Week 1

Define what an Actor is and provide an example of
a commonly used Actor Type:
An actor is essentially any object that can be placed on the level. Objects like the camera or the player start are considered actors.

Define what components are and provide two
examples of components:
Components are the objects that are required for an Object Blueprint to function, some examples of these are the static mesh component and the actor component.

Week 2

Here we learnt the basics of procedural and image-based texturing in Unreal Engine. We made use of the Metallic, Ambient Occlusion, Diffuse, Bump, Roughness, and Specular channels.

Being able to manipulate these parameters properly is essential at the time of producing high-quality textures that also look realistic. If you get one of the parameters wrong it could distract the viewer from the scene and make the render look unrealistic.

Week 3

This is where we can scatter different objects across another actor, in this case we were attempting to populate a scene so we gathered foliage assets. Changing the probability for certain objects to appear in the scene will allow us to control how the scene will look once we scatter the assets across the scene.

Here we use the image textures to create a grass material for the ground of the environment, we mix the grass material with a rock material through a multiply node. This is then combined with a coordinate node which makes the height of the environment influence the material that will be shown on the floor.

This is useful to have one material show different textures in an organic way which can positively affect render times. Additionally, the node group above the main image textures is designed to break up the textures and add variation to the textures. This allows the repeating textures to repeat seamlessly increasing the realism of the textures.

Changing the Collision presets to block all from no Collision ensures that the player will interact with the instances that are placed throughout the environment instead of being able to walk through them.

Here we used the basic modelling tools from Unreal Engine to build a hut. This can be useful to create small quick things that may not have much importance and it is useful to learn how to use it to save time and not need to switch software every time you need to model something.

Week 4

This time we started learning about lights and how different lights work and how to use them in a scene. We mainly used point lights, cone lights, and  area lights since those are the 3 most common lights that are used in a scene. In the images above you can see how they display the light differently and some of the settings they have.

In the image above you can see me using the modelling tools to create a simple light that is then implemented into the scene in the image below. This shows a good use case where it would be annoying to move software to model the light as this might only be viewed from afar. I created a very basic model but you could use booleans in a more complex way to add more detail to the lamp.

I then added a couple of planes with different materials that changed in roughness, colour, and specular. By putting them together and under the light you are able to see very clearly the difference between one material’s interaction with light and another.

Week 5Here we learnt how to create string functions with blueprints that would later be displayed on the screen of the player as they play. This can be changed so that the message is sent every frame, sent once, or sent every time the player hits a trigger box.

In this section of blueprints, we learnt how to create a light that would change colour whenever the player interacts with a trigger box. When the player wasn’t interacting with the light it would go black, essentially turning off.

Following this we learnt how to create a camera sequence and adding the camera to the timeline where it can be animated and manipulated by the transform settings, although you can also add other parameters that you may wish to change such as the focal point.

We also learnt about the movie render queue plugin, this plugin allows us to change the settings and properly render the sequence and save it into our files so that we can then do the compositing or post-processing to the video to make it look the best we can.

The blueprints above make it so that the player can trigger the cut scene and make the object move. In the video, I show that the trigger box will only be triggered by the player and not by any object that passes through the trigger box.

Week 6

This week we learnt how to create a random rotator. The Blueprints shown in the images above tell the cubes to rotate randomly once the player hits a trigger box, every time the player hits the trigger box this will make the cubes change rotations randomly once again.

Week 7 Here you can see a water material that we designed with blueprints that are also animated and create the effect of moving waves on the surface of the water. Here I used the blueprints to create a toon shader, I have created toon shaders in software like Blender before and I was surprised at how much simpler this was although it did have a bit less control I bet you can add certain nodes to be able to change certain parameters easier.

Week 8

Here you can see the process of creating a particle system and making it interact with the player and only activate when the player enters the trigger box and deactivate once the player steps out.

Week 9

Here we were taught how to create a health system using the UI of Unreal Engine. This contained a damage system and a regeneration system. We were told to try and figure out how to make the player not be able to gain more than 100 health, that the health packs destroy once they are used and to add emitters for visual representation of what was happening.

Week 10

This week we learnt how to get animations from Mixamo as well as a 3D Character and add animations to the character. We then created an Animation graph that would make the character walk, run, jump, and fall depending on the speed of the character and whether it was falling or moving vertically up. This was very different to anything we had done and quite complicated but I found it quite useful and interesting to have learned how this system works.

For the interior render, I wanted to create a spooky medieval render. I ended up finding a really good asset pack that had really good skeletal bones so I used those to tell a story of some slaves that had been left inside the dungeon and eventually passed away. One of them is in a cage with a sword through its chest which could have been done as punishment and a demonstration to the other slaves.

For this scene, I wanted to create a sense of mystery about what is behind that door. I wanted to create the idea that this place used to belong to someone but has now been forgotten to exist. I added some clues that hint at the fact that people lived inside whatever was past the door. The forest surrounds the small hole in the ground and protects the old room. It gives a fantasy and mystical look, and like the interior render, I would say it is based in the medieval ages yet everything in the area nearby has been abandoned so it could be a medieval room that has now been found after decades.