What to focus on?

I am excited about the Samsung VR stuff that is coming now. I don’t even own one yet :smiley:

I want to develop some VR simulations,educational visualizations, and small games (The free ones that kinda suck at first LOL) . Not for a living. Just for myself for fun. I need something to keep my mind off things. Something that will make me happy and give me something to focus on.

I have been doing some research on occulus and Samsung Gear VR etc.
I think I will go the Gear VR way.

I have experience with 3D software such as Lightwave 3D but that was in 99-2000.
Is it still much easier to use independent modeling and surfacing software like 3d Studio Max to build and surface objects or is the Unreal Engine good enough? I mostly plant to stick with solid objects that are rigid and synthetic. Semi photo realistic is probably the most I would shoot for. I am not looking for organic shapes or animals/people etc. No muscles or bones etc. I am not going to try to make it look just like real life etc.

If It would be easier to use a 3D suite would Light wave be fine or should I look at 3d Studio Max, Maya, Soft Image, or something else?

If I want to make a flat, pre renderd game, what kind of software should I use?

Does Unreal Engine geared mostly to FPS style games? Could I get it to make puzzle games etc?

what languages and software should I focus in for Samsung Gear VR?

Java?
Java Script?
C++?
C#?

I have some limited experience with Arduino IDE and Apple Basic LOL.

Thanks for your input folks. I think this will be a long and fun journey.

The only language you really want to be looking at is C++, though many people build simpler games using blueprint within the editor. There are a wide variety of 3D tools being used, they just need to be able to export to FBX.

Unreal is blueprints and C++. Also 3d pipline favors MAYA. you have quixel and alleghoritmic for making textures.

I suggest you choose to be programmer or artist. There is just too much of stuff to learn, so pick side until you get trough that quite steep learning curve.

Unless you are really certain coding is not for you (and you know some coding, so this does not apply), you should start with simple BLUEPRINT projects. That lets you have some real progress and real things done in unreal (will keep your morale higher) and you learn other modules on the way (like materials, animations, ai etc.). First follow bunch of tutorials you like. do some TINY challenges, like for eg. creating twin stick shooter from scratch. Do not build on templates until you know what you do, but making template functionality is matter of 20min.

Thanks for your input. I am NOT an artist at all :slight_smile: I am the tech guy. I would like to program. I just want to be able to make basic objects with simple surfaces, maybe texture map or reflection if I get fancy. Radiosity if I realy want to show off LOL.

So blueprint is built into UE4? ANd I should move up into C++? Is C# an updated version of C++ pr or something different? Sounds Like Maya is the way to go for integration?

Yes, Blueprint is apart of UE4.

Yes, For the engine only (Excluding Blueprint) uses C++.

No, C# is not a Upgraded version of C++. It is a C ‘like’ language. Though here is the link to learn more.
For I Probably messed that up! :stuck_out_tongue: C Sharp (programming language) - Wikipedia

Also, for the 3d graphics, Maya is the best. But! You can use blender for free instead of paying a ton of money! :smiley:

I am sorry, I don’t know enough to understand this statement. Could you tell me what the blueprint language provides and when I would need C++ instead?

Here is some articles that will hopefully explain Blueprint. (First one is actual Documentation.)

Now, I will say that C++ is WAY faster than blueprint in game. (Not creating it, when the even happens in game.)
But there is a Blueprint to C++ convertor now!

I hope that helps make up your mind! (But if you can do C++, Do C++.)

This was extremely helpful. Thanks :smiley:

I am glad I joined this forum first. Sometimes I get stuck in the troll forum where people just nag me to use the search feature. As if I had any clue what I should be searching for LOL :smiley:

I forgot to ask. I have seen some stuff regarding Unity and I don’t understand it’s purpose. OK it is a place to build your level but I thought UE4 did that? Am I missing something or is Unity a different way to make a VR simulation instead of UE4? I am planning to develop for Samsung as the Oculus Rift thing seems unavailable anyways and I think will be far less common as everyone already has a smart phone.

Unity is an entirely different engine, it’s entirely different to UE4, whatever you made in Unity is solely for Unity, whatever you make in UE4 is solely for UE4.

An engine is basically a framework which provides game developers (of all sorts, from gameplay programmers, artists, graphical programmers, to level and environment designers, FX artists, AI programmers, etc) a set of pre-developed tools that are used to accelerate the development of your game / project. Rather than writing the renderer for your potential game from scratch yourself, you instead use an engine like Unity, Unreal, Frostbite or CryEngine which has all the work done for you, and use the engine’s tools rather than your own. Different engines typically do different things well: Unity is well known for being easily accessible, making it the first choice for a lot of indie hobbyist developers just starting out designing and developing games, CryEngine is known for being the pioneer for all sorts of rendering techniques that eventually may or may not make it into the industry (SSAO IIRC, which is the standard post-process ambient occlusion technique that games use, was first introduced by Crysis which used CryEngine), and Unreal is currently known for being an excellent free engine that delivers triple-A quality and reliability, with a great studio behind the helm (Epic Games). Both Unreal and Unity are not solely for VR, just that VR is currently a thing that’s taking off so a lot of studios are riding the bandwagon. You can use Unity and Unreal, or any other engine for that matter, for anything you want that fits the engine’s criteria: game development, real-time films, architectural visualisation, anything.

When choosing what engine to use, it’s a very important choice as for the most part everything you do in one engine cannot be translated to any other: if you start off using Unity, most of your work cannot be moved over to Unreal. Unity has a bunch of tools for level desgn, but UE4 also has it’s own tools for level design through landscape actors, BSP geometry, static and skeletal mesh actors and spline mesh actors.

You won’t (Shouldn’t) get trolled here good sir!

And you should get a straight answer most of the time! :smiley:

That’s much nicer people who want to seem like an expert who don’t know the answer just telling me my question is wrong :smiley:

So I have been doing more reading based on what I have been told.
It sounds like if I have a program that can make .FBX objects and surfaces I can just use UE4 without any need for Unity?
It also seems like maybe there is flat, pre rendered, click through VR experiences which are more high res but not real time rendering etc. there are true 3D real time games.
What software would I need if I wanted to make the flat pre rendered stuff first? Can UE4 do that? I want to do the UE4 stuff too. I want to try a lot of things out and see what advantages each way has.

You can theoretically output 360 video from UE4, though you could also do it from a 3d package (e.g. Maya) without the need for game engine.

OK Thanks. I think the overview of what I need to learn is jelling up a bit now.

I just have a few more Q’s about the coding part.
Does the UE4 SDK (Along with the use of Blueprints) make a end product that can be installed and used? Or is it just for simulating while designing?
How do I get the finished product into the Galaxy Phone to test it with the VR headset?
I understand what the 3d Software provides and I understand UE4 provides the real time rendering and ability to move around etc.
What are the parts that the codeing provides? Object behavior? Menus? What are the parts of the game that I build with code? What is a good resource to read on how C++ is used with UE4?

  1. Your choice of programming language has no effect on the installation of the end product.

  2. Worry about that when you have something resembling a product, but generally speaking it’s easy to deploy to any given platform.

  3. Code is ALL behaviour. Without it you don’t have a game; if this is a new concept for you you may want to start looking at games programming at a very fundamental level (e.g. in a command line window), before coming back to UE4.

I am new to VR and I want to be able to set up little scenes just to see if the dimensions are right. Does it “feel” like the right size to the viewer etc. When I am done building the models and placing them in a scene, how do I load them into the VR environment so I can look around and see if it is what I want or not?

I plan to get a feel for the over all work flow build up from super simple scenes that are not necessarily games into something bigger as I learn. Right now I am just trying to compile a list of all hardware and software I need to do the whole thing. I will probably buy them as I learn them over time etc.