Building Alliances - Unreal Engine (28/11/24)

Basics

Moving around unreal is quite similar to Maya.

You can hold down left or right click and use WASD keys to navigate the scene.

The green play button allows you to go into your scene and interact with it like a player. To exit this press ESC.

Placing Objects

To place objects do

• Window > Place Actors > Geometry > Click and drag the box

Adding the box to the scene is once again, similar to maya. On the right hand side are the transform options. You don't scale the object using the scale in geometry, instead use the scale in brush settings.

I added a box in unreal and scaled it using the brush settings

Here are some shortcuts

• Shift 7 = editor
• Shift 1 = selection

Textures

To add textures it's

• Geometry > Select all adjacent (this makes sure the entire object is selected)
• Surface Materials > Select a material from the drop down menu

Using what I've learnt about placing objects and textures, I modelled a simple gazebo and added various wood textures.

Lighting

To add a light it's

• Place Actors > Lighting > Point Light Reference

To add a trigger box it's

Place Actors > Basic > Trigger Box

On the right, is a menu that allows you to adjust the brightness and colours of the light.

Below I added a light to my gazebo and changed the colour to blue.

Blueprints

We can use blueprints to connect a light to a trigger box which will allow me to be able to make the light switch on when a character walks in a certain area. To do this do

• Open level blueprint , most likely to use blueprint class
• In level blueprint, hold left/ right click + wasd to move around 
• Right click > create reference to point light
• Hold left click to select, right click, comments to add comments e.g. on and off

Below is a screenshots of the working blueprints of my light and trigger box

I also using the same level blueprint, added another trigger box which turned the light off when my character wasn't in the gazebo.

Here is a screenshot of how it looked in unreal

Mass

To apply physics/ kick an object do:

• Physics - Simulate Physics - Mass

Importing from Maya

Make sure that the centre of the object you're creating is in the centre of the world. When it comes to exporting, export it using fbx.

In Maya, to scale an object correctly for Unreal, you'll need to utilise a grid with the correct measurements. Don't attempt to scale projects in unreal, always do it in Maya. To do this do

• Display
• Set length to 1000
• Set grid lines to 100
• set subdivison to 1

Then to import the model into unreal, do

• Content Drawer
• Click and drag the exported fbx file
• Make sure collision is on unless you want to be able to collide with your object