Still struggling with some basics

ok so I’ve been using ue4 for quite a while now, and I’ve done a few intermediate level stuff, and yet I still struggle with the basics.

I mostly use it for archviz, and I always use templates, but I’m unable to create a blank template and create out of the blue or insert a functional first person character. it doesn’t have to have limbs or weapons or crosshairs, nothing, it just needs to be able to perform like a player character, walk, jump, collide with collision objects, and not fly through everything. how do I do this? it’s hard to understand ue4 when you are always using templates.

another thing I’m unable to do is to make a VR character. I’ve used the template and you have to select the kind of controller you want to use by using different levels. I want to make a character that works on my monitor with mouse/keyboard as well as a gamepad, but also works with my vr headset, with a gamepad/walking or motion controllers/teleporting. I don’t care if I need to make an interface to select what kind of input and display I want to use.

shouldn’t this be the most simple out of the box thing to make?

Well, open the first person template and study it! Open all the blueprints in the template and start looking at what they did and try to understand why they did that. And when you search on youtube there are plenty of tutorials on how to start from blank.

I’ve learned a lot from youtube (always include the ‘ue4’ keyword) and from templates/blueprints provided by Epic. A good learning resource is all the projects Epic have made available for free. Check the Marketplace for this.

Creating a character with the capabilities you listed might just be the easiest thing to do in Unreal Engine. Simply create a Blueprint based on the Character class, and add input functionality to it. There are tons of tutorials that show you how to do that. You can do countless modifications to your movement just by altering variables of the Character class (Class Defaults) and in the CharacterMovement component.

You are talking about creating a character that will be functional with 3 different input methods and 2 different view targets, one of them being VR. So you need 3 movement systems and a system that will effortlessly switch between the 3, depending on the situation. No, this shouldn’t be the most simple out of the box thing to make. It takes some tinkering and work to achieve.
I advise you to analyse the templates that come with UE4, and to watch a lot of beginner tutorials on YouTube. Good luck.