Category: Unreal Engine

In this term1’s final homework, I would like to create an “fairy” adventure land. But I realise that my personal skill can not support me to complete the totally huge project, so I need to adjust the size and the making level in UE5, especially for the freshman in the fundamentals.

Original Storyline:

A thin mist filled the air. The ground was wet and shiny. Silver fireflies flew over it. They left golden spots that looked like little stars.
Suddenly, the bushes nearby moved. A hand pushed through the leaves. It opened the bushes, and a small sprite appeared. She wore soft pink and blue clothes. Her silver hair was in two pigtails. Her big eyes looked around. Then she stepped out.
She walked on the wet brick path. It reflected the light. There were small puddles and some weeds. Little flowers swayed as she passed.
With every step, the fog grew thicker. She heard strange sounds—like water gurgling and the wind whispering. She felt scared and walked faster, holding her map tightly.
Everything turned dark. Black eyes seemed to move around her. Shadows flew past—but they were only birds.
Then, under a lamp, a scary shadow appeared. She was surprised to see it was just a small rabbit.
But the moonlight lit her way… so she began to run.
Again and again, she pushed through tall grass and trees.
Then the fairy’s view opened up. It was a beautiful moonlit night. Everything sparkled.

STORY BOARD

Character

In this week’s class, I talked to Sarra about my project process, actually, I still feeling confused about my story, including the character. Though the 1-1 feedback talk, I am so appreciat with Sarra, she helps me clarify my storyboard. She said I need to lock on my story, I truly realise my story always changes, and there are so many characters who need to do the animation, it will be quite heavy for the left one month.

In this class, we learned how to use the parent ball set to change the materials inside create the child ball, and more.

At the beginning, I only wanted to make a pure background in UE for homework, but when I talked to sarra, she told me that maybe this is not enough for a simple project, because there should be a character inside the story, so that the story will be more vivid. She asked me to add an actor even if he is in first view mode in the unreal.

Here is my concept about the final homework in this terms. These are inspirational pictures in my imagination.

this is the end of the story in the character view. This is like a fairy land

In this week, we leaned how to change the materials and setting a materials.

In the material map. I leaning about plus 123 and left click with different functions. If you want to change the materials that you need to adjust something, let the PBR ( Physically based rendering) looks better.

Tips of the words:

Base color: adjust the material’s color light spectrum and change parameter. like RGB

Roughness: change the furface of material, soft or rough, even use in road looks like wet.

Metallic: Sometimes it can be used to create building effects, or for objects with metal-like materials, you can increase the relevant parameters.

Sometimes you create the bluemap in materials, you can just drag the texture into bluemap, which will autocreate directly texture sample. and the G matches the Roughness, B matches the Metallic, R corresponds to Ambient Occlusion.

if you don’t want to connect this part, just plus “Alt and click it ” that bluemap will separate.

I just remenber plus 1 and left click will come out a texture sample, and 2,3 will match the difference function of tools.

In this time, we learning how to create a sequencer :First, right click and choose “Level sequence”, and then Find the “skeletal mesh” character, add it inside the perspective world, like this(p3). If you want the character has animation in this sequencer, then just dragging it into the sequencer inside, right click the “+”, if the character has own anmation that you can just use it. and play it.

some time when Serra teaches us, like how to use this tool, it was looks like easy, but when we do the same process by ourselves, that will totally difference, I always came out some problems, like the aniamtion is missing or the outline character option shows a red alert. So I ask Chichi for help, she told me I should first find the character have bone rig, then it can just used in animation. it means that some meshes just no rigs, so they lack skeletal mesh.

The second things is quite hard to learning and understanding for me which is rigs. I also use the character in class.

In the outline, we can see lots of bones connected and child links.

every ball has it own name, and the ranks is difference,taking care of the rank and the ball number. some time this part(like hand) can’t move, that you can try to add a new ball in this part and make sure the “child” part link the right “Father”.

All in all, the rigs part is quite hard to understand and hard to use. But I will keep going and learning it.

This week, we learned many new things. Serra explained how to create a new level in UE5 and where to find all the tools. The class moved quite fast, and sometimes I struggled to follow because of the language and unfamiliar terms， but I still gained a lot.

I also learned how filmmaking in UE5 is both similar to and different from traditional filmmaking. That was really eye-opening for me, since I love game cinematics, music videos, and promotional videos—all of which can be made in UE5.

Basically, I now understand what the tools are and how to use them，like building my own scenes using assets from Fab.

We also learned how to link objects and make them follow a path using Blueprint, similar to the pendulum animation we did in Maya this week. But the Animation Blueprint felt more complex. I was a little intimidated at first, since I’ve never used Blueprint for animation before, but Serra was very patient， teaching us step-by-step and answering every question we had. I’m really thankful to her.

About the “pendulum” Blueprint，for my understanding, you select one actor as the master, make the others its children, and then add physics calculations to create swinging between the different child objects. When you think of it that way, it doesn’t seem so complicated after all.

in the first week, I get quite lots of imformation form sarra about UE’s function and detail, including fab and liburary…

introduction about the window and how to work in UE5.

In this class, Serra showed us animation works and blogs from Year 2 students. Then, in UE5, she taught us how to find free assets we need in the Fab library, create levels, understand the purpose of different sections, and learn what each tool does. Also how to create the file and name it, and every part of UE5 important function.

She also mentioned that with so many tools and details, we can simply use the search bar with keywords to find what we need quickly, which helps improve workflow efficiency.

I also remember she talked about “Nanite.” I was first drawn to how the word sounds, but its function is to handle highly complex geometry by using virtualized geometry representation, though honestly, it sounded quite technical and I didn’t fully grasp how to use it in practice.