I’m a 16-year-old buy, soon going into my 2nd year of high school. I’m very interested in game art & design and I’m going to be studying it after my high school education. But I’d like to start making games already now. I’ve been browsing around for engines to use and I came across Unreal Engine 4. Right now, I’m reading a C# book, since I would like some programming experience, which always helps. But with Unreal Engine 4, I read that it isn’t necessary to be able to program C++.
For example if I wanted to create a first-person-horror game, kind of in style with Dear Esther (I know that’s not horror). Am I able to build that with the Unreal Engine 4 Editor and Blueprint that are included or do I need to know C++?
While it is true you do not need to known C++ to use the engine and develop games, this may not be true for some things you are looking to achieve as your game grows in complexity. We are always adding functionality to our visual scripting with Blueprints but this may not cover everything you may need.
With our content examples on our Marketplace there are some game examples that exclusively use Blueprints with no programming code used at all!
Good luck, in your future in the game dev world. I would also start familiarizing yourself with Photoshop and a 3D package like or Maya. Just to add to the back pocket of tools your understand. But learning C++ is a great start as well.
Thanks! Since C++ isn’t exactly for beginners, would it be a good idea to buy a book on UnrealScipt and a book on UDK art & design, and learn how to make a game with UDK?
If you want to use UDK/UE3 for your development that would absolutely be helpful to dig into and learn.
If you are wanting to learn Unreal Engine 4, it no longer uses UnrealScript. We now have visual scripting system known as Blueprints and we use C++ for our programming language.
There are certainly options out there for you to learn. If you are wanting to learn Unreal Engine 4 we have a lot of documentation available along with our YouTube channel with video tutorials.
You can start by checking out the YouTube Playlist and seeing what interests you the most.
If you want to delve into Blueprints without knowing how to code you can look at this video Blueprints Intro which will give you the run down of the basics.
Users have compiled a list of community created tutorials as well that will give you some basics on creating some of the things you would like to as well! News Weekly Community Tutorials
If you’ve subscribed and downloaded the engine you’ll find that there is a host of free content examples and games available on the Marketplace. We have basic templates available for common game types for you to build your games off of and these are being updated regularly with new one. The most recent being our Vehicle template. The free content on the Marketplace is free to use in your own games as well!
If you have questions you can always ask here on the forums, use AnswerHub, or search by using Docs.UnrealEngine (the last is a very powerful search because it will search all of our sites for the keywords you type in and you can choose to only look at any one of those sites individually for information as well!)
If you have any other questions or need help let us know!
I also learn programming like that. At the moment I’m also reading a C# book, because then I know the basics, so that will be easier to use C++, and in my area C# programmers are rare, so when I dont have success with game dev/C++ I can still go into the electronic industry -> win/win
But beside the C stuff I also learn blueprints, because in my opinion they are very easy to use
As someone who graduated college with a B.S. in Computer Science and a serious **lack **of skill in programming (the college courses weren’t easy for me), I found that blueprints, while they came 4 years after my graduation, actually helped me revisit older programming concepts and gain a much better understanding of things that I previously didn’t grasp while studying programming languages.
I find that blueprints force you to practice core concepts like logic & algorithms, flow, and efficiency, while being incredibly graceful (and informative) when you don’t do it exactly right. I wish blueprints were a thing when I was in college because it would’ve made my classes much easier.
Ok, so I subscribed to Unreal Engine 4 last night and began to learn it a bit. I saw that there are already some props to choose from, but few, so how would I start creating my own props?
I looked at Maya and 3DS , are these beginner-friendly? I’m not going to be creating characters with them, only props for the environment
Your question is probably about as big a question as asking are you a Nintendo, Xbox, or PS4 fan!
Personally I use 3Ds as it’s what I truly started modeling on. Others I know have started on and prefer Maya. These are two are both Autodesk software and share some similarities but they do have their own ways of doing some things.
Figher5347 will jump in here shortly and recommend Blender as he’s very proficient with it and has some fantastic tutorials for beginners to get them started!
There are several considerations to make about the software before you start though.
Blender is absolutely free, while and Maya are not. You can get a trial but that’s only for 30 days.
I would look at the assets you want to create and see if there is going to be a problem creating them within the software. (ie. is good with Apex Destructibles where as Maya is good with Apex Cloth)
I wouldn’t worry about which one is more hard to learn. If you’ve not used a 3D modeling software before it won’t matter that much to you. To me Blender is outrageously hard to navigate, but this is because I’m used to and stubborn about my controls!
For simple asset creation there is not a lot of difference in how the objects will be seen or used within your game. They can all accomplish this task! A lot of it will be dependent upon your skill and time you put in to become proficient at making the assets you want to create.
On a side note, if you even see an asset in one of the content examples that is offered on the Marketplace you are more than welcome to use that in any game you create. You would simply need to Migrate it from that project to your own project (documentation here)](https://wiki.unrealengine/Migrate_content_between_projects).
This will work with all the assets. Some functionality of the assets (ie. the minion guy from StrategyGame) will not function properly simply because they have C++ references that will not transfer. The asset will transfer but the functionality that they do in that game will not.
Now to be serious:
When you dont have the money to buy 3ds or maya it is recommended that you use blender, because it is easy to use, free and you can do the same as in all other 3d program. In my opinion all 3d programs will be hard to start. So there is no “easy” one, but you will get used to it very quickly and then you dont want to switch the 3d program (started with blender and now it’s pretty hard for me to use 3ds )
Thanks, both of you! I decided to try 3DS Trial, as it is a requirement to have experience with 3DS to attend the universities I’ve been looking at, but I’ll try Blender too
I have one last question; when I press “w” to move my objects or “r” or any of the other tools, every time I, for example, move it it moves in “ticks”. This is very useful, but when I want to be precise down to the nearest millimeter, what do I do?
I would check out Digital Tutors really good training for beginners, its well worth the expense. You be farther ahead when you do go and you be more focused on learning the art and the principles instead of figuring out the tools
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How do you know that?
