Unreal Engine 4 Game Development Essentials

✍ Scribed by Satheesh PV

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 266
• Edition: Illustrated
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Key Features

• Get to grips with the user interface of Unreal Engine 4 and find out more about its various robust features
• Create dream video games with the help of the different tools Unreal Engine 4 offers
• Create video-games and fully utilize the power of Unreal Engine 4 to bring games to life through this step-by-step guide

Book Description

Unreal Engine 4 is a complete suite of game development tools that gives you power to develop your game and seamlessly deploy it to iOS and Android devices. It can be used for the development of simple 2D games or even stunning high-end visuals. Unreal Engine features a high degree of portability and is a tool used by many game developers today.

This book will introduce you to the most popular game development tool called Unreal Engine 4 with hands-on instructions for building stunning video games. You will begin by creating a new project or prototype by learning the essentials of Unreal Engine by getting familiar with the UI and Content Browser. Next, we'll import a sample asset from Autodesk 3ds max and learn more about Material Editor. After that we will learn more about Post Process. From there we will continue to learn more about Blueprints, Lights, UMG, C++ and more.

What you will learn

• Download both the binary and source version of Unreal Engine 4 and get familiar with the UI
• Get to know more about the Material Editor and how it works
• Add a post process to the scene and alter it to get a unique look for your scene
• Acquaint yourself with the unique and exclusive feature of Unreal Engine 4―Blueprints
• Find out more about Static and Dynamic lighting and the difference between various lights
• Use Matinee to create cut scenes
• Create a health bar for the player with the use of Unreal Motion Graphics (UMG)
• Get familiar with Cascade Particle Editor

About the Author

Satheesh PV is a game programmer living in Mumbai, India. He was selected by Epic Games as one of the closed beta testers for Unreal Engine 4 before its public release. He started his career as a game developer in 2012 by making a first person multiplayer game with his brother and close friend using Unreal Development Kit. He also created Unreal X-Editor, which was an IDE developed for UnrealScript, the native scripting language of Unreal Engine 3. He is also a moderator at Unreal Engine forums as well as a spotlight member and engine contributor.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Unreal Engine 4
2. Importing Assets
3. Materials
4. Post Process
5. Lights
6. Blueprints
7. Matinee
8. Unreal Motion Graphics
9. Particles
10. Introduction to Unreal C++
11. Packaging Project

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Copyright
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgements
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: Introduction to Unreal
Engine 4
Unreal Engine 4 download
Downloading the launcher version
Downloading the GitHub version
Forking Unreal Engine repository
Compiling Unreal Engine
Getting familiar with Unreal Engine
The viewport toolbar
Modes
Content Browser
Content Browser view options
World outliner
Details panel
Navigating the Viewport
BSP
Creating BSP
Default starting level, splash screen, and game icon
Summary
Chapter 2: Importing Assets
Creating asset in a DCC application
Creating collision meshes
Custom collision shapes
Unreal Engine 4 collision generator
Simple shapes
K-DOP shapes
Auto convex collision
Materials
LOD
Exporting and importing
Exporting
Importing
Context menu
Drag and drop
Content Browser import
Automatic import
Configuring automatic import
Result
Summary
Chapter 3: Materials
Material user interface
Toolbar
Live preview
Live nodes
Live update
Preview panel
Details panel
Graph panel
Palette panel
Common material expressions
Constant
Constant2Vector
Constant3Vector
Texture coordinate (TexCoord)
Multiply
Add
Divide
Subtract
Texture sample (Texture2D)
Component mask
Linear interpolate (lerp)
Power
PixelDepth
Desaturation
Time
Fresnel
Material types
Material instances
Material Instance Constant
Material Instance Constant example
Material functions
Material function example
Summary
Chapter 4: Post Process
Adding Post Process
LUT
Post Process Materials
Creating a Post Process Material
Summary
Chapter 5: Lights
Lighting basics
Placing lights
Various lights
Common light settings
Light mobility
Lightmass Global Illumination
Preparing your assets for precomputed lighting
Building a scene with Lightmass
Tweaking Lightmass settings
Summary
Chapter 6: Blueprints
Different Blueprint types
Getting familiar with the Blueprint user interface
Components tab
What are components?
Adding a component
Transforming the component
Adding events for components
My Blueprints tab
Creation buttons
Searching in my Blueprint
Categorizing in My Blueprint
Toolbar
Graph editor
Details panel
Blueprint graph types
Function graph
Creating functions
Graph settings
Editing functions
Macro graph
Interface graph
Blueprint node references
Node colors
Variables
Math expression
Creating our first Blueprint class
Creating a new Blueprint
Spinning static mesh
Destroying our Blueprint Actor after some seconds
Spawning our Blueprint class in Level Blueprint
Summary
Chapter 7: Matinee
Creating a new Matinee
Matinee window
Manipulating an object
Cutscene camera
Director group
Summary
Chapter 8: Unreal Motion Graphics
Setting up a project
Creating the HUD Widget
Creating the health bar
Assigning our HUD to Character
Creating floating health bars
Summary
Chapter 9: Particles
Cascade particle editor
Toolbar
Viewport
Navigation
Details
Emitter
Emitter types
Curve editor
Creating a simple particle system
Creating a simple material
Adding gravity
Applying the color over life module
Adding collision module
Playing particle in Blueprints
Summary
Chapter 10: Introduction to Unreal C++
Setting up Visual Studio 2015
Workflow improvements
Creating a C++ project
The character class
Adding the health system
C++ to Blueprint
Summary
Chapter 11: Packaging Project
Recap
Packaging the project
Quick packaging
Packaging the release version
Summary
References
Index