I don;t understand where to learn to really use the engine. Like I had a thread about using a plane and building an ocean floor with an ocean. But there is nothing to tell you even where to get close to knowing how to do that. I can’t find tutorials to teach me where I can be up to that level eitehr. I almost regret coming to this from the basic unity I was doing. I like unreal and the community I just don;'t know HOW I am supposed to learn to get where I need to be if there is not many basic guidline and feature tutorials
Hi Uprentiss,
I’m always curious, as a new user where were you finding it difficult in finding information?
Are you aware of the AnswerHub, Our Wiki page, our YouTube Channel with tutorials and introductions, or even our Documentation search?
What are the specific roadblocks you are having that are preventing you from learning the engine and in general usability?
Information like this could really help us streamline or make it easier for new users who may not be aware of something or know where to locate information they are trying to find.
Thank you!
Hoping I could help out the Unreal Engine although I’m not the thread starter. I too have found it partially difficult when I started in regards to finding tutorials, eventually I used a combination of the unreal engine tutorials as well as a combination of other peoples but I think it’s just due to the unreal engine being newer than some other programs as to why we are missing the amount of tutorials in which we are used to being able to google or youtube search every single thing and get a response. Maybe making the startup for the first time bring up a dialogue of some sort giving you a few youtube tutorials as well as the walkthrough pages that currently come up would help.
Thanks
I would suggest you the way which I posted in the PM yesterday But when you have simple questions, you can also add me at Skype, then you can ask me whatever you like: ()
There are lots of tutorials, basic tutorials , but since i begin in that world two or three months ago i can say for beginners the lack of some concepts, and how things work make the first steps a bit unclear if you want do something without tutorial
Anyway asking, google, and read alot help to learn concepts and begin do things without tutorial.
Patience and take the time to understand!
Hi everyone,
Would you mind providing specific tutorials you would like to see that would help users in the beginning?
What are some of the “basic” concepts you all would like to see? (ie. UV Unwrapping/lightmapping, BSP vs static mesh, etc)
Specific instances where new users are feeling they are stumbling with information and workflow would greatly help. I could try to come up with a list, but I am not a new user and may overlook something that a new user would think is important for them.
Thank you for all the feedback!
I’m moving this to the ‘General Discussion’ section in hopes to get more responses. I am going to leave the re-direct here in ‘Content Creation’ since it was started here for anyone who has been posting. Thank you, again!
I think a project tutorial could really be useful.
For example how to make a pong or small games of this type. Using blueprints and c + +.
Highlighting the concepts of framework and explaining what are and how to use various classes as gamemode, the gamestate, etc …
I’m getting a good overview with all your video tutorials, but also a long study of your documentation and strategy game or others, provided as example.
But that was long and could be faster with this kind of tutorials.
Maybe I’ll try to do one. I almost ended a Tetris like game I’m working on right now for my learning.
Anyway, thank you already for all the help you have given us and for your time.
And sorry for my bad english.
I need a detailed reference for all the Blueprint nodes.
https://forums.unrealengine/forumdisplay.php?12-Community-Content-Tools-and-Tutorials Would be a great place to start.
One thing I struggle with as a complete noob is the subtle nuances of node types. Things like a reference to a player character vs a player controller or why self is OK on some nodes, but not others. I now get the difference between an actor and a component, but that was confusing at first and took some trial and error to understand. I think a reference guide to all nodes is probably a big task, but would be super useful for beginners.
I’m still a noob and don’t fully understand a lot of what I’ve done that works, but I’m getting there. I’d highly recommend these tutorials to anyone still learning the basics. They did a lot of relatively simple stuff in the most stripped down way, but you get the basics and can then extrapolate and start to learn a lot on your own.
Blueprint Essentials - https://www.youtube/playlist?list=PLZlv_N0_O1gaG5BW72It4chjhypxIO9ZB
Third Person Blueprint Game - ?v=GWbd0Wowwnk
There was also a link in the forums that I can’t find now, to an e-book with a good tutorial that filled in a lot of blanks for me. I’ll try to find that link when I get home to share.
Hi Gooner44,
We do have the Blueprint nodes in our documentation with some examples that can explain them more clearly. Were you aware of these? If so, are there gaps in the documentation that you feel could be better explained?
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Thinking for me, confusion tends to pop up from investigating the details before hitting the basics. Like that saying, something about the forest from the trees…I dunno, I’m not good at analogies. I get tempted to ask more about certain features, but see that changes are coming per the roadmap, so, holding more input on this until 4.3.
So, Lauren Ridge recently did a C++ video series and it was fantastic because it tied together everything step by step. Little things like using VS2013 where I was using it in a slightly different way. The Kismet libraries stood out as well. All these little things that pop up which would be good to know, except I found myself skipping straight to the specific functions needed when I first started. Individually these little things don’t seem like much, but add on a dozen more and you’ll find new users feeling quite confused as I was and still am in many areas. Seems to me, a very complete series on basic classes and how to they interact with each other would be grand. PlayerController, AIController, GameMode, GameState, etc. We do have good descriptions of each, but actually putting them together in a game is another matter. Other basics like sharing variables between classes and references to objects, really drilling in some core stuff like maybe a single tutorial page showing all the ways one can pass things around. I think if the basics are drilled in, perhaps in multiple different ways, new users would be far better off. Especially if one is learning from the forums where sometimes the ideas behind them get jumbled about or the person getting answers only receives half the answer but they have no idea they’re missing something until they try implementing the advice.
Take GameMode for example. Today I went to start experimenting with this using blueprints first as a test. So I look up the description, and yes, looks like that’s the class I need to put some stuff into. So I make it a subclass of my project GameMode and start adding some test items…and nothing triggers. Clearly I know too little about implementation of the class, so I go searching. I find a number of answerhub questions, some forum posts…oh, there’s a link to GameMode documentation…but, I’ve already read that. So, the ending of this story is that I know the usage information is out there, but I also know from experience that I’ll spend the next two days looking for it and not making any progress. So this might be more an issue of stuff being spread over too many places.
Video tutorials certainly have their place, but they’re not searchable and there are many times where I’m not in a position to watch or listen to video. Sample projects do indeed help, but we might need to see a bit more such as more AI, inventories, etc., but I know these are on the roadmap. Seems to me, the most effective thing would be some kind of reformatting of the documentation with a menu system. The GitHub Developer docs are nice, easy to jump around and example code all over the place. That combined with some really complete foundation examples and…well that would do it. There’s totally a place for community feedback, but maybe it’s not the most structured way. Answerhub and forums really ought to be a discussion place for really specific stuff and probably best if new users graduate from an official and complete set of documents before heading there.
Wow that was a tl;dr…sorry, but I like this engine and frankly wouldn’t have put the effort into this wall-o-text if I didn’t feel a passion for it. Hope it helps in some way.
Thank you, !
I’ve started compiling a list of tutorials and things where there may be gaps in information for new users to pass along. I’m continuing to follow this post and any suggestions that come out of it.
Thanks for the links, . Yes, that’s the book I was referring to. The first tutorial in there was a bit misleading as it wasn’t really blueprint related other than a pretty simple trigger, but I did learn how to load a level. The second one, however, was extremely useful and gave me the basis for the small game I’m now working on.
I have seen the node documentation you linked too. It seems like really good info, but when I first saw it I had little experience actually using the system so it was a bit over my head. Looking at it now, I see that most of it is fairly general. I don’t think it can answer the more complex questions that come up as you’re using a node and it doesn’t work. Still a good place to turn if you can’t quite tell what a node is trying to do and much better than the in-editor tooltips of course.
I think a lot of the gaps are just things you learn over time. As timconwell says below, you can easily get lost if you just try to do the one little thing you want out of a larger tutorial. There are some really good tutorials that are short bites like Tesla’s stuff here:
https://www.youtube/channel/UC3QBWg9pMnaFF-q0qjXPDEg
But things like the blueprint essentials I linked earlier are well crafted and expand on each other so it’s really important to do them all in order, especially if you are not familiar with any of this stuff.
I’ll start keeping notes of the specific things I find unclear. I just can’t remember any off the top of my head.
Imo, the new doc are equal to confus that old UDN, a mess of links in the middel of wall texts.
Look one of the more important page about communication between blueprints, the only link to the tutorial about implementing interfaces is in the end of a wall of text.
https://docs.unrealengine/latest/INT/Engine/Blueprints/UserGuide/Types/Interface/index.html
The docs need a lateral tree of content like maya for example:
://download.autodesk/us/maya/2009help/index.html?url=WN_nPart.htm,topicNumber=d0e55367
I would kill for a Unreal Engine 4 cookbook. Short written (no video or video parallels text) samples that solve simple problems like:
How do I draw a name and status hud on a pawn?
How do I attach a gun to a character arm in firstperson? third person? top down?
How do I change the gun?
Change levels?
Add a dynamic mesh?
etc.
Once in Blueprint and a second time in C++.
Ah yes, the code cookbook approach. The perfect example of “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”