Unreal Engine 4 Game Development Essentials

Unreal Engine 4 Game Development Essentials

by Satheesh PV
Released February 2016
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781784391966

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Book description

Master the basics of Unreal Engine 4 to build stunning video games

About This Book

  • 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

Who This Book Is For

If you have a basic understanding of working on a 3D environment and you are interested in video game development, then this book is for you. A solid knowledge of C++ will come in handy.

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

In Detail

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.

Style and approach

This step-by-step guide will help you gain practical knowledge about Unreal Engine through detailed descriptions of all the tools offered by Unreal Engine.

Table of contents

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

Product information

  • Title: Unreal Engine 4 Game Development Essentials
  • Author(s): Satheesh PV
  • Release date: February 2016
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781784391966