I’ve been trying to learn from the examples provided by Unreal when you launch UE4. The thing is, when I start checking out the blueprints, it seems so confusing and I don’t know even where to start. Do you guys have any tips on approaching these projects and the best way to learn from them? Thanks!
I have learnt quite a lot from taking the examples apart, the thing I find easiest is to pick one part of a BP like a function and start changing how it works, even just simple things such as changing variables can be helpful. I ended up taking chicken apart, changing a few things here and there and before I knew I had accidentally made a game.
hope that helps:)
Same here .
I like to also approach it like this: I figure out what my problem is first.
So say I want to do level streaming, and I don’t know anything about that but I want it in my game. I go and look at the examples for streaming, and look at the blueprints while the game’s running and see how they work, how the nodes execute. Then I grab the parts that I need to make it all work in my own project, and directly copy paste the blueprint nodes over to my own graphs (you can copy the nodes and they go in your clipboard as text, so you can even go and share them on pastebin, or whatever).
If I want to do something that isn’t as straight forward as that, I look at multiple examples and see if I can adapt little pieces to what I want to do.
Finally, it’s a good idea to learn how the systems work in general so you can, e.g., know how to go from your general problem/system to a specific solution to make it work. For instance, once you learn that you can get access to sockets and bone locations via a SkeletalMesh, it’s easy to know how to make it so that you have your item/inventory system drop a weapon from the character’s hand, rather than a general point in front of them.
It’s not the fastest process but you will get faster at it. Keep watching and reading tutorials and keep trying things out and you will progress. Like anything it takes practice, but progress with encourage you!
When trying to learn something like this on your own, this may be the best order:
1. Official basic documents and videos
Why: You need to build a foundation first. Learn the basics of the UI, functions, pieces, and most of the main terminology. Skipping this step leads to a lot of what you are mentioning in the first post (looking at examples but getting confused about what all is going on).
Where: You can find a ton of this info from Epic’s own site, wiki, and youtube channel.
Epic’s Getting Started Area = https://docs.unrealengine/latest/INT/GettingStarted/index.html
Epic’s Unreal Engine Youtube = https://www.youtube/channel/UCBobmJyzsJ6Ll7UbfhI4iwQ
2. Straightforward, basic tutorial series
Why: Now that you’ve got the basics, it’s time to make something simple. This could be walking through a tutorial for pong, flappy chicken, super mario bros, anything that doesn’t take too long but will involve many of the facets of UE4.
Where: Epic’s wiki, youtube, this forum, or random people’s websites/blogs
Epic Wiki = https://wiki.unrealengine/Main_Page
Blueprint book from KitatusStudios on this forum = https://forums.unrealengine/showthread.php?10221-BOOK-Blueprints-Master-the-Art-of-Unreal-Engine-4-Blueprints
3. Looking at sample projects, pull-aparts, tweaking, modding, and using 3rd party content
Why: You now know all the pieces to look for in a project, know the terminology if there are notes / documentation on the project, and you’re now fully aware of how to build basics around something if you run into problems integrating parts of the project together.
Where: Epic’s wiki, youtube, this forum, or random people’s websites/blogs (pretty much anywhere)
Hope this helps! Good luck and have fun trying out UE4!
I personally would just start a small project and then when you are stuck, you can take a look at the examples and you will learn from them -> that’s how I did it 