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(Wes Bunn) Hello everyone and welcome. My name is Wes Bunn and I am a Technical Writer
here at Epic Games. Over the next several videos, we are going to be working together
to build our very own 3rd person game entirely from scratch. So starting with just some FBX
assets, we will go through the import process here together to get those assets inside Unreal
Engine 4. Then, we will build everything else that we need around that to get our character
up and running around in our level here. So this video series is aimed at beginners. So
if you are new to Unreal Engine 4 and would like to learn how to get your own characters
into the editor and playable then this is the video series for you.
I did want to mention that we are using Unreal Engine version 4.8 for the purposes of this
video series. So with that, let's actually take a look at the finished project here.
So if I jump into the editor here and hit Play, we will show you what it is we are going
to try to create here together. So you can see we have our character here who is idling.
I can rotate a camera around him, which is pretty standard for any 3rd person game having
a follow camera, essentially. So we can independently control that. We can also use the WASD keys
to run around with our character. We can go back to an idle state. So we will show you
how to set this up to get your character running around inside your game. Then, we can also
jump with our character here. We can jump to different heights. So we can jump from
here, we can jump there, we can jump all the way down here like so. So we will show you
how to set that up as well. You can also see as our character is running around, he is
kicking up a little bit of dust here which is kind of cool. So we will show you
how to set up this particle effect that occurs whenever the player is running. So we will
do that towards the end of the video. First things first, we need to get our character
up and running before we do anything else. Then, we will also show you how to do some punches
with a character. (Laughter) Now these punches aren't the greatest looking, but it gets the
job done and it shows you how you can set this up. Or I can do like one punch at a time,
or I can hold it down and do multiple punches. I can also punch and run at the same time.
So if in your game you have a character that you want to run and shoot, or run and reload
this will show you how to set that up. Our character can also punch stuff because that
is cool. Look at that. Get out of here. So, that is what it is we want to create here
together; this is the end result. There are a lot of systems that come into play here
and work together that we are going to have to touch upon. So I wanted to run through
those really quickly to kind of show you what it is we are going to be covering and give
you a brief description on what they are before we get into them. So as you can see, we have
a lot to cover. So starting from the top here to the bottom, the first thing that we are going
to be taking a look at is the importing process and how you can get your FBX assets into Unreal
Engine 4 and start working with them. From there, we are going to be taking a look at
Skeleton assets: what they are, how they work, as well as some things to keep in mind when
sharing Skeletons between characters. From there, we are going to take a look at Persona
which is the animation tool inside Unreal Engine 4. Then, we will talk about how to properly
set up inputs on a character; so how to go into your Project Settings and add the inputs
that you need so that you can use them later. This will include setups for gamepads, touch
controls, as well as the standard PC controls or mouse and keyboard style controls. We are
then going to look at Blend Spaces and show a way that you can blend between multiple
animations based on really a variety of factors, but we are going to do it based on the speed
of the character. So you can go from like an idle state into a walk, into a run, and transition
between all three states smoothly. From there, we are going to take a look at Animation Blueprints.
This is how you get the data from the game or from the Character Blueprint, which is
another topic for discussion, and take that data and essentially transition that into
the final animation that your character is actually doing. From there, we are going to take a
look at State Machines, which are a way that you can create sort of a flow chart or a graph
of all the different states or things that your character is going to be doing, and smoothly
move between them and set up rules to transition in between each state. A lot more information
will be coming on that when we actually get to that video. It is sort of a beast of a topic, so
it is going to have its own video once we get to that later in the series. Then as I
mentioned, we are going to take a look at setting up a Character Blueprint and not only
that, but we will look at how a Character Blueprint is different than a Pawn Blueprint. For a lot of people
who are just getting into Unreal Engine 4, particularly if you had a history in UDK or
Unreal Engine 3, a lot of folks don't really know which of those two to begin with when
setting up a character (a Pawn or a Character Blueprint). So we are going to talk about
that and help clarify some things and why you may want to choose one over the other.
So as you can see, we have a lot to cover but we will try to break up these videos into
bite sized chunks so that it is more easily digestible. But ultimately, our end goal is to
get all the way back to here so that we have a playable character that can run around,
jump, and punch. So that is going to do it for this video. In the next video, we will
show you where you can get your hands on some of the assets that we will be using for the purposes
of this series. In that video, we will start the FBX import process. Thank you so much
and we will see you in the next video.
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