Category: 3D

Lets dive into the details on the Minotaur character that has recently been published by RABBITMACHT.

In this post, we are focusing on how you can incorporate The Minotaur 3D Digital Asset into your own projects by exploring how this character is built and effectively leveraging these resources in your own workflow.

The Minotaur consists of two main 3D components that being the Minotaur itself and the Minotaur’s Armour. As the components are modelled separately they are not interdependent. In other words, you can use the Minotaur with or without his armour and/or extract and use the armour on a completely separate character.

Although these two components also consist of other objects or sub-components, what distinguishes these main components is that each sub-component inhabits the same UV layout within its main component.

Let’s have a look at the main components in a little more detail.

Main Component 1 : The Minotaur Model

The Minotaur Model can further be broken down into several other components including

• upper teeth and lower teeth
• tongue
• left eye and right eyes

As these components typically do not deform during animation (they are only transformed), they can safely be parented to a bone for the purposes of animation.

This is, of course, with the exception of the tongue. As the Minotaur uses Blender’s Rigify system, we fortunately are provided with deformation bones and controllers too for the tongue.

Main Component 2 : The Minotaur’s Armour

The Armour is a more complex main component as it is made up of several objects. Including,

• Straps
• Shoulder Guards
• Loincloth

How these components contribute to the rig during animation, takes on three different approaches.

The simplest approach can be seen with the shoulder guards which are weighted to the Minotaur’s shoulder bones and also to the first upper arm bone for a little extra deformation that assists with the prevention of objects intersecting.

Avoiding Intersections

It’s worth noting at this point that in order to rig the Armour so that it deforms with the Minotaur’s movements and avoids excessive intersections, we have taken a hybrid approach that results in a combination of techniques while keeping viewport interactivity responsive with minimal dynamic simulations.

Bearing this in mind although the straps could be animated with a cloth simulation, this would be overkill given that they are intentionally designed to look and act like a hard leathery material. As a result, the straps are weighted to the armature and follow the Minotaur’s body deformations. One of the key tools, in terms of avoiding too many intersections between the Armour straps and the Minotaur’s body, would be in Shape Keys. Shape Keys or Morph targets can be used to tweak the armour and main body when intersections become visible.

Shape Keys are particularly useful when rendering stills as they add a great deal of convenience, without compromising on the outcome or the scene’s believability.

Finally, the Minotaur’s loincloth is animated by means of dynamic simulation. This adds to the scene’s realism while keeping simulations at a minimal. The Minotaur’s body is set as a collision object and as both objects have a polycount that can be rendered in realtime the simulation can be computed within a very reasonable timeframe.

As a result it’s advisable that you Bake a dynamic simulation to disk before rendering an animation

What does the Minotaur product consist of?

The Minotaur product comes with two main production-ready blend files, a supplementary FBX file with a baked walk cycle and a water-tight, stylized STL file for 3D printing.

• Minotaur_for _animation
• Minotaur_for_stills
• FBX baked walk cycle
• STL stylized model for 3D printing

Each file is optimized for it’s specified outcome and the production-ready blend files all have textures in high-res, 4K packed into the .blend file.

Production-Ready Files

The Minotaur for Animation file uses Blender’s Eevee renderer with the Principled BSDF shader. This provides the speed and level of detail required to render animation sequences with reasonable overhead and quality.

The Minotaur for stills file uses a more complex approach to rendering by leveraging on Blender’s Cycles renderer. Both the main Minotaur and Armour meshes have highly customizable shading networks that include Sub-surface scattering (SSS), Fresnel, Ambient Occlusion and many high-res masks for targeting specific parts of each model. For instance, if you wanted to change the minotaur’s veins from green to red and make them glow there are already masks in place to help you achieve that.

Shading Network

Although at first glance the Shading Network might seem complicated, it is in fact very logical and follows a simple design principle. That being,

Create a single shader (for example a Diffuse) that applies to the entire model.

Then minimize the shader’s coverage with a mask and mix in the previous shader that followed the same methodology, through a Mix shader.

Effectively, what this means is that it is really easy to take each Shader’s output and plug it directly into the Material Output’s Surface input to see exactly how each shader affects the model.

If you would like to learn more about how the textures, materials and UV’s are built for the Minotaur, the following post can help you gain deeper insight.

Minotaur XIII : Texturing, Materials and Uv’s

Rigged with Rigify for Animation

Although I have often noted the benefits of a translation-biased rig to many of my students, in this instance, for the sake of simplicity and to curb the learning curve the Minotaur uses the very popular Rigify for animation. As you may already be aware Rigify automates the process of creating a Forward Kinematics (FK) rig which is used for deformation as well as a controller rig that uses various transforms and restraints for posing the FK rig.

Animating with Rigify is intended to be relatively straight-forward and once your animation rig has been generated no special plugins are required thereafter.

The Rigify Metarig has also been included in the production files, giving you the ability to regenerate the rig if you wish to do so.

The minotaur comes equipped with a 40 frame loopable walk cycle. This provides an example of how you would set up multiple animations for your character particularly if you wanted to export it to a game engine.

If you want to learn more about the significance of a Forward Kinematics rig the following post can help you get a better understanding of that. Although controller rigs are essential for making character animation manageable and will generally consist of various hierarchical chains with restraints such as Inverse Kinematics, they will still typically rely on an underlying FK rig to actually deform your character’s geometry, read more below..

Minotaur XIV : FK and Pose Rigs

Using the NLA Editor

Blender’s Non-linear Animation Editor, not to be confused with an NLE (Non-linear Editor) which is typically used for video editing and is also another tool available within Blender, provides a high level of abstraction relating to animation data. In much the same way that you can rearrange video clips in an NLE such as Adobe Premiere Software, Blender’s NLA Editor allows you to convert animation sequences into clips (also called Actions) and rearrange them in any desired order.

With the rig selected open Blender’s Non-Linear Animation (NLA) Editor. This allows you to push down the current animation to an Action. When exporting animations for a game character you would typically create multiple Actions such as walk, run, jump etc. By using actions the game engine is able to distinguish one sequence from another in a non-linear way. In other words, if you wanted your character to jump the game engine would go straight to the jump action as opposed to first playing the walk animation then the run animation and finally reaching the jump animation.

Once an Action has been created you can still edit it by simply selecting the action in the NLA Editor and hitting Tab on the keyboard. The action’s keyframes will then be exposed in the Timeline, Graph Editor and the Dope Sheet. To create another Action you could return to the NLA select the action you are editing and hit Tab to exit Edit mode. Then simply keyframe another animation. To ensure that the old action does not override the visibility of the new action uncheck it’s NLA track, this effectively mutes the action.

Also included within the Minotaur product is an FBX file demonstrating what an animation baked and exported might look like. You can simply import this FBX into another 3D application or separate it into two main parts one consisting of the rig with the Minotaur and the other consisting of the rig with the Armour. There are many different ways of exporting animations from Blender into game engines including UE to Rigify and UEfy to name a few. However, your use case might require something different. If you have any questions, comment below and someone will be sure to help you out.

Working with Proxies and the Shrinkwrap modifier

The Minotaur comes with an active Modifier stack, this means that in order to get the most out of the file it’s recommended that the file is edited in Blender. The modifier stack actively contributes to the file’s output, it is editable and some components are hierarchically immutable. Understanding the Minotaur’s proxy model setup will assist greatly in reconfiguring the modifier stack.

Find out more about the Minotaur’s modifier stack and how it optimizes the rendering process, both in the viewport and for high quality renders, by means of proxies in the following posts.

Minotaur XI : Proxy Model Setup

Minotaur XII : Optimizing a Poly Count for Rendering

High Resolution Sculpt Data

The Minotaur for stills file comes with an ultra-high-resolution sculpted version of the Minotaur and his Armour. You can find the high-res versions within a scene collection post-fixed with HR. These models are made of many hundreds of thousands of polygons so caution should be exercised when trying to render these models.

Their primary purpose is for the displacement of the realtime model’s subdivisions through the Multires modifier at render-time.

In the following post, you can find out more about how the high-res models are constructed through non-destructive as well as Dyntopo sculpting.

Minotaur IX : High Resolution Sculpting

A Highly Efficient UV Layout

Whether you are creating characters that will be hand painted or texture mapped by compositing photos an efficient UV layout is crucial to avoid exposing seams. A UV layout that is effective will not only be applicable for your 3D application but for 2D editing as well, as such UV’s should be laid out matching the form of a character as close as possible while still avoiding stretching.

You can find out more about generating an efficient UV layout in the following post.

Minotaur VII : Laying out UV’s

Where can I get the Minotaur?

The Minotaur is available from the RABBITMACHT store for direct purchase. This comes with a great deal of product support and all minor updates are free.

The Minotaur comes with a standard Royalty-free license, which gives you as much versatility as you can possibly need to use it in your own projects including both commercial and non-commercial, educational or other.

You can also get your copy of the Minotaur from RABBITMACHT’s Blender Market store.

If you have any questions leave a comment below or get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

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When developing 3D characters it’s important to retain as much of a non-destructive workflow as possible.

This is particularly important with regards to games development as the models used in the final output will often have certain elements baked into texture maps.

Without a non-destructive workflow, modifying a baked a texture map or rebuilding components of your character might be your only option when making changes to your final output becomes necessary. It can be particularly difficult to achieve your desired results as it requires a very indirect approach to editing, thereby compromising on control, detail and taking up more time than necessary.

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A non-destructive workflow means retaining as much of the character’s creation history as possible. This means that reverting to different stages in your character’s creation process becomes a lot more accessible. You can then make the changes where necessary (be it at the modelling, texturing, sculpting, rigging or other stages) and automatically allow those changes to propagate throughout your character’s production pipeline.

Although setting up characters in this way might require a bit more planning, initially, once you get into the hang of it and start seeing the benefits of how much time it can save you in the long-run the technique will soon become a necessity in your character development toolkit.

Setting up a reference

Starting with references is typically advisable. They could either be 2D images or, as in this case, we are using a 3D model of a wraith-like-character.

With the reference model selected simply,

• Go into Edit mode,
• Select a single vertex from the model’s component you want to delete.
• Hovering over the 3D Viewport, hit L on the keyboard
• and Blender will select all connected vertices.

This makes deleting whole portions of the model much easier.

The MakeHuman model is then exported as an OBJ file and imported into Blender. The OBJ file format has the added bonus of retaining a model’s UV layout.

Modelling The Base Mesh

Once the reference is completed it’s time to shift our focus to the main model (Base Mesh). We’ll start with modelling as this is the only stage in the character’s pipeline with destructive properties.

Regardless of whether your character is being exported for a game or not, working with efficient geometry that is less taxing on system resources is generally advisable.

Your completed Base Mesh, at this stage, should not comprise of non-manifold geometry and have as few UV islands as possible. By retaining and leveraging on the MakeHuman model’s topology and already existing UV layout you will be able to save yourself a great deal of time and effort.

Blender’s Shrinkwrap modifier is used to match the vertex positions of the selected object to the shape of the targeted object, by displacement.

A Rig is not a tool that is exclusively reserved for animation

Destructive and Non-destructive Sculpting

Sculpting is an important part of the character development process as it provisions a stage to add necessary details to your model and bring your artworks to life.

It’s important not to use a destructive sculpting technique on the Base Mesh so as to retain the UV’s and vertex groups that would have resulted from UV projecting and rigging (in previous steps).

Baking A Normal Map

In order to keep your character’s poly count to a reasonable amount, a Normal map will be required to recreate the details, applied through Dyntopo sculpting, within the game engine.

Retain all the components that went into this setup and you will have a non-destructive approach to sculpting and generating a Normal map for your character at any stage in it’s production pipeline.

Painting a Color Map

It is often desirable to work simultaneously on a Color map and Normal map for many different types of game and other character types. As one map will influence the other, retaining a non-destructive workflow can provide the most effective solution to this challenge.

• Hide the Base Mesh
• Select the duplicate
• Enter Sculpt mode
• Sculpt the duplicate
• Add a Shrinkwrap to the Base Mesh
• Apply the Shrinkwrap at the highest resolution
• Use cycles to bake a normal map
• Paint some more.

Exporting to Unreal

While working on your character it’s advisable not to wait until you have completed the character to test it within the game engine. By using Epic’s SendToUnreal plugin, not only can you easily add your character to your game but also adjust and modify the character within Blender and see the results instantaneously in the engine.

The character is readily available within the game environment with the added benefit that we can modify the character as above, and see the changes in the game engine update instantaneously.

Diagram Illustrating Non-destructive Workflow for Character Development

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Throughout the game development process, you will need to work with assets that have been generated outside of Unreal. It stands to reason that if you are using Unreal Engine for your game that you would likely want to utilize it’s flagship 3D rendering capabilities. As such, working with a 3D Content Creation suite like Blender will form an integral part of realizing your game.
However, the transferal of digital assets from Blender to Unreal might not be as straight forward as you had hoped. In fact, the reality is that this need not be the case any longer. In the past year or so leaps and bounds have been made in getting these two software environments to communicate almost seamlessly with each other.

And FBX for all…

Although the FBX file format alludes towards digital justice, if you have been using the file format since about the mid-20-teens you’ll be well aware of its idiosyncrasies which prompted the advent of wide-ranging support for other file formats within Blender with regards to the interchanging of digital assets. As such, you might have experimented with Collada (.dae), 3D Studio (.3DS), Wavefront Object (.obj) to name a few newer and older options but of course, all of these interchange formats have their pros and cons. Where you might win with one feature, another feature could be compromised in that particular file format. The result of this being that there would typically always be some degree of editing required within the target environment in order to get the asset to match the source.

That’s not to say that the FBX format is a one-stop solution for all of these issues, however, we can be assured with more certainty that in interchanging data between Blender and Unreal that our outcomes are more predictable. A considerable amount of work has been dedicated to getting the FBX file format to work from Blender. A commendable effort, particularly given that the file format is owned by Autodesk and their documentation on the subject has, in some instances, been somewhat scarce.

FBX is Epic Game’s officially recommended format for interchanging 3D digital assets, as such you will find many resources online with regards to exporting FBX from Blender then importing it into Unreal.

In this post, we are going to utilize a Blender Add-on that is currently in development at Epic Games that automates the export/import process required for the interchange of 3D digital assets between Blender and Unreal.

Welcome Send To Unreal

The name of the Add-on is Send To Unreal and you can access its GitHub repository at the following address, https://github.com/epicgames/blendertools

As previously mentioned you will need to first link your GitHub account to the Epic Games GitHub account. If you are unfamiliar with this process you can read more about it in a previous post.
Without making this connection between accounts you will not be able to access the GitHub repository for the Add-on.

Alternatively, if you just want to test the addon you can download version 1.4.13 here

As noted though, this version will likely become outdated quickly as the Add-on is heavily under active development and you will benefit a great deal more from using the latest version of the addon. Therefore it’s recommended that you follow the steps for linking your GitHub account to the Epic Games developers GitHub community before continuing.

Installing the Add-on

Configuration for Blender and Unreal

Live Export/Import

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If you’ve ever wanted to make your own 3D game but felt overwhelmed by the prospect of having to learn how to code the complexity of an interactive game system, then learning how to use Unreal Engine’s Blueprints system might be the solution you’re looking for.

For many decades the C++ programming language has been a particularly favoured choice in games development. The language is considered to be a mid-level programming language, as such developers benefit from very readable language syntax, scalable and maintainable paradigms and other high-level programming language constructs. At the same time, developers have direct access to manipulating system resources via memory management, which is something that is typically reserved only for low-level programming languages these days.

The aforementioned reasons coupled with the ability to develop simple to complex infrastructures makes C++ an easy choice when it comes to developing systems that require media management, AI (Artificial Intelligence), physics and rendering engines to mention a few of the requirements within games development.

However, for some time several visually-based code-creation and editing-systems have appeared in the light of attempting to abstract the complexity relating to developing these interactive systems. This is particularly relevant for artists and content creators that are perhaps not as concerned with the kudos acquired from tweaking a function to get a nanosecond of a performance boost or even perhaps developers that wish to prototype an idea quickly.

That’s not to say that these are the specific use cases for learning Unreal Engine’s Blueprints, in fact as we will learn Blueprints have wide-ranging capabilities, that make the system a comprehensive choice in developing many different types of games as well as providing the ability to extend a game system with C++, when necessary.

Blueprints and C++ in Context

In order to add interactivity to your game, some form of coding is required. Whether you create that code by hand or use a system that does it for you, code is necessary to drive the interactions between game elements which result in meaningful outcomes. Bearing this in mind, regardless of whether you are an artist developing assets and using a node-based editor to generate your scripts or a developer looking to achieve results quickly, having a top-level overview of some basic coding concepts and how they apply to Blueprints will certainly go a long way towards a greater understanding of what makes your game work. Ultimately, this can also go a long way towards fixing problems within your games when they don’t work as you were expecting.

When starting a new project within the UE4 editor you have the option of choosing a Blueprints or C++ based project. In fact, Blueprints are a visual representation of the underlying C++ code that drives the logic of your UE4 game. The reality is that you do not need to settle on one, at the expense of not being able to use the other. Many games use both C++ and Blueprints quite effectively, together.

So when would you use Blueprints and when would you use C++? You can develop an entire game only using Blueprints, as it is a very robust and extensive platform for visual scripting, you can, therefore, expect that some level of commitment is required to utilize it efficiently. C++ is often used to create game elements that act as building blocks for your game and as you might gather from the term “building block” these elements provide core functionality or statefulness that is referenced with some degree of regularity. It is also not uncommon that aspects of these C++ game elements will be exposed within the UE4 Editor through a Blueprint interface, thereby providing content creators or non-programmers access to core game elements by means of a visual scripting language.

Game Outcomes with Blueprints

Our objectives for this phase of developing our game are quite simple as the main outcome remains focussed on a basic introduction to the Blueprints visual scripting system in order to add interactivity to elements within our game. We will continue from our previous post on developing the StarPickUp asset, the outcome from the perspective of the player is that when the character passes through the StarPickup it should disappear. At this point int time, a relevant value is added to the player’s score and this is reflected on the screen, during gameplay. At present, when the player attempts to pass through the Star pickup they are prevented from doing so. This is the default behaviour of UE4, that being the StarPickUp Actor has an invisible collision box surrounding it which is preventing the player (Pawn) from passing through it.

Our process for adding the required interactivity follows,

• Detect if the Pawn is colliding with the Star Pickup Actor
• If so, add a corresponding value to the Pawn’s Score
• Destroy the Star Pickup Actor
• Update and display the Player’s score

Transferrable Knowledge in Working with Blueprints

There are various types of Blueprints that we can create but a Blueprint Class (also simply referred to as a Blueprint) will be the most common we will use throughout this series and for many other game projects. If you are familiar with the Object-Oriented programming paradigm the term class is used very much in the same context.

You can think of the class that we are currently working on as something that retains all that is necessary in describing how the pickup will eventually work in the game world. Once we have completed work on our class and we are ready to use it in our game, we will drag copies of it into the 3D viewport from the Content Browser. In fact, the objects (or Actors) that we place in the 3D viewport can also be referred to as instances rather than copies. They are instances because they inherit all of their meaningfulness, and whatever is required to make them work as expected from the class that we designed and any changes we make to the class will be reflected in all of its instances.

Depending on how you design your class, the instances of the class can have various different properties for example each StarPickUp that is instantiated from the class will have a different position. You could even design them to have different colors or different values equating to higher or lower scores when the Player passes through them. So although they all come from the same class, their purpose within the gameworld might differentiate.

As you can imagine, bearing this in mind, the visual scripting language’s namesake, Blueprint, is no coincidence. When we create classes we are effectively creating blueprints that describe how the objects that we use within the game world will work and interact with other game elements.

If this concept is somewhat difficult to grasp you could think about it in the context of a blueprint for a building. The blueprint contains all of the necessary information for creating the building, however, the blueprint itself is not something you could live in. It’s simply there to describe the possible outcomes. When you create a building from the blueprint, that becomes the useful object, in the same way, that we instantiate Actors from the blueprint class in UE4 and place them in the game world. However, it’s also worth remembering that not all objects are necessarily equal. For example, using the same blueprint one building could be used as a home while another could be used as an office.

Although C++ did not have the first implementation of Object-oriented programming, the language certainly has done a lot to popularize the programming paradigm as we see many different high level languages supporting it. You certainly don’t need to understand Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) to work with Blueprints, but if you ever wish to take things a little further by integrating your blueprints with custom C++ a basic understanding of OOP can certainly go a long way.

Collission Detection and Reaction Setup

Understanding Nodes

Nodes provide the core visualization of data that forms the scripted element of a game. They can be made up of various types of data, perform various functions and can be used to construct countless programmatic statements. In Unreal Editor you would typically access Nodes for creating and modifying Blueprints through the Graph Editor within a tab such as the Event Graph (which we are currently using) or the Construction Script.

The Graph Editor (within the Blueprint Editor) is used to edit the Nodes that form the currently selected element’s Event Graph. The Event Graph is a node-based visualization of the code that will typically be executed for the currently selected element. For example, when gameplay begins the Nodes within the Event Graph will be executed for the StarPickUp Actor, thereby defining that Actor’s interactivity within the game world. How the Nodes are executed, will depend on how you have constructed the graph.

Constructing an asset’s Event Graph can be very straight forward or exceptionally complex however there remains some basic features of the Event Graph that are consistent across simple to complex systems.

• The Event Graph for an asset consists of Nodes
• Nodes are typically connected to each other

How Nodes are connected to each other will depend on what you are hoping to achieve but again there are some very basic rules that apply across all systems and thereby make it somewhat easier to learn how to create an assets Event graph.

Nodes are represented as a block with a heading (the name of the node) and one or many pins. The pins of a Node will be of various colors but there are essentially only two different types of pins.

• Executable Pins
• Data Pins

Both Executable and Data pins can be either an Input or Output pin. Whether the pin is an input or output does not change the type of pin it is, it simply determines how data enters and exits a node through it’s available pins. All input pins are aligned to the left side of the node and all output pins are aligned to the right of the node. You might have noticed that the On Components Begin Overlap node only has output pins, nodes can consist of either or both (depending on the node in question).

Nodes can be thought of as programmatic statements and the order in which these statements are executed is determined by the connections between Nodes, via their pins.

Executable Pins

Bearing this in mind, a Node’s Executable Pins represent this concept implicitly. Executable pins appear on a node as somewhat arrow shaped and it is this arrow that points towards the order of execution.

You can connect node’s Executable pins and thereby determine the order of a scripts execution, by clicking and dragging the output executable pin of one node and dropping it onto the input executable pin of another node.

Data Pins

However, what about when you want to pass data as a result of a node’s execution from that node to another node? That is when you would need to use a Data pin in conjunction with an Executable pin. How you pass data from one node to another matches the same sequence as connecting executable pins, that is, to connect the output of one data pin to the input of another data pin on another node. However, when making the connection between data pins there are several other factors to take into consideration.

Not all data pins are compatible with each other. Data pins are all of a particular type, and it may not be possible to convert data of one type into another. A pin’s different data types are all color coded and it is safe to assume that in most instances connecting an output pin to an input pin of the same color type will result in a valid connection. Some of the data types we will use most often follow,

• Red Pins – represent boolean data which will typically have a value of true or false
• Light Blue Pins – are of type integer, otherwise known as a whole number (0, 1 , 2, 3 etc)
• Green Pins handle Float values or numbers with a decimal point (3.174 etc)
• Pink Pins are used for Strings, in other words, literal characters that don’t need to be evaluated within mathematical expressions in order to return a value. Often strings will contain letters of the alphabet for example “This is a string value” and so it this “1234abcd”.

Of course, there are other data types, but for the purposes of what we are setting out to accomplish an understanding of these four will be more than sufficient for now.

Destroying the StarPickUp

A Network of Nodes

Although we are moving in the right direction, we are not quite there yet as we currently have no score system that is able to track how many pickups our player has collided with and, as a result, what the player’s score is.

In order to accomplish this we will need a slightly more complex network of Nodes to replace the Event Graph we currently have associated with our StarPickup. Don’t worry though, because although the setup we will be replacing our existing Event Graph with is more complex learning the logic and how to apply this understanding is fundamental to developing many different types of interactions for games. As a result, if you can understand the logic you only need to learn it once then adapt this approach to developing a variety of different types of interactions within your games.

There are a couple of tasks we will need to perform when creating our new node network,

• Add a variable to our pawn
• Access/Get this variable from the StarPickUp actor
• Manipulate the value
• Then return/Set the value to replace the old value
• Display the new value during game play

In other words we are going to get and set a variable, this is one of the most fundamental concepts of programming.

Working with Variables

Creating the Scoring System

Getting

Setting

Debugging Tools

If at this point you were to test your game you would still not see any visual representation of the player’s score. However, this time around although you cannot see a difference, there is in fact, a fundamental difference to the game’s scoring system in that the code will successfully be executed.

Debugging in terms of software development relates to the process of removing errors and faults in a codebase. However, some errors might not necessarily be clearly visible when running your codebase and as a result, many development toolkits (Unreal Editor included) will provide tools to assist with this process, by exposing parts of how your application is running and if it’s performance is matching your expectations.

One of the debugging tools available to us in Unreal Editor is the Print String node. This node has the ability to display text while the game is running. As this is a debugging node, the text will only be visible while the game is run through the Editor, in other words debugging information is not (and should not) be retained when the game is built for a specific platform.

Coming up

If you have worked your way though the entire series then you have accomplished quite a great deal in terms of getting to grips with a fundamental understanding of working with Assets and the Blueprint Editor to create interactivity with your games.

In the next post we will be looking at developing a health system for the game, as well as adding assets with animation within our game and converting the debugging information to something more useful that our players can see.

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Skill Level : Beginner

Overview

Welcome to the first in a series of posts on developing a 3D Sidescroller Racing Game. By following along with this series you will gain an understanding of what is required when working with Blender, Unreal Engine 4 as well as several other Open Source applications in developing a functional 3D game, that utilizes game mechanics similar to that found in Sonic the Hedgehog and gameplay inspired by Wipeout 2097.

In this post we will start by developing a 3D asset in Blender, that we will then import into Unreal Engine 4 (UE4). We will then use this asset within the Unreal Editor as an item within a side-scrolling game that acts as a pick-up. A pick-up is typically any item within a game world that is collectable by a game character. In terms of Unreal Engine-speak, we would refer to our game character as a Pawn and the pickup as an Actor. Simply put, our Pawn is the character we control within the game and it will interact with our Actor, the pickup object.

The focus of this post is not on the interaction between the Pawn and the Actor, but rather on the core concepts of developing an actor within UE4. We will develop the pickup 3D model in Blender with special consideration regarding the creation of assets for realtime applications. We will then create a Blueprint Actor with the 3D model in UE4 that has a glowing material and a rotates in-game like many a pickup of simmilar type from other games you may have played.

Prerequisites

In order to complete this tutorial, you will need both Blender and Unreal Editor 4 installed. If you would like to find out more about installing Unreal Editor, please read through this post.

You will not require anything more than a basic understanding of Blender’s modelling tools as well as some general background knowledge of 3D. If you are just starting from scratch then you should consider taking this free 3D course before continuing.

Building the Asset

When building game assets there are various factors to take into consideration, it’s always worthwhile keeping an eye of the polycount of your assets, making sure that you are not creating non-manifold geometry as well as creating edge loops that subdivide as evenly as possible as this will assist with creating different Level Of Detail (LOD) objects.

As a pickup is an asset that will be used many times throughout a game level, its polycount becomes exponentially significant to keep as low as possible. Keeping a low polycount is significant as it places less strain on the game’s rendering engine, this ultimately can contribute to making your game play smoother and prevent frame-skipping. Also bear in mind that, it may be a misconception to think that keeping a low polycount is only relevant if you are producing games for mobile devices. Although, the topic of keeping a low polycount is certainly recommended for mobile games its also worth remembering that not only is this a topic of concern for PC gaming but consoles games can benefit from the performance increase as well. When taking into consideration the distribution of a system’s resources for the purposes of rendering and making a game playable, consider that resources consumed for the purposes of transforming and rendering geometry could potentially have been used elsewhere to improve the quality of lighting in a scene or providing smoother physics simulations. In other words, thinking about balancing the load of the rendering engine is not just a consideration exclusively for software engineers but also something that artists and other technicians should always be aware of.

As performance is such an important topic in games development, we will be addressing it wherever possible.

Modelling and Asset Preparation

Our pickup is going to be in the shape of a star and although there are many ways in which you could model this in Blender one of the simplest approaches would be to use an application such as Inkscape.

If you use a primarily open-source production pipeline, then Inkscape is certainly a tool you might want to consider adding to your workflow. It is a cross-platform, Vector drawing application and can be used to generate splines that import seamlessly into Blender.

Inkscape has a set of premade shapes that are highly customisable including a star. Once the star was quickly created it was then saved as a vector in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic) format. This is Inkscape’s native file format. From here the SVG is easily imported into Blender and works as any spline typically would. This is also very useful if you ever needed to tweak the vector graphic as Blender splines, particularly as all the bezier handles generated in Inkscape are retained in Blender.

From Blender simply import the SVG , using Blender’s SVG import plugin.

In order to retain as much control as possible of your 3D assets for your games, converting them to polygons within Blender (and before exporting them) will help you to visualize what the final results will look like. This will also afford you the benefit of being able to address any concerns with the geometry before importing them into UE4.

As a result, it’s recommended that if you have an exporter that does polygon conversion for you there are times when you might want to skip that option in order to retain as much control of the creation for such a critical asset as a pickup that will appear abundantly in some game levels.

Sometimes in Blender, when converting curves to a polygon object the results might not be what you expect. In our case, as we are dealing with a simple primitive shape although the conversion process resulted in malformed geometry with polygons of inconsistent dimensions, fixing this will be quick and easy.

1. In this case the internal edges of the star were selected then deleted, resulting in an outline of the star.
2. The edges making up the outline were then selected and extruded. This can be achieved in Blender’s Edit Mode by hitting the e key and moving the mouse/stylus etc in the viewport. To restrain the extrude to a particular axis hit the key corresponding to that axis. In this case, the key combination for extruding the outline of the star was e then z.

Modelling Considerations for Realtime Applications

At this stage, you might consider laying out your model’s UV’s. Although it is not always necessary, particularly when dealing with a light source 3D model if you wish to add any textures to your model within the game level then laying out of UV’s will be required.

• When laying out UV’s try to ensure that they take up as much of the object’s texture space as possible (sometimes referred to as 0 to 1 texture space). This ensures that you have the greatest surface area in which to make the texture’s details visible and clear.
• UV’s should be non-overlapping, for the sake of simplicity. Although UE4 does support multiple UV sets/channels which will allow a vertex in one location to inhabit more than one set of coordinates within multiple UV sets. This can simply result in additional overheads with regrads to system resources that can be utilized elsewhere.
• UV islands should match your objects shape as close as possible, for example, the UV map of the star above looks like that of a star.

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Setup your Game Project in the Unreal Editor

Import A 3D Mesh Asset

Once your mesh has been imported you can double click it within the Content Browser to open it for editing. This is applicable for most assets within the Content Browser and not just exclusively for meshes.

Create Your First Blueprint

As mentioned there are many benefits to working with Blueprints. We will make our first Blueprint which will essentially serve the purpose of being a pickup in our game.

Although it is not necessary to have any prior programming knowledge in order to use Blueprints, understanding some basic concepts will certainly help when it comes to creating your own Blueprint objects.

Blueprints are essentially a collection of properties and various functionalities. You can define a Blueprints functionalities as well as it’s properties and also access preexisting one too. If you have prior programming knowledge you could think of a Blueprint as a visual representation of a class within the context of the Object-oriented programming paradigm.

Working with Blueprint Components

There are three main sections within the Blueprint Editor that we are concerned with.

1. The panel on the left-hand side of the Editor is used to add components to the Blueprint. These components can be various types of assets that you have imported into the Editor (such as the Star Pickup mesh) or assets that are already a part of UE4. You can also add unique properties to Blueprints here.

2. The middle section of the Blueprint Editor is primarily for the purposes of visualizing the Blueprint, how all the components relate to each other as well as providing the ability to modify these connections through a Node-based interface.

3. The section on the right consists of the main panel for editing the details of a component or other selection.

If at this point you are struggling to visualize what we are attempting to achieve you can think about our project in terms of a hierarchy.

At the top of the heirachy is the game level we are currently working on. This game level consists of all our Blueprints, Characters, mesh objects sounds etc.

What we are doing is currently adding a Blueprint to this level. This Blueprint is made up of a Static Mesh. The Static Mesh is made up of Geometry (polygons) and Materials. The Blueprint itself is also going to include some functionality and properties that will make it possible for our Character and even other Actors in the game world to interact with it.

A Blueprint is essentially not a tangible object within the game world, however, its components can make it seem tangible.

Now that we have our Star mesh imported and connected to our Blueprint we are going to work on making it look somewhat more interesting by adding some simple animation as well as making it glow. At a later stage, we will add the functionality that turns it into an actual pickup which augments our characters score during gameplay.

Within the same Blueprint Editor for the StarPickUp add a new component called Rotating Movement. In order to add components to a Blueprint follow the same steps, we took for adding the Static Mesh. This component will be used to add a simple rotation animation to the pickup. You can specify the axis around which you would like the rotation to occur in the Details panel.

Once you are satisfied with your edits you must compile the results to ensure that there are no errors. As a reminder Blueprints provide a visual representation of the code that would be required to make your game interactive. Compiling, in terms of programming, is the conversion process required between one type of programming language into another. As such, you can think of Compiling in terms of Blueprints as converting the work you have done from a format that is human-readable into a format that is more machine-readable and can therefore run more effectively on a variety of different systems.

As a general rule, you should always consider Compiling and Saving your work before exiting the Blueprint Editor.

Once you have placed your asset into the viewport, you can test your placement and how your character interacts with your asset by clicking the Play button.

Exit Game mode to return to the main editing interface and double click on the StarPickUp Blueprint in the Content Browser.

You might notice that this time around when the Blueprint Editor opens, instead of seeing the Star Static Mesh you see a grid, where the Viewport previously was (in the middle section of the Editor). This is likely the Event Graph and its main purpose is to provide a visualization of the properties and functionalities of the Blueprint. As we do not have any yet, the interface might seem pretty empty. At a later stage, we will add functionality to the StarPickUp that will allow us to interact with it during gameplay.

Node-based Editing for Materials

Unreal Editor provides an intuitive Node-based editing system that is consistent not only for editing materials but also for designing interactions with Blueprints. If you have previously worked with Blender’s node-based editing system when building materials you will find many similarities in terms of building materials within the Unreal Editor too. Nodes can be added by right-clicking on an empty area within the grid area (middle section) of the Material Editor. You can create connections between Nodes by dragging handles from one Node’s socket to another Node’s socket. When you attempt to make a connection that is invalid the Editor will prompt you with a message in red text.

In order for your mesh to render it will require a material, how that material renders will be determined by the connections we make between the various nodes in the Material Editor.

As you will notice your material will still not be glowing as of yet, this is primarily because we have not finished setting up the rest of the Nodes and nor have we completed making the appropriate connections.

We are now going to finish our material by making the appropriate connections. As noted the Multiply Node has two input channels, the purpose of the node is to take an input from channel A, multiply it with the Value as input from channel B then return the result through the output.

In our case, this is significant because all color channels have a minimum and maximum setting depending on the software you are using this could be represented as a range between 0 to 1 or 0 to 255. When pushing these representations of color values beyond their predetermined ranges, the result is that the material can start to appear as being self-illuminated. By taking the results of these exaggerated values and returning them to the Emissive Color channel of a material, a bloom effect is then achieved. This bloom effect is what creates the impression of the object glowing.

It is, however, worth noting that the object is not necessarily glowing, as if it were glowing it would also be casting light on the environment in which it is placed. Therefore, the effect is simply a simulation that does not match real-world physics unless you are using a more current build of UE4. In builds 4.6 and greater the emissive material is, in fact, able to cast light on the environment.

Although it is possible to simulate the effect of the material lighting the environment in versions of Unreal less then build 4.6 you would have to consider how this will affect performance during gameplay.

As previously mentioned performance is of great significance when developing games. Take into consideration that this Star PickUp will appear many times within a level. To visualize this more clearly think about how many times coins appear within a Sonic the Hedgehog level. As a result, wherever it is possible to improve on the performance of an asset during gameplay, it is worth taking into consideration the balance between the quality of rendering versus performance. However, in some cases, you might be able to plan the implementation of an asset without having to make compromises yet still gain from the potential of a performance increase.

In our case, this is crucial when taking into consideration how many times the Star PickUp will appear within a single level as each instance added to the viewport has the potential to negatively impact on the game’s performance, in other words how smooth the game plays or whether it skips frames on some devices.

In this post, we were introduced to many of the basic editing interfaces that the Unreal Editor uses consistently for different components making up a game. We also touched on some topics that should be taken into consideration when exporting assets from Blender for UE4.

In the next installment of this series, we’re going to take a look at how to add interactivity to the assets we imported as well as how to create animated assets in Blender that will be imported into our game.

Now that you have Unreal Engine and Editor up and running, it’s time to start migrating your digital assets from Blender into the Editor. In this post we will discuss some of the prerequisites for building certain assets in Blender, then exporting and finally importing and setup within Unreal Editor.

Build the model in Blender

In fact, you are not limited to Blender in terms of building your models for Unreal Engine 4 (UE4) however, we will be focusing on Blender as it provides a great deal of versatility in terms of content creation. We will focus on an animated 3D character that will be exported via the FBX file format, then imported into UE4. When building assets such as this for a real-time engine there are certain considerations to take note of. Working with an application such as Blender in conjunction with UE4 requires a certain degree of understanding as to what role each software plays in the production pipeline. In other words, there are certain tasks that Blender performs well that should be completed before a model is exported for UE4. Among these considerations are,

• Topology
• Non-overlapping UV’s
• Texture mapping
• Rigging and Animation

Model Considerations

Topology: Build your models without non-manifold geometry and with edge loops that are placed with consideration for accurate deformation during animation. Although, it will require some experience in getting this right you can start by learning about the basics on this free course.

Non-overlapping UV’s and Texturing: Your model should have it’s UV’s laid out before it is exported from Blender. When unwrapping your model’s UVs to export for a real-time application, its generally best to maximize usage of the 0 to 1 UV texture space, keep your textures square with dimensions between the 4th to 13th power of 2 exponents. You can read more about understanding UV’s here.

Rigging and Animation: Blender has a vast toolset for creating simple to exceptionally complex animations and supporting the content creation process with advanced rigging features. Although you can create animation in UE4 and will certainly encounter times when this is necessary, mastering animation in Blender will certainly be beneficial with regards to raising the quality of your final output significantly. Learning animation is a time-consuming process if this is not in your interests simply utilize readily animated models.

Exporting a Model and Rig

Once you have your model prepped with all the above criteria checked, it’s time to begin the export process. In the interest of keeping things simple, we are not going to focus on export settings and the finer details involved therein. Simply, we will examine the process as an overview in order to equip you with the tools to get an animated character from Blender into Unreal Engine 4. Taking a research-based approach to learning, from that point, will help accelerate your project to the next level.

As mentioned in a previous post, when exporting a model, Location and Rotation transforms should be 0 for all axes.

Scale transforms should be at 1. This is both applicable for the model and for the armature.

When choosing a unit of measurement such as Unit system, Metric or Imperial it would be considered best practices to remain consistent with the same system throughout the entire project. Doing so could contribute towards creating models that are imported at the correct scale, and ultimately save you some time.

You will not require any animation for this first step. All that is required is that the model is bound to the rig and adequately weight painted prior to exporting. With the rig selected go to frame zero, and enter the model’s Rest Position if it is not already in rest pose. If there are any objects in the scene other than the model and rig, such as lights, camera or other objects simply delete them. Ideally, just the 3D model and rig should remain.

With your rig selected enter Pose mode (from the 3D Viewport not Pose Position as opposed to Rest Position i.e. remain in Rest Position) and rename the top-level parent bone, that is the highest bone in the rig’s hierarchy, to Root.

To reiterate on the process we will first be exporting just the model and rig. Once we are happy with how this has imported into UE4 we will then continue to export the animation.

As we are only interested in the Armature and Mesh, select those object types from Blender’s FBX export options dialog. Although if you already deleted all other object types as previously noted then your object types would have been implicitly set.

In the interest of separating animation out of this file, if any already existed, it is recommended to uncheck the Bake Animation setting at first.

When exporting your media to UE4, keeping things as simple as possible is key. Therefore if you are able to create a workflow that enables only exporting Deform Bones successfully then, checking the Only Deform Bones option can help to significantly reduce file sizes and speed up the import/export process.

Bear in mind that if you choose this option for the initial exporting of the character and rig, you should keep this option checked for exporting all remaining animations.

You are now ready to export the file. Save the file to a unique name.

Project Setup

Level Setup

Import the Mesh and Rig

Import the Animation

Create and Edit Materials

Exclusive offer for Learners

If you can recall that far back one of the most impressive elements of Unreal was in UnrealEd, a level editor that was distributed at no extra cost to the game. However, let’s not forget the original games beautiful lighting, compelling gameplay and that incredible fly-by intro sequence that sets the tone for all the mystery and intrigue that is to follow.

The Unreal Engine has progressed significantly since it’s initial inception of UnrealEd, in this post we will be setting up Unreal Engine 4, currently the latest version of Unreal publicly available and soon to be replaced by version 5 in 2021. Although you could easily head on over to Epic’s site and download a copy of the engine, for easy installation, we will instead be building the engine from the source code. There are many benefits to building the engine from source of which one is that we are not restricted to the Operating Systems that are supported on the official download page such as Windows. We will be building the Unreal 4 Engine on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa.

Technically speaking it’s not entirely necessary to use this version of Ubuntu, or Ubuntu at all. As previously noted building from source removes such limitations so you could use just about any modern Linux-based distro. However, for the sake of convenience and simplicity, we’ll be using Ubuntu’s most current LTS (Long Term Support) version.

In continuing the Open Source ecosystem of this project we will not be relying on propitiatory Autodesk products (with all due respect). Instead, we will be utilizing the Open Source Blender 3D content creation suite to develop and import assets into our Unreal project. Of course, one of the main benefits of this approach is that to get you up and running will not cost you a dime in terms of software purchasing, licences or the like. However, it is worth noting in the long term if you do happen to make a game that does start making money then depending on how you distribute it, UE4 licensing could result in some costs.

Now that we have an idea of where we’re heading lets jump right in and get started with building UE4 on Ubuntu.

Build from source

When building a project from source code you will need to take into consideration the programming language/s used to develop that code. Without this consideration, source code is nothing but ASCII text, similar to that in a word processing document. However, in order to make something useful of the source code it needs to be converted into something that a machine can understand, this refers to the process of compiling which forms a part of the build process.

Building an application from source code will generally involve several steps but simply put in the context of what we are doing, we will

• Resolve dependencies
• Create online accounts
• Clone the codebase
• Configure resources
• Make and install from binaries

Resolving Dependencies

Before we get started with accessing and downloading the source code there are a few additional tools we will need in order to ensure the build is successful. The process of installing the requirements needed to build an application from source can be referred to as resolving the software’s dependencies.

• In terms of UE4, the source code is written in C++ and as a result, you will need the tools for compiling a C++ application.
• As UE4 makes extensive use of hardware acceleration in order to render very sophisticated 3D graphics in realtime, you will need the latest drivers for your Nvidia or AMD graphics card. This is not as much a dependency as a software requirement, as this only becomes relevant after the application has been built.
• Finally neither a dependency nor a software requirement, but arguably an essential component within any developers toolkit would be a solution for Version Control Systems (VCS). In this case, the recommendations would be Git and GitHub.

As previously mentioned the operating system we will be using is Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. Although it might be possible to build UE4 on other versions of Ubuntu, the process is somewhat simplified on 20.04 and encountering difficulties with graphics drivers on 16.04 after successful builds or failed builds on 18.04, can prove to be less of an issue.

Make sure build essential is installed on your system you can do this through Synaptic or by entering the following command in a Terminal,

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Build-essential is a meta-package, that is to say, it is not essentially an application itself as much as a tool for installing other software. In this case, the other software would primarily be for the purposes of building applications developed in C++. Among the software it will install will be g++ (the GNU C++ compiler), various development libraries as well as make, which is a utility that assists with the compilation process. Of course, you could simply install these packages individually based on your skill level and proficiency with regards to C/C++ development. If you don’t wish to install build-essential you could also rely on the setup process, noted below resolving these dependencies within the build toolchain. Nonetheless, it’s worth noting in the event you encounter difficulties or wish to expand on your C++ development skills.

You might have also noticed from the above screenshot that bumblebee is not installed on this system. After having encountered issues with the Nvidia 660M discreet card not initializing on this system, removing Bumblebee resolved the issue. If you are utilizing an Nvidia card, it is recommended that you install the latest drivers supported by that card. As a result, the system noted for this installation uses version 4.40 of the Nvidia drivers. It is also essential that you use drivers that support the Vulkan API. OpenGL and Direct3D alone will not suffice for UE4.

As you will need an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the purposes of developing code for your game or for editing the UE4 source code, Visual Studio Code 2017 or greater is an official recommendation. You can obtain it from Ubuntu’s Software Center, it is also available as a Snapshot.

Git is essentially a source code management tool that you would install locally on the system you will build UE4 on. Although you do not need git to build UE4 there are however some key benefits to using it, which we will have a look at shortly. To install git you could simply do so through Terminal again with the following command,

sudo apt-get install git

This will install all the requirements for working with git through the Command Line Interface (CLI). Git forms one of the main components in working with Version Control Systems (VCS), but to have an effective solution for software development you will also need a remote hosting and VCS solution. There are several providers that can fulfil this requirement in various paid or unpaid capacities, however, GitHub is the service provider we will be using. As a result, you will need to visit github.com and sign up for an account if you do not already have one. You will not require more than a basic free account. Once you have git and GitHub setup you are ready to start retrieving the UE4 source code.

Finally with regards to accounts, make sure you have signed up for an unrealengine.com. This account is needed in order to access the UE4 source code.

Get the Source

Log into your Unreal Engine account, under your user profile you will find a link to your account settings.

Click the PERSONAL link. This section lets you customize characteristics about your account, as well as allows you to connect 3rd party software.

In the panel on the left is a button called CONNECTIONS

Click this button to customize what 3rd party software your Unreal Engine account can access. In this section, you will find an option to link your GitHub account. Click the CONNECT button and follow the prompts to connect your Unreal Engine and GitHub accounts. Ultimately you will need to become a collaborator on the Unreal Engine GitHub repository in order to obtain the source code. Don’t worry if you don’t have any experience with code, you will not be able to make changes to the main source code that easily. However, if your intent is to modify the source code then you should probably consider Forking the Unreal Engine source code and editing that. We’ll discuss options for accessing the code shortly, but first, you will need to finalize the connection between the accounts by visiting GitHub and clicking the Authorize EpicGames button.

Once you have authorized Epic Games access to your GitHub account, you should then receive an email inviting you to join the @EpicGames organization. This email will be sent to the address associated with your GitHub account, worth noting particularly if you are using different emails for your UE4 and GitHub accounts. Accept the invitation and you will finally have access to the Unreal Engine source code.

Now that you have access to the EpicGames repository as a collaborator when you visit their repository at https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine you will notice that the UrealEngine repo is now accessible.

Read through the Readme file, which has a friendly welcome message as well as some very useful links for learning how to use the engine.

You are now ready to Download, Clone or Fork the engine’s source code. Before proceeding there are a few suggestions that should be taken into consideration regarding these options.

• Fork: This option is particularly useful if you wish to modify the source code. Choosing to create a Fork will replicate the repository within your personal GitHub account. You are then able to modify and change the source to your requirements. This does not download the code onto your local workstation and is therefore not recommended as a standalone solution if your interests are primarily in creating games or realtime applications with UE4.
• Download: This might initially seem like the best option and although there is no particular reason not to utilize this option if your interests are primarily to get up and running with potentially as little overhead as possible, you will be defaulting on the benefits of the VCS provided.
  To download the source you will first need to choose a branch. By default, the release branch is selected as this is a well maintained and tested branch with updates regularly being added and merged. If you are somewhat familiar with VCS you might be tempted to download the master branch, however, this branch is primarily the master for development and therefore not subject to as much testing as release. You can also choose to download older versions of the engine and the developer teams also have their own branches prefixed with dev-branchname. However, these branches tend to be considered as bleeding-edge and should not be used for the purposes of production as much as for development.
• Clone: Cloning the source perhaps provides the most versatility in terms of the three options as this will download the source onto your local machine, allow you to modify and test your changes locally as well as benefit from working with fully-fledged VCS enabling you to do things such as checkout other branches on the same system, modify, stage, commit and push remotely if you initially forked.

git clone https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine.git

To clone the repository navigate to the desired directory through a CLI and run the command above.

As you can see from this screenshot, cloning required approximately 3.41GiB of disc space. Depending on the speed of your internet connection this could take a considerable about of time to obtain. Although this might seem like a lot of data be aware that it is only a small part of the requirements for building and running the engine, as in order to use the engine you should have at least 100 Gigabytes of free space on your drive. That is not a typo and does not accommodate the additional space requirements of your personal projects.

Compile Binaries

At this point you would have obtained a copy of the source code, installed all the required dependencies and are now ready to start setting up the engine and installing it on your system.

To clarify, the source code you have downloaded is in a human-readable format, which makes it possible to edit and maintain. You will now need to convert this code into a machine-readable format through the process of compilation, this will result in binaries which will be executable therefore allowing you to finally launch and run the engine.

If you have followed all the steps to this point compiling the binaries will be quite straight forward and will only require a minimal knowledge of the Command Line Interface.

Open a terminal window and navigate to the root directory of your UE4 source code. You can do this by changing to the appropriate directory.

cd UnrealEngine

Then run the Setup shell script. This step might take some time depending on your system’s configuration as it will download a native toolchain that will ensure the UE4 codebase compiles and links successfully on your system.

./Setup.sh

You will then need to generate the Unreal Engine project files, once setup has successfully completed.

./GenerateProjectFiles.sh

Finally you will need to run make to build the binaries

make

This step will require substantial system resources and time depending on the target machine you are compiling against. You will need at least 8GB of RAM and a multi-core processor (8 or more) to complete this step in an hour or less. Once this step has successfully completed and no errors have been returned you are finally ready to launch the Unreal Engine 4 Editor. Congratulations!

Launching the Editor

Well done for getting this far, it’s now time to launch the Editor and start your journey towards learning how to make your first game. Navigate to the directory where the binaries were created and launch the editor.

cd Engine/Binaries/Linux

Now launch the editor.

./UE4Editor

The first time you launch the editor, it will need to compile shaders which will take some time but fortunately, this only needs to happen the first time the editor is launched.

At the Create New Project screen, select Games then Next and you will be presented with the Select Template screen. Choose Blank Project, then make sure Blueprint is selected and No Starter content is required as we will be importing our own mesh from Blender.

Blueprint is the Unreal Engine visual scripting language. With it you can create gameplay through a node-based system using simple drag and drop techniques to create connections between nodes in the editor. This means that as a designer you are not necessarily limited to having to learn a programming language in order to develop your game.

Importing a Mesh into the Editor

Now that we have UE4 up and running on Ubuntu we’re going to use Blender to export a 3D asset that we will import into the editor. In the interest of keeping things simple for now, we are just going to discuss the basic concepts of importing a static mesh.

Within the Editor locate the Content Browser section in the bottom half of the screen and click the Add New button.

Click New Folder to create a new folder within the project, that will be used to store the imported asset.

You will need an asset to import into your project. There are various options for importing 3D meshes into UE4, although the official file format for this is usually considered to be FBX. The FBX file format supports animation as well as many other features, but we are just using it to familiarize ourselves with the import/export workflow.

In order to prepare your mesh for exporting from Blender make sure that all transforms have been applied. In other words if your mesh has any rotation, translation or scale attributes these will need to be baked into the mesh so that your mesh transforms are all zero. If your object moves while trying to Apply it’s transforms you might need to enter the object’s Edit mode select the object’s vertices and then translate the object back into the correct position. Essentially your object’s Center of Mass should be as close as possible to the origin without intersecting the ground plane.

Apply the object’s transforms by selecting the object in the 3D viewport, then clicking the viewport object menu and Applying all transforms from the Apply menu.

Next export the mesh by choosing FBX from the export options.

The default settings are ideal for the purposes of what we are doing, and the only option you would need to change is to ensure that the Selected Objects option is checked from the FBX export settings. Save your exported mesh and it’s time to import it into the Unreal Editor.

From the Content Browser in the Unreal Editor click the Import button, to import the FBX file you just exported from Blender.

When importing this file again accept the default settings. If all goes well your assets will now appear in the new project folder you previously created.

In completing this final step you would have successfully imported your 3D model into the Unreal Editor. From the Content Browser click and drag your asset into the editor viewport. Your model is now visible within the Unreal 4 3D rendering engine’s editor. Click the Play button to preview what your asset will look like in-game.

With the techniques you have learned here try import other models as well as other types of assets including texture maps.

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