Blog Morning! July 30th 2024!
Its morning and time for some work, so what better way to start it than with a jolly ol BLOG MORNING!
Blog Morning! Its Landscape Lumps 2 and 3 on Tuesday the 23rd of May 2024!
Let's start with Part 2 to get you into a landscaping material mood! Then RIGHT on to part 3! Making an auto landscape material is considered by some to be a holy grail of open world game development in Unreal Engine 5. It certainly can look difficult and overwhelming, but that is why Landscape Lumps is here to break it into easy to digest bits! Give it a go and have fun! https://player.vimeo.com/video/988260766?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479 https://player.vimeo.com/video/988787530?badge=0&autopause=0&player_id=0&app_id=58479 What a Blog Morning! If you enjoyed the previous Landscape Lumps session then you will love this. (Also I have BMO helping me. Thanks BMO) - We now include four different texture sets for grass, sand, cliffs and rock. Set up an automatic way of managing the cliffs based on steepness and then build a method to allow us to paint different textures directly on to our landscape! Landscape lumps a-plenty for us all! I hope that you enjoy it as I know I personally found it a massive pain in the arse trying to learn it years ago when no one understood it particularly well. Get making things! Cris
Blog Morning! Its Unreal Engine 5 Landscape Lumps Part 1 on Saturday the 20th of July 2024! In 4K!
Hello lovely people! We have gone full 4K - JUST for you! Today I am starting a new series of Blog Morning! sessions; These ones will be focusing on showing how you can use Landscapes and Landscape Materials inside of your project. This first part is a simple but fun introduction to the landscape tools, where we will be looking at making a landscape using a pre-existing heightmap file and then adjusting it a little bit so that its not far far underground and so that we can see it! Following that we apply a very basic pre-existing grass material just so we can see things better and then… THEN…. it is time to drive dune buggies around on a Saturday morning! Have a Blog Morning! With me Cris and with Unreal Engine 5! Discord link to get the heightmap : https://discord.gg/QKRB97U434(No obligation to talk to use or like us in any way. No personal details needed. No nothing.) For shy bairns that cry and don't like people : https://imgur.com/a/X4px8sU
Blog Morning! Friday the 19th July – User Interface in 5 minutes in Unreal Engine 5!
Yes it really is that easy! I hope you are having a Blog Morning too! Cris
Blog Morning – 16th of July 2024 – Let’s talk lighting optimisation tips!
A question from my good chum Stefan led me to make this video. He asked whether it is possible to see lighting represented by overbright white on a plain grey scene and the answer is YES. We can do that, plus we can do a couple of other things too in order to track the HDR in our scene, check out EV values and more besides! Part of the fun of digging into Unreal Engine is the pleasure of finding that it has so many tools that were requested by the professional community just a couple of clicks away! So have a Blog Morning, grab a coffee and here is a 5 minute explain!
Blog Morning! Monday the 15th of July 2024!
And I have been working on windchimes! Mostly so that I can showcase the excellent work of Phillip Godfrey and his recordings which I am delighted to be using. Here are two of my video blogs - one from yesterday that I did not get a chance to post up until now and once for today! Double bonus!
Blog Morning! Its Saturday the 13th of July.
What is Cris up to today? Well - today I worked out that after two years I had my Samson G Track Pro microphone upside down. Probably an important thing as its a cartoid mic and directional and was basically pointed at my keyboard. The first video today is me before I realised. Video two is me trying it the other way. Its still a little muted for my liking as I like nice sharp sounds because Im a deaf bugger, however its getting there. hopefully Reddit won't be quite so confused by how quiet things are next time! So - here I was talking about importing 6 gigs of audio assets from Mr Phillip Goddard's excellent soundscape collection. It really is a gem for a project like this and I look forward to demonstrating it shortly. And this is the realisation and the hope its a little clearer... Fingers crossed. I compared the two - the second is a lot clearer and less bassy - with the added bonus that the cartiod isn't aimed directly at my damned keyboard (extra clicky!)
A deer by the lake at the keepers station
My Personal Project – The Wickie. Have some images.
I thought I might like to post up a few images from my ongoing project The Wickie - an experience and a thriller set in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Here are some of those images for you to look over. Please bear in mind that these are finished representations of the interactive world, however the open world still needs some we A deer by the lake at the keepers station the lake at the keepers station on the rock the castle on the broch the keepers station and Pandora's Rock lighthouse the steam powered gondola of Troy Malin Looking over the walls at the top of the 'Rock down to the islands that approach from the east.
The Reddit Post for this set.
I posted about this set to reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/unrealengine/comments/1dywh8i/learning_game_development_in_ue54_for_teachers/ :: Hi all. I don't get a chance to work on video training packs as much as I used to however I wanted to drop this here for anyone who is interested in starting out on learning UE5 or who might want to show someone else how to use it in a learning environment. This is based on a recent teaching gig I did for Epic down in the Midlands in the UK where a lot of teachers are now wanting to find a way to get their students into using Unreal Engine 5. I have been delighted to see so many young people coming into the industry and realising they can make something after a few simple lessons. I do not claim that this set is the definitive article in learning, however, if you have never used Unreal Engine 5 (or 4) and you want to make a game in 3d using some of the cool tools that Unreal Engine 5 has, then this is a place to start that will give you a finished project that you can expand upon while learning and enjoying yourself. I have placed the entire set on my Vimeo channel for free download and so forth. No adverts. I hope that it is of help to anyone who might want to use it. For reference I am Cris Robson, I am an Epic Games Instructor Partner and I also work for Epic Games as a training consultant in the UK and Europe. You can access all of the assets via my discord, that includes the Idol.FBX and associated textures as well as the project files and the final executable of the very simple game.
Who Am I?
I ask myself that question an awful lot. I have been educating people in using game development and 3d tools now for over 25 years. I worked on my first video game in 1984, when I was working with UDG graphics and even on board sound was a futuristic concept. As an neurodiverse adult I fully understand the need for lessons and training to be easy to understand and digest and I have made it my mission to produce training that is accessible to as many people as possible. I develop video games as a hobby and at the moment I am working on a video game entitled The Wickie. It will be excellent when it is released, however it is a massive project so it has taken me four years of work and counting. While I am making it, I am working hard on continuing to learn new things and passing on that training. Several years ago I was approached by Epic Games to be a tester for what would eventually be Unreal Engine 4. I already loved UE3 and UDK and had greatly enjoyed the huge enthusiasm of trainers such as the late great Jason Busby and former Epic Games trainer Zach Parrish. I jumped at the idea and I have never looked back. It opens a world of creativity and imagination like you can not believe until you try it! So does that answer you? Probably not. Im a father, a husband, an educator, an advocate for autism awareness, a trainer, a learner, a friend and a mentor. If that helps you feel some bonds of trust with me then wonderful. If not then I assure you, give the lessons a try. There is no underhand plotting or scheming here. The Core UE5 GameDev set is and will always be free. Cris R p.s. The image is me…