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Unreal Engine 5 Beginner Tutorial - UE5 Starter Course!

Unreal Sensei・275 minutes read

The text provides a tutorial for beginners in Unreal Engine Five, covering topics such as installation, creating a world, navigation, lighting systems, materials, importing models, and programming using blueprints. It also includes instructions on customizing windows, camera movement, selecting and moving objects, creating materials, lighting scenes, and adjusting settings for optimal performance and visual quality in projects.

Insights

  • Tutorial provides a comprehensive guide from Unreal Engine Five installation to world creation, catering to beginners.
  • The video tutorial is structured in chapters for easy navigation and learning progression.
  • Users learn to install Unreal Engine Five, create projects, navigate 3D worlds, and manipulate objects.
  • Exploration of new lighting system, Lumen, and creation of materials with imported 3D models are key components.
  • Customization of windows and UI layout in Unreal Engine enhances user experience and workflow efficiency.
  • Creation of materials involves utilizing textures, normal maps, and Perlin noise for realistic effects.
  • Integration of Mega Scans assets, foliage, and wind effects enhance visual quality and realism in projects.
  • Blueprint programming simplifies game development through visual scripting and character behavior control.
  • Optimizing lighting with Lumin, skylights, directional lights, and post-process volumes enhances scene realism and visual appeal.

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Recent questions

  • How can I adjust lighting in Unreal Engine 5?

    To adjust lighting in Unreal Engine 5, you can utilize different types of lights such as point, spotlight, rectangle, directional, and skylight. These lights can be customized with properties like color, temperature, source radius, and indirect light intensity. Skylights are particularly useful for capturing a 360-degree view to project the sky onto the scene, enhancing lighting effects. By adjusting settings like atmosphere and sunlight in directional lights, you can impact the appearance of the sky in the scene. Additionally, you can light an outdoor scene by adding a directional light set to movable, turning on atmosphere sunlight, adding a sky atmosphere, and setting a movable skylight with real-time capture. Lumen, the default setting in Unreal Engine 5, provides real-time global illumination without needing to adjust settings, ensuring consistent lighting. Adjusting the final gather quality in the post-process volume can further control the lighting quality in your projects.

  • How can I create materials in Unreal Engine 5?

    In Unreal Engine 5, creating materials involves setting up textures for base color, roughness, and normal maps. To create a material, navigate to the material folder, right-click to create a new material, and name it. In the material editor, drag and drop textures for base color, roughness, and normal maps into the material tab. Ensure that the texture samples are set to the correct types (color, linear color, normal) for each texture. Connect the textures to the corresponding material outputs (base color, roughness) in the material editor. Adjust the tiling of textures by adding a texture coordinate node and a multiply node in the material editor. Tint the material by multiplying a color onto the base color using a multiply node and a constant three vector for the color. Create a material instance to make real-time adjustments without waiting for compilation. Expose variables like size, color tint, and normal flatness as parameters in the material editor to control them in the material instance.

  • How can I import assets into Unreal Engine 5?

    To import assets into Unreal Engine 5, you can start by importing 3D assets, known as static meshes, into the engine for use in your projects. The process involves importing textures and creating materials for these static meshes to ensure proper application of textures and materials. Linking materials to static meshes is crucial for the assets to appear correctly in your scenes. Different color channels in textures are used to contain various masks like metallic, roughness, and ambient occlusion, which can be combined into one texture for simplified importing. Ensure that all imported textures are correctly set up and saved within the content browser for use in your Unreal Engine projects. Normal maps are essential for adding depth and shadows to materials in Unreal Engine, enhancing the realism of your assets.

  • How can I navigate and move objects in Unreal Engine 5?

    Navigating and moving objects in Unreal Engine 5 involves holding down the right mouse button to look around the scene and using keys like W, A, S, D, E, and Q to move in different directions. Camera speed can be adjusted by changing the speed value or using the scroll wheel while holding down the right mouse button. Pressing the F key focuses on objects in the scene, snapping the view to their location. The camera can pivot around objects by clicking on them, pressing F to focus on them, and using the left mouse button to rotate and the right mouse button to zoom in and out while holding down the Alt key. Different viewport modes like perspective, top view, lit, unlit, and wireframe can be accessed for various viewing options. Shortcuts like pressing the middle mouse button while hovering over a tab can close windows, and pressing control and space can bring up assets in the content browser.

  • How can I create a landscape in Unreal Engine 5?

    To create a landscape in Unreal Engine 5, you can enter landscape mode and utilize default settings or customize based on recommended landscape sizes. Use the sculpt brush to adjust landscape height, with the left mouse button increasing height and shift decreasing it. Adjust brush strength, size, and falloff for sculpting and smoothing the landscape. Different brushes like sculpt, smooth, and flat are ideal for landscape manipulation, with the flat brush suitable for creating flat play areas. Unreal Engine typically uses programs like Gaia or World Machine for landscape creation, but new features are gradually replacing them. To increase the size of the landscape, go to landscape mode or press Shift + O, select the dataU, and add more components to the landscape. In the landscape material, organize the layers by using material attributes instead of blending individual channels. Create two materials within one material and blend between them to simplify the process. Use material attributes to blend different material attributes instead of a single channel.

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Summary

00:00

"Unreal Engine Five Tutorial for Beginners"

  • Tutorial for beginners in Unreal Engine Five
  • Detailed steps from installation to creating a world
  • Video divided into chapters for easy navigation
  • Learn to install Unreal Engine Five and create a project
  • Navigate and move objects in a 3D world
  • Create materials and import 3D models
  • Explore Unreal's new lighting system, Lumen
  • Sculpt landscapes and paint foliage
  • Download free content from Epic Games' library
  • Brief overview of programming a game using blueprints

12:54

Customizing Windows and Navigating in Unreal Engine

  • In Unreal Engine, windows can be customized by adding new ones through the "Windows" tab, such as the "Place Actors" tab, which can be moved and snapped to different locations or tabs.
  • The user interface layout can be adjusted by moving windows like the details panel and place actors tab to desired positions.
  • The functionality of the "Place Actors" window has been integrated into the "Create" tab, allowing for similar actions.
  • Shortcuts like pressing the middle mouse button while hovering over a tab can close windows, and pressing control and space can bring up assets in the content browser.
  • Navigating within Unreal Engine involves holding down the right mouse button to look around the scene and using keys like W, A, S, D, E, and Q to move in different directions.
  • Camera speed can be adjusted by changing the speed value or using the scroll wheel while holding down the right mouse button.
  • Pressing the F key focuses on objects in the scene, snapping the view to their location.
  • The camera can pivot around objects by clicking on them, pressing F to focus on them, and using the left mouse button to rotate and the right mouse button to zoom in and out while holding down the Alt key.
  • Different viewport modes like perspective, top view, lit, unlit, and wireframe can be accessed for various viewing options.
  • The "G" key switches to game view, hiding editor widgets to show the scene as it would appear in gameplay, and the "RSG" key combination brings back the widgets.

25:43

Mastering Object Selection and Manipulation in 3D

  • Hold down the control key to select multiple objects.
  • Select an object that is already selected to add it to the selection list.
  • Hold down control and shift to select and move objects.
  • Use Alt and drag to copy objects.
  • Press E to rotate objects.
  • Press W to access the translation widget.
  • Hold down Alt and drag to copy multiple objects.
  • Use the content drawer to add props like lamps.
  • Use control and space to access the content drawer.
  • Create a post-process volume to control scene effects like exposure and color grading.

39:06

"Unreal Engine Basics: Manual Exposure and Materials"

  • Set exposure to manual at eight
  • Materials can be complex for beginners in Unreal Engine
  • Create a new level and folder named "My Stuff"
  • Save assets in "My Stuff" folder
  • Create a new level using a template like "Time of Day"
  • Adjust exposure and add a post-process volume
  • Create a new material by dragging materials from the content folder
  • Apply materials by dragging them onto objects
  • Create a new material under "My Stuff" folder
  • Adjust material properties like color, roughness, and metallic values

52:09

"Texture Integration and Organization in Unreal Engine"

  • Roughness values are clamped between 0 and 1, rounding to the nearest number in that range.
  • To integrate textures into materials in Unreal Engine, double click on the object, access the details panel, and select the material.
  • Use the content browser to easily access and drag textures into the material graph in Unreal Engine.
  • Use the Perlin noise texture to vary roughness in materials for a more realistic look.
  • Use the lerp node to switch between a texture and a color based on the alpha channel, creating varied textures in materials.
  • Migrate assets between Unreal Engine projects by right-clicking on the assets, selecting migrate, and choosing the destination content folder.
  • Organize the content browser by creating folders for materials, maps, meshes, and textures.
  • Import textures into Unreal Engine by dragging them into the content browser, ensuring they are saved and checking their properties.
  • French pavement textures and normal maps can be imported and utilized in Unreal Engine for realistic material creation.
  • Ensure all imported textures are correctly set up and saved within the content browser for use in Unreal Engine projects.

01:05:37

Creating Materials with Normal Maps in Unreal Engine

  • Normal maps are essential for adding depth and shadows to materials in Unreal Engine.
  • Creating a material involves setting up textures for base color, roughness, and normal maps.
  • To create a material, navigate to the material folder, right-click to create a new material, and name it.
  • In the material editor, drag and drop textures for base color, roughness, and normal maps into the material tab.
  • Ensure that the texture samples are set to the correct types (color, linear color, normal) for each texture.
  • Connect the textures to the corresponding material outputs (base color, roughness) in the material editor.
  • Adjust the tiling of textures by adding a texture coordinate node and a multiply node in the material editor.
  • Tint the material by multiplying a color onto the base color using a multiply node and a constant three vector for the color.
  • Create a material instance to make real-time adjustments without waiting for compilation.
  • Expose variables like size, color tint, and normal flatness as parameters in the material editor to control them in the material instance.

01:19:09

Enhancing Material Realism in Unreal Engine

  • Introduction of a new parameter called normal flatness affecting the normal map in Unreal Engine.
  • Adjusting normal flatness can enhance or diminish the normal map's appearance, affecting material realism.
  • Material instances allow for real-time adjustments by exposing variables within Unreal Engine.
  • Master materials serve as a centralized material controlling various material instances.
  • Creating master materials involves converting textures into parameters for flexibility.
  • Adding metallic input to master materials enhances material variety and customization.
  • Fixing normal map issues caused by using incorrect map types in Unreal Engine.
  • Importing 3D assets, known as static meshes, into Unreal Engine for use in projects.
  • The process of importing textures and creating materials for static meshes in Unreal Engine.
  • Linking materials to static meshes to ensure proper application of textures and materials in projects.

01:32:45

Enhancing Lighting Effects in Unreal Engine 5

  • Different color channels in textures are used to contain various masks like metallic, roughness, and ambient occlusion.
  • Combining masks into one texture is a common practice in Unreal Engine to simplify importing.
  • Masks are utilized in materials to control aspects like metallic and roughness.
  • Lumin in Unreal Engine 5 enables real-time global illumination, enhancing lighting effects.
  • Comparison between traditional global illumination methods and Lumin's real-time capabilities is demonstrated.
  • Lumin settings can be adjusted in the world settings to optimize performance.
  • Different types of lights in Unreal Engine 5 include point, spotlight, rectangle, directional, and skylight.
  • Lights can be customized with properties like color, temperature, source radius, and indirect light intensity.
  • Skylights capture a 360-degree view to project the sky onto the scene, enhancing lighting effects.
  • Adjusting settings like atmosphere and sunlight in directional lights can impact the appearance of the sky in the scene.

01:46:30

Optimizing Lighting in Unreal Engine 5

  • Skylight in Unreal Engine projects the sky's light onto scenes, creating soft shadow lighting akin to an overcast day.
  • To light an outdoor scene in Unreal Engine 5, add a directional light set to movable, turn on atmosphere sunlight, add a sky atmosphere, and set a movable skylight with real-time capture.
  • Lumen, the default setting in Unreal Engine 5, provides real-time global illumination without needing to adjust settings.
  • Turning off Lumen can affect reflections, so switching back to Lumen is recommended for consistent lighting.
  • Adjusting the final gather quality in the post-process volume can control the lighting quality in Unreal Engine 5.
  • Lighting an architectural visualization scene involves using movable lights and Lumen for real-time lighting effects.
  • Converting the scene to stationary lights and baked lighting can improve quality and performance, especially for static scenes.
  • Lightmass importance volumes and lightmass portals help direct light rays in Unreal Engine for better lighting results.
  • Tweaking lightmass settings, such as increasing indirect bounces and skylight bounces, can enhance the quality of baked lighting in Unreal Engine.
  • World settings in Unreal Engine allow for fine-tuning lightmass settings to optimize the lighting quality in architectural visualizations.

01:59:26

Optimizing Lighting Quality in Unreal Engine

  • Decrease the scale of lighting from one to 0.1 to reduce artifacts, compensating by increasing indirect lighting quality from one to 10.
  • Adjust indirect lighting smoothness to 1.3 for optimal results, noting that higher settings will lengthen lighting calculation time.
  • Building lighting levels after adjustments may take a while, so patience is required during this process.
  • To enhance lighting quality further, adjust exposure in the post-process volume to 11.8 and address low resolution lightmaps causing poor quality by increasing light map resolution for specific objects.
  • Increase light map resolution for various objects, such as the floor, wall, and baseboard, to improve shadow quality.
  • Building higher quality shadow maps and bounce light by increasing lighting quality to medium, ensuring a longer build time for improved results.
  • Adjust exposure compensation to 11.5 and increase bloom slightly to enhance the final light build quality.
  • Implement reflection captures to improve object reflections, ensuring a more realistic appearance by capturing reflections within the scene.
  • Create a landscape in Unreal Engine by entering landscape mode and utilizing default settings or customizing based on recommended landscape sizes.
  • Light the outdoor scene by adding a directional light and skylight, adjusting settings for atmosphere and sunlight, and filling black voids with fog, ensuring proper settings for sky atmosphere and fog effects.

02:12:19

"Enhancing Landscape Creation in Unreal Engine"

  • Wait until the compilation reaches 100 before proceeding to the landscape map.
  • To fix fog issues, adjust the fog in scattering color from blue to black and the directional and scattering values from greenish to black.
  • Increase the sun intensity by pressing control and L to transition from nighttime to daytime.
  • Add human references for scale by pressing control and space, then selecting third person and adding the mannequin character.
  • The mannequin is approximately 183 centimeters tall, while the female mannequin is around 175 centimeters tall.
  • Enter landscape mode by pressing shift and 2 or clicking the button.
  • Use the sculpt brush to adjust landscape height, with left mouse button increasing height and shift decreasing it.
  • Adjust brush strength, size, and falloff for sculpting and smoothing the landscape.
  • Use sculpt, smooth, and flat brushes for landscape manipulation, with flat brush ideal for creating flat play areas.
  • Unreal Engine typically uses programs like Gaia or World Machine for landscape creation, but new features are being added to replace them gradually.

02:25:39

Enhancing Landscape and Foliage in Unreal Engine

  • To increase the size of the landscape, go to the landscape mode or press Shift + O, select the dataU, and add more components to the landscape.
  • In the landscape material, organize the layers by using material attributes instead of blending individual channels.
  • Create two materials within one material and blend between them to simplify the process.
  • Use material attributes to blend different material attributes instead of a single channel.
  • Enable Mega Scans in Unreal Engine 5 by pressing Ctrl + Space, signing in to your Epic Games account, and downloading assets directly into your world.
  • Mega Scans assets are stored in the Mega Scans folder and the RMS presets folder in the content browser.
  • Adjust parameters like albedo tint, metallic, specular, roughness, and normal strength in the material instance to customize the asset's appearance.
  • Download materials from Bridge and add them to your project without dragging them into the world.
  • Access high-quality foliage from the Mega Scans library in Bridge, download, and add them to your project for realistic vegetation.
  • Activate wind effects in the foliage material instance to make the foliage sway realistically in the wind.

02:38:43

Master Unreal Engine 5 Game Development Basics

  • Enable grass wind setting by scrolling down and clicking on it in the material instance.
  • Utilize foliage mode to access foliage ready for painting by clicking on the grass icon or using the shortcut Shift + 3.
  • Adjust paint density to control the density of objects being painted, with options ranging from 0.5 to 1 and beyond.
  • Vary the scale of objects by selecting them and adjusting the scale X uniformly or individually from 0.5 to 2.
  • Activate Nanite on static meshes by opening the static mesh, switching Nanite settings from disabled to enabled, and applying changes.
  • Visualize Nanite triangles on static meshes by selecting Nanite visualization and observing the density change as you zoom in and out.
  • Import Nanite meshes from Quixel Bridge by selecting high-quality Nanite assets, downloading them, and adding them to the scene.
  • Program in Unreal Engine 5 using Blueprints, a visual scripting language that simplifies coding with blocks of nodes.
  • Import third-person character content for game development by adding the Third Person Blueprint content pack to the project.
  • Play and exit the game by pressing play to start and escape to exit, allowing for testing and development within the Unreal Engine environment.

02:51:27

Creating a Third Person Character Blueprint Game

  • To use a third person character blueprint as the starting point for a game, click on world settings.
  • World settings encompass the settings for the entire world; access them by selecting world settings under Windows.
  • Within world settings, choose the game mode that corresponds to the third person character blueprint.
  • The third person character is the character that allows movement within the game.
  • Access the blueprint for the third person character by double-clicking on it within the folder.
  • The blueprint contains components, variables, and events that define the character's behavior.
  • The event graph within the blueprint controls actions like walking, camera movement, and jumping.
  • Create custom events within the blueprint, such as triggering actions when a specific key is pressed.
  • Develop obstacles in the game by creating a blueprint for an obstacle actor and adding collision events.
  • Ensure that the collision events are specific to interactions with the third person character to trigger desired actions.

03:05:33

"Creating Death Events and Win Screens"

  • To create a death event for a third person character, connect it to the character and call it "death" to activate previously made nodes.
  • In the BP_obstacle, set up a check for overlap with a third person character to trigger the death function; otherwise, leave it blank.
  • Use the event tick to continuously rotate the obstacle by a set amount, ensuring it rotates independently of frame rate.
  • Adjust the rotation increment to be frame-independent by multiplying the rotation by Delta seconds.
  • Create a variable "spin speed" to control the rotation speed of obstacles individually within the details panel.
  • In the level blueprint, set up a box trigger to display a win screen UI when the character overlaps with it.
  • Design a win screen UI widget with a text element displaying "You Win" in the middle of the screen.
  • Connect the box trigger to the win screen UI to display the win message when the character overlaps with the trigger.
  • Refine the game by adjusting the obstacle course layout and size to create a challenging gameplay experience.
  • Consider exploring the Unreal Sensa Masterclass for further tutorials and support in game development.

03:20:02

"Optimizing Assets and Updating Projects in UE5"

  • To delete an unnecessary overview in a folder, right-click on the content browser and select "fix up directors" to remove asset references.
  • Assets needed for creating an environment are included in downloadable content, specifically in the "intro to a real project" folder.
  • Migrate assets by right-clicking on the "Charyk Assets" folder, selecting "migrate," choosing the assets, and pasting them into the new project's content folder.
  • Download the "QuickSort Mega Schansman evil game environment" from the launcher marketplace to use in the project.
  • Update a project from Unreal Engine 4 to Unreal Engine 5 by converting it in place or creating a copy, or by switching versions manually.
  • In the new project, adjust settings to enable virtual texture support and sky atmosphere affecting height fog for the medieval assets.
  • Open the medieval village map, recompile shaders, and adjust engine scalability settings if the game lags.
  • Fix a glitch causing objects to disappear by resetting the desired max draw distance value to zero for each static mesh.
  • Use a blueprint to automate the process of resetting the draw distance for all static meshes in the scene.
  • Create a new level from scratch by adding a landscape, directional light, sky and atmosphere, and adjusting settings for a dynamic scene with proper lighting.

03:32:35

Creating Realistic Outdoor Scenes with Landscape Materials

  • 90% of outdoor scenes are primarily lit by the sky and the sun.
  • To apply a landscape material, access the Creag assets and materials by pressing control and space.
  • Utilize the "Am_I_Auto_Landscape_Creek" material for the landscape.
  • Adjust settings in the details panel and drag the landscape material onto the landscape.
  • The landscape material can be downloaded from Gumm Road, with accompanying tutorial videos.
  • Populate the landscape material with textures from medieval environments found in Mega Scans under surfaces.
  • Use filters to easily select textures and apply them to the material.
  • Set up textures like Creek Stone, T_Foreground, Heavy Mud, and T_Grass for different materials.
  • Ensure textures are correctly applied to normal, roughness, and color channels.
  • Add a landscape layer and sculpt the landscape to create cliffs and grass areas, utilizing a post-process volume for exposure control and volumetric clouds for visual effects.

03:47:22

Enhancing Water Features and Landscape Design

  • To make crossing easier, increase the size and reduce the depth of the water feature.
  • Adjust the camera angle by moving it to a new position for better visibility.
  • Add a mud layer to the water feature to make it more realistic.
  • Use the landscape mode to add a material layer for the mud.
  • Ensure to save progress regularly to avoid losing work.
  • Paint the mud layer onto the landscape using full strength.
  • Adjust the tiling of the mud texture in the landscape material instance.
  • Smooth out areas and create a gradual transition between different terrains.
  • Fix glitchy trees by simplifying the wind animation in the material.
  • Populate the world with trees and foliage, starting with larger trees and gradually adding smaller details.

04:01:45

Enhancing Visual Quality with Plain Reflections

  • Increasing the water reflections from one to three immediately enhances the visual quality.
  • To enable plain reflection for water, project settings must have "plain reflection global clip" enabled.
  • Plain reflection creates a mirror-like effect, ideal for mirrors and water surfaces.
  • Adjust project settings to enable plain reflection, restart the project for changes to take effect.
  • Plain reflection preview mode allows visualization of the reflection area.
  • Adjusting the reflection size and position improves the water appearance.
  • Plain reflection impacts performance, causing a decrease in frames per second.
  • Screen space global illumination is preferred over Lumens due to compatibility issues with landscapes.
  • Adjusting lighting settings and adding light shafts enhances the scene's vibrancy.
  • Modifying tree colors by adjusting leaf tint in master materials streamlines the process efficiently.

04:15:06

"Enhancing Project Flexibility with Bridge Base"

  • Use a bridge as a base for the project, deactivating snapping for flexibility.
  • Increase the size of the bridge and rotate it using local rotation.
  • Scale the object to create variety and avoid perfection.
  • Adjust the size of the creek to fit better with the project.
  • Decrease the size of the landscape brush for blending purposes.
  • Add a path leading to a homestead area, painting it in for a natural look.
  • Rearrange trees for better spacing and use select tool for precision.
  • Utilize rocks to create a natural look, adjusting specular settings for realism.
  • Implement modular design for building a house, using static meshes like Legos.
  • Access and navigate the content browser for selecting and locating specific static meshes.

04:31:09

Creating Safe and Simple House Models

  • The text discusses creating a house model, emphasizing simplicity and safety.
  • Gray elements are added for visual appeal and alignment.
  • Doors and windows are selected and positioned, ensuring alignment with the floor.
  • Various objects are scaled, rotated, and moved to fit the design.
  • The process involves filling gaps with wood and other assets.
  • Suggestions for adding modular designs and foliage are provided.
  • Grouping objects for easier manipulation is explained.
  • The importance of saving progress is highlighted.
  • The text emphasizes experimentation and personalization in design.
  • The final stages involve refining the landscape and adding finishing touches.

04:47:40

Optimizing Unreal Engine 5 Performance Settings

  • To optimize performance, adjust engine scalability settings from Epic to High to prevent lag during recording.
  • Deleting the plane reflection in the water scene can significantly increase frame rates from 42 to 80 frames per second.
  • To improve water reflection quality, replace the plane reflection with a sphere reflection capture and adjust its position.
  • Disabling class contact shadows for foliage can enhance the scene's appearance by preventing darkening on the bottom side of the foliage.
  • Switching from screen space to Lumin for post-processing can slightly impact frame rates, with Lumin being a preferred choice for Unreal Engine 5 tutorials.
  • To prevent wind effects on tree bark, disable grass wind in the materials of the bark mesh elements within the static mesh editor.
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