, that used structs to build any higher than 1D array, and of course, i send my thanks to Mathhew Wadstein once again, because he again had an explanaintion about how to correct use structs (and especially, that you have to create them first in the editor, cuz that was, was made it impossible to import that code at first).
Sooo… i would have loved to get that info from the array documentation, because i found plenty questions, that asked exactly the same, how to get 2D or any multidimensional array.
It’s a lot of trial and error involved, but you can start with the regular docs.
The other important thing to be aware of is to just use the animation BP for nothing at all (Which is literally opposite of all of epics resources and tutorials).
The (arguably?) best way is to store the reference to a casted animation instance (mesh > get anim instance > cast > promote to variable) on begin play within the character.
You then set variables directly from the character since there is no need to parse things twice this ends up improving performance slightly too.
The nasty bit is the fact you need to refactor logic for transitions to essentially work on a Boolean basis. You cannot check the value of a float before entering a state machine for instance, you would have to store that “boolean” result and use that directly
(at least currently? They did expand some things like !not, so perhaps there’s a bit of wiggle room for future changes there).
If you need further help, make a topic in animation with questions and I’m sure many of us on here will chime in with specifics.
As experienced engine user, at this point the only content I’d want to see is in-depth familiarizations with new features, modules and systems of the engine.
Backtracking to 2014, I would perhaps prefer a branchy skill-tree like tutorial series.
Set it up like a tree.
First, teach people the core basics of using the editor, making a new project, installation and all that.
From that start, they can then choose a path and each path breaks up into different paths.
Obviously, on the game path, you would make a third person character that can walk, run, jump with WASD/Mouse. From there, people can dig deeper into gameplay, maybe go first person, or explore combat, or enter the AI path, the animation path, or the sound path or the environments path. In the environments path, they can go for the lighting path, or the landscaping path.
Different paths would of course combine later on, so if you are in a team, you can focus 100% on your task, if you are an indie, you can pick and choose what is required for your goal.
And please, do consider allowing the community to discuss the content, either underneath it, or on a hub link, because some will require things in a different way, may not understand everything or have improved solutions after tweaking things.
I want to know if the video tutorial will be uploaded to Youtube afterwards. I am not very good at English. When I was on youtube, the automatic translation function was very convenient, which helped me a lot. Or does the new website have similar functions?
One of the problems with any online learning (it happens everywhere) is dispersion of information. They have hundreds of hours in live trainings with awesome useful stuff that isn’t organized. Maybe these videos can be added to the learning portal in its own category with a summary of topics
Live learning videos aren’t targeted enough to be actual learning materials - with some exceptions.
In the last year, most of those videos have largely been a waste of time where they crack non-funny jokes instead of explaining how things work - with some notable exceptions, and a lot that go the opposite way where they have guests or employees who don’t even know the thing they are showcasing or how it works.
The dispersion of information is also due to Epic axing the community wiki. Info was once organized.
Then epic decided to take over with the learn tab, so the community wiky could no longer exist, or people wouldn’t visit said learn tab.
And there you have it…
Hopefully when they add the new supposed tutorial section to the forums, some order can be restored…
