Over the last week I’ve been learning and exploring the possibilities of Unreal Engine 5 (somewhat fitting in with the ‘take a risk with your work’ suggestion/task).
Watching / learning from ‘Unreal Engine 5 Beginner Tutorial – UE5 Starter Course!’. Very well produced YouTube tutorial, ‘Unreal Sensei’ is a very good instructor. 1.5m views since 3rd June / in 4 months. Good way to promote your paid content.
Learned how to import SketchUp files into UE5 via the Epic Games training centre. Simple workflow as should be expected and bodes well for ‘clip art’ environments using marketplace assets.
- Can realise an interactive ‘sold out’ scene.
- Will try realising the yellow 3D jcb’s in the photographic landscape photographs.
- Will also try the directory terraformation scenes in UE5.
Shower reflection (sunday am): right now within my workflow UE5 seems to be the malleable tool to allow focus on narrative. It seems quick and ‘dirty’ due to the lack of emphasis on the quality of ‘actors’ on the stage due to these needing to be prepared elsewhere. Time needn’t be devoted to tweaking assets. They are ready to perform. Whereas blender is the technical tool which is more precious in detail – cleaning up and doing things right. This is a sweeping generalisation but UE5 feels accessible and intuitive enough to realise a range of ideas.
Technical learning:
- UE5: Modifying sky / environment. Remove sky and use solid colour.
- Working with 2D planes. In particular:
- large photographic backgrounds (facing camera / parallax effects)
- Flat actors (clip art images) to always face camera.
- Controlling camera motion, in particular to allow more fluid, cinematic (hand-held?) walk arounds.
To explore
- Monochrome spaces. B&W & subtle tints. (Nod to George).
To do:
- JCB (m4 + train landscapes)
- Flat coloured (textured) market place engineering actors in UE5 walk around environment
- Sold out UE5 environment