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Unreal Engine 4 Thread
- Thread starter Mik2121
- Start date
Hi guys.
Searched but didn't find.
Does anyone have experience with the custom licensing instead of the 5%?
It would be very interesting to know how much does it cost to get the engine and be done with it.
https://www.unrealengine.com/custom-licensing
Searched but didn't find.
Does anyone have experience with the custom licensing instead of the 5%?
It would be very interesting to know how much does it cost to get the engine and be done with it.
https://www.unrealengine.com/custom-licensing
SpookyFries
Member
The official Unreal YouTube channel has several tutorial courses that are really good. I would suggest following the Twin Stick Shooter videos as it will get your hands involved in all of the different aspects of creating a project in UE4 (Player setup, materials, projectiles, animations, variables, etc)
Thanks for the reply! If I ever get time I'll probably be trying to work with the C++ side, but I'll still need to set up materials and animations etc. I haven't looked yet to see if their channel has C++ videos.
Unreal Engine 4.15 is now out: https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-4-15-released
Compile times reduced by up to 50% sounds excellent. And Nintendo Switch platform support is available by name now, it sounds like.
Even if I get developer-approved eventually, I'm going to get beaten to the Switch by so many games.
Are there any special settings I can make to make the editor load faster and respond quicker in general? 4.15 needs to compile hundreds of shaders every time I do a tiny change to my own stuff (I'm following the Udemy Unreal tutorial series by Ben Tristem). I'm aware of the editor auto settings etc for graphics, and I get a decent framerate with settings set to low, which isn't my experience with older versions/projects, and certainly not with Unity (far less intense editor I'm sure). Light building is also pretty slow, the few times I've tried it.
I'm also getting a warning, sometimes two identical, saying that my graphics drivers have known issues, but even though my card is really old, AMD stopped supporting it in 2013 :lol, I didn't used to get this error before. Just getting the launcher to load is also strangely slow (minutes probably). I haven't gotten to the Visual Studio parts yet but I bet that'll be super slow as well, it has been in the past :/
Can I do anything, besides getting a new PC? I've set Swarm to standalone mode.
I'm also getting a warning, sometimes two identical, saying that my graphics drivers have known issues, but even though my card is really old, AMD stopped supporting it in 2013 :lol, I didn't used to get this error before. Just getting the launcher to load is also strangely slow (minutes probably). I haven't gotten to the Visual Studio parts yet but I bet that'll be super slow as well, it has been in the past :/
Can I do anything, besides getting a new PC? I've set Swarm to standalone mode.
A few days ago this made the rounds because of the cool visuals:
http://www.shed-works.co.uk/ (the Moebius-inspired stuff)
I tried to replicate it in UE4 with my somewhat limited knowledge of postprocess shaders. I used the outline postprocess from UE4 with some modifications so that the falloff is narrower near the player (so you can better see outlines for rocks and whatnot) and wider for the background (so things like hills and large spheres don't have outlines all over them).
I know there's probably a much smarter way to go about this, like actually getting outlines of meshes separately and also checking where they cross to add extra lines, plus check the normals to get also proper outlines on the inside of meshes, but...
For now this is getting close to what I wanted to try out (done between last night and tonight):
https://youtu.be/YAiY1Hq8RGU
http://www.shed-works.co.uk/ (the Moebius-inspired stuff)
I tried to replicate it in UE4 with my somewhat limited knowledge of postprocess shaders. I used the outline postprocess from UE4 with some modifications so that the falloff is narrower near the player (so you can better see outlines for rocks and whatnot) and wider for the background (so things like hills and large spheres don't have outlines all over them).
I know there's probably a much smarter way to go about this, like actually getting outlines of meshes separately and also checking where they cross to add extra lines, plus check the normals to get also proper outlines on the inside of meshes, but...
For now this is getting close to what I wanted to try out (done between last night and tonight):
https://youtu.be/YAiY1Hq8RGU
A few days ago this made the rounds because of the cool visuals:
http://www.shed-works.co.uk/ (the Moebius-inspired stuff)
I tried to replicate it in UE4 with my somewhat limited knowledge of postprocess shaders. I used the outline postprocess from UE4 with some modifications so that the falloff is narrower near the player (so you can better see outlines for rocks and whatnot) and wider for the background (so things like hills and large spheres don't have outlines all over them).
I know there's probably a much smarter way to go about this, like actually getting outlines of meshes separately and also checking where they cross to add extra lines, plus check the normals to get also proper outlines on the inside of meshes, but...
For now this is getting close to what I wanted to try out (done between last night and tonight):
https://youtu.be/YAiY1Hq8RGU
That looks really cool! Nice job. Definitely want to learn more about stuff like that.
I'm always impressed at how quickly you make UE4 stuff without programming knowledge. I've been programming for years and it takes me a long time to figure out Unreal setup.A few days ago this made the rounds because of the cool visuals:
http://www.shed-works.co.uk/ (the Moebius-inspired stuff)
I tried to replicate it in UE4 with my somewhat limited knowledge of postprocess shaders. I used the outline postprocess from UE4 with some modifications so that the falloff is narrower near the player (so you can better see outlines for rocks and whatnot) and wider for the background (so things like hills and large spheres don't have outlines all over them).
I know there's probably a much smarter way to go about this, like actually getting outlines of meshes separately and also checking where they cross to add extra lines, plus check the normals to get also proper outlines on the inside of meshes, but...
For now this is getting close to what I wanted to try out (done between last night and tonight):
https://youtu.be/YAiY1Hq8RGU
Thanks! It's a lot of fun learning this stuff.
Thank you!
Well, it's not like I set every single node by myself from zero. The outline base work was done already by Epic in one of their demos, but it didn't work properly for catching small outlines like the tiny rocks (well, you could do it but then it would break the outlines for things like the landscape). So I sorta went into what they had and modified a bunch of things to properly pick up the background and foreground with different parameters and all that. Other than that, it's probably simpler than it might look.
At work I do even more of this stuff sometimes so I guess I got used to prototyping different things like this (not just toon stuff but prototyping different visual styles and mechanics in general).
Unreal Engine 4.16 is now out: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/unreal-engine-4-16-released
Insane Metal
Member
Alien Queen on UE4. 😱
IbizaPocholo
NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
Amazing!
Holy fuckballz.
Guess I'm not the only one then.
Not that I believe I should be happy about that, lol.
Unreal vfx is decent, but consider that realtime and rendered VFX are completely different ballparks.
JordanN
Banned
Unreal Engine 3 was actually used for Lazytown believe it or not. UE4 was also used to render one character in Star Wars: Rogue One.
But yeah, it all comes down to what your needs are.
Hate to do a little crossposting but I've been trying to figure out how to recreate a certain effect I saw in a UE4 game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDB6utGmAYU&t=3s
edit: In GIF form:
Right at the beginning of this video you can see the dome, made of blue triangles, shrink away on a tile-by-tile basis. I'm assuming this is a material effect, but I don't know where to begin with something like that. Anybody have any pointers or ideas?
In general I'm pretty weak at wrapping my brain around making more complicated material effects, so if there are any comprehensive resources out there I'd love to hear about them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDB6utGmAYU&t=3s
edit: In GIF form:
Right at the beginning of this video you can see the dome, made of blue triangles, shrink away on a tile-by-tile basis. I'm assuming this is a material effect, but I don't know where to begin with something like that. Anybody have any pointers or ideas?
In general I'm pretty weak at wrapping my brain around making more complicated material effects, so if there are any comprehensive resources out there I'd love to hear about them.
Noticed this in the roadmap today:
https://trello.com/c/gBCtRjFA/125-python-for-editor-scripting
This sounds rad.
https://trello.com/c/gBCtRjFA/125-python-for-editor-scripting
This sounds rad.
Cats Waller
Neo Member
I'm not a vfx artist so I can't say with confidence how I i believe that was done, but I can think think of a few ways to approximate that effect. Browse through the 'game art tips' section of this site, perhaps this pin table one first: https://simonschreibt.de/gat/pintable/
oh man, this rules. Thanks!
Unreal Engine 4.17 is now out: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/unreal-engine-4-17-released
Speaking of 4.17, MonoUE (C# / F#) got updated to it too.
Epic is aware of it, hopefully they include it officially in 4.18.
Epic is aware of it, hopefully they include it officially in 4.18.
What is more likely is that they integrate the changes that allow MonoUE to be distributed as a plugin instead of a fork. Full integration means Epic would have to commit to maintaining it (on all UE4 platforms) and I'm not sure they are interested enough for that yet. The MonoUE devs are still making large structural changes and it doesn't even support packaging games yet.
(I'm also not too thrilled about yet one more thing to cause each new UE4 versions to be ridden of bugs until it's patched 3 or 4 times).
Actually yeah a plugin makes MUCH more sense. Still really interested to see where MonoUE goes
Hello UE4 people!
Thought I'd pop in this thread and mention that I started learning UE4 about a week and a half ago. It's been quite the lightning tour. I started off with the intention of just doing some programming in UE4, since that kind of thing is what I'm best at, but I found pretty quickly that UE4 is kind of too cool for *just* writing code.
Like a lot of people, I actually came to UE4 from a Unity background. I think Unity is a great piece of software, and it powers a lot of games I like, but it also has its fair share of issues, which I wanted to explore by contrast with a completely different technology. I wanted a more objective viewpoint, and I felt the best way to get to that was actually to start with a subjective experience of learning the tool. (I have used it *very* briefly in the past, and previous versions, like UDK a bit. So not coming it to completely unaware).
Since starting, I've actually tried to expose myself to as many pipelines as possible. Like, yeah, I wanted to start with writing code, so I wrote a recursive data structure using actors and components so I could get used to how Unreal deals with the object management of those things. That led me into some really interesting places, and a lot of deeper knowledge of the systems at work. The level of granularity of control I found particularly interesting: without going into a boring technical discussion, I found it to be a pretty elegant thing, considering the immense complexities of UE in general.
But, while programming is awesome, I wanted to wade into stuff I was *entirely* unprepared to tackle -- because who doesn't do that? I nabbed Blender, and got to work making some simple assets and animations, so I could get a feel for what that is like in the artists world. Now, I'm not a great artist or anything, but I know my way around well enough, and following technical documentation is one of my strong suits. So I was able to learn enough about rigging and animating in a day to do this. I ran into a lot of interesting problems along the way, but it was a really illuminating process to do all of that.
I also spent considerable amounts of time using photoshop and the material editor in Unreal to build some really awesome materials. It's surreal to me how easy it is to do things in Unreal that are at least a little complicated in Unity (if I wanted to do a lot of these effects in Unity, I'd be sitting there writing pixel and vertex shaders, but here I can just plop a few nodes in and go to work!).
I have yet to spend any *significant* amount of time with the editor doing things, say, a level designer might. Part of the reason is, I'm not building a "project" with UE. Yet. Since starting I've read a lot of the introductory materials, following along as I built a starter FPS project, and learned the flow of code and basic operations there, all the way to customizing a lot of functionality, adding cool things like aiming down sights, and other non-sense. Unreal is definitely not the kind of thing of thing where you just walk in and start experimenting with efficiency, so I've found the doc site and other materials useful, but a Google search goes a long way with some of the outdated information out there.
Overall, I am having a blast. It's been a long time since I've worked on anything game-related, and learning new technologies is a ton of fun for me. It's got me writing C++ again, which is a joy that I don't often get around to. Intellisense and UE don't play nice, it would seem, but ignoring those issues things are easy enough. I absolutely love writing classes, extending them with a blueprint, and adding in custom functionality. The "flow" of UE is really cool, but it is perhaps one of the harder aspects of learning it.
I'd love to show things I'm putting together, but it's all just a bunch of disparate elements as I'm coming to grips with things. I'm hoping to have another week and a half of time with it before I give it a rest as I settle down and digest the output of my tour. I still have so many things to play with, like matinee for example. And while I've had a lot of time with Blueprint through material editing and the like, I'd love more still.
Would love to hear thoughts from people who have learned UE4 about their experience, whether they came to it from other technology, what they love/hate most about it, etc. Seeing as how I haven't read this thread before, I am sure a lot of that stuff is there and I'll be scanning through it as I find time, but did want to say Hi and talk about what I'm even doing here.
Thought I'd pop in this thread and mention that I started learning UE4 about a week and a half ago. It's been quite the lightning tour. I started off with the intention of just doing some programming in UE4, since that kind of thing is what I'm best at, but I found pretty quickly that UE4 is kind of too cool for *just* writing code.
Like a lot of people, I actually came to UE4 from a Unity background. I think Unity is a great piece of software, and it powers a lot of games I like, but it also has its fair share of issues, which I wanted to explore by contrast with a completely different technology. I wanted a more objective viewpoint, and I felt the best way to get to that was actually to start with a subjective experience of learning the tool. (I have used it *very* briefly in the past, and previous versions, like UDK a bit. So not coming it to completely unaware).
Since starting, I've actually tried to expose myself to as many pipelines as possible. Like, yeah, I wanted to start with writing code, so I wrote a recursive data structure using actors and components so I could get used to how Unreal deals with the object management of those things. That led me into some really interesting places, and a lot of deeper knowledge of the systems at work. The level of granularity of control I found particularly interesting: without going into a boring technical discussion, I found it to be a pretty elegant thing, considering the immense complexities of UE in general.
But, while programming is awesome, I wanted to wade into stuff I was *entirely* unprepared to tackle -- because who doesn't do that? I nabbed Blender, and got to work making some simple assets and animations, so I could get a feel for what that is like in the artists world. Now, I'm not a great artist or anything, but I know my way around well enough, and following technical documentation is one of my strong suits. So I was able to learn enough about rigging and animating in a day to do this. I ran into a lot of interesting problems along the way, but it was a really illuminating process to do all of that.
I also spent considerable amounts of time using photoshop and the material editor in Unreal to build some really awesome materials. It's surreal to me how easy it is to do things in Unreal that are at least a little complicated in Unity (if I wanted to do a lot of these effects in Unity, I'd be sitting there writing pixel and vertex shaders, but here I can just plop a few nodes in and go to work!).
I have yet to spend any *significant* amount of time with the editor doing things, say, a level designer might. Part of the reason is, I'm not building a "project" with UE. Yet. Since starting I've read a lot of the introductory materials, following along as I built a starter FPS project, and learned the flow of code and basic operations there, all the way to customizing a lot of functionality, adding cool things like aiming down sights, and other non-sense. Unreal is definitely not the kind of thing of thing where you just walk in and start experimenting with efficiency, so I've found the doc site and other materials useful, but a Google search goes a long way with some of the outdated information out there.
Overall, I am having a blast. It's been a long time since I've worked on anything game-related, and learning new technologies is a ton of fun for me. It's got me writing C++ again, which is a joy that I don't often get around to. Intellisense and UE don't play nice, it would seem, but ignoring those issues things are easy enough. I absolutely love writing classes, extending them with a blueprint, and adding in custom functionality. The "flow" of UE is really cool, but it is perhaps one of the harder aspects of learning it.
I'd love to show things I'm putting together, but it's all just a bunch of disparate elements as I'm coming to grips with things. I'm hoping to have another week and a half of time with it before I give it a rest as I settle down and digest the output of my tour. I still have so many things to play with, like matinee for example. And while I've had a lot of time with Blueprint through material editing and the like, I'd love more still.
Would love to hear thoughts from people who have learned UE4 about their experience, whether they came to it from other technology, what they love/hate most about it, etc. Seeing as how I haven't read this thread before, I am sure a lot of that stuff is there and I'll be scanning through it as I find time, but did want to say Hi and talk about what I'm even doing here.
I wanted to say I read your post and it makes me want to get back into UE4. I have ideas that would use UE4, and I'd probably be following a similar route if I get time and motivation. Kudos.
Thought I'd add a small gif that shows some of the stuff I've picked up in UE4 since I started.
https://media.giphy.com/media/l3c5RTNXvQbMXEnyU/giphy.gif
and
https://media.giphy.com/media/xTcf1bAsoy9wXSY9C8/giphy.gif (later version)
Anyone who has used UE4 can tell this is nearly nothing Basically, I have spent a *lot* of time learning "common" game development tasks that are dissociated with what I am comfortable with.
So, in this scene, I've created some textures and normal maps in Photoshop for the walls, ceiling and floor. The shotgun I "modeled" in Blender (I can do better than this from a modeling perspective, but not enough time to do so today) -- learned how to unwrap the uvs, and texture it in PS. Also added an "idle" animation that you see near the end of the gif using a bone and keyframes in Blender. The animation is blueprint-controlled, while the character itself is a C++ class derived from the Character class; it can actually do a few cool things not shown in this video.
I've spent a lot of time learning the various systems in UE4. I've written code, used blueprints, the material editor, used the import tools for models/anims/skeletons. I have yet to do *anything* with sequencer, or with the particle editor, which I'm especially looking forward to messing with.
https://media.giphy.com/media/l3c5RTNXvQbMXEnyU/giphy.gif
and
https://media.giphy.com/media/xTcf1bAsoy9wXSY9C8/giphy.gif (later version)
Anyone who has used UE4 can tell this is nearly nothing
Basically, I have spent a *lot* of time learning "common" game development tasks that are dissociated with what I am comfortable with. So, in this scene, I've created some textures and normal maps in Photoshop for the walls, ceiling and floor. The shotgun I "modeled" in Blender (I can do better than this from a modeling perspective, but not enough time to do so today) -- learned how to unwrap the uvs, and texture it in PS. Also added an "idle" animation that you see near the end of the gif using a bone and keyframes in Blender. The animation is blueprint-controlled, while the character itself is a C++ class derived from the Character class; it can actually do a few cool things not shown in this video.
I've spent a lot of time learning the various systems in UE4. I've written code, used blueprints, the material editor, used the import tools for models/anims/skeletons. I have yet to do *anything* with sequencer, or with the particle editor, which I'm especially looking forward to messing with.
Good post!
I've been using UE4 since around the engine's release. Prior to it I had mostly done GameMaker or custom 2D engine stuff, but at that time I was actually in the early stages of a UDK project. The leap from UDK to UE4 was massive, largely thanks to Blueprint, better documentation, and the starting templates. After toying around with the engine for a couple months or so I got to try the Rift DK2, and I was immediately on board with VR and started wanting to develop something bigger.
Fast forward to today and I've spent a lot of time using the engine to build Horizon Vanguard, to the point where I'm ready to release a demo (with a new trailer because that linked footage is cruuusty) within the month. Every once in a while I'll hit some oddball bugs due to the rapid release schedule, and those can be really frustrating, but for the most part the engine has been really exciting to work with. I can relate with the artistic discovery you're talking about: I've definitely learned a lot about making meshes, animations, materials, and particle effects along the way, and there are few things more satisfying than, say, modelling an enemy, getting its behavior hooked up, adding some nice effects, and experiencing it end-to-end in-game.
