greetings and welcome everyone my name
is West bun and I'm a technical writer
here at Epic Games and today we're going
to be taking a closer look at blueprint
in Unreal Engine 4 and how you can use
it to script functionality for your
games
disclaimer share before we get started
we are using Unreal Engine version 4.8
for this video series and this series is
aimed at those of you that are totally
new to blueprint so if that is you you
are in the right place if you already
know a little bit about blueprint
please take this first video here is a
bit of a refresher Before we jump into
the engine as this is going to be the
introduction or overview of the system
before we start working with it in later
videos
and speaking of those later videos let's
talk about what we plan to cover here at
a glance for this series for starters
what is blueprint we'll give you the
quick high-level elevator style pitch at
what they are and we're going to cover
that in this video actually then we'll
talk about where they are and how to
access them inside of Unreal Engine 4
the truth is blueprint is used quite a
bit throughout ue4 but we'll cover the
two most common areas in the form of
level blueprints and class blueprints
and we'll talk about both of those a
little bit here in a moment as well as
cover them extensively when we get to
them in those videos later in this
series and then we'll talk about how to
work with them and this is something
we'll probably be doing in each of the
videos moving forward basically how do I
use blueprint to create things so for
starters what is blueprint well if you
boil it down blueprint is really just a
form of visual scripting now if you're
sitting there wondering well what
exactly is visual scripting and what
does that entail well there are some
folks out there that really enjoy
programming and then there are some
folks out there that do not those
programmer types enjoy typing in lines
of code or C++ or C sharp or whatever
language they prefer and they do so in
things like Visual Studio which looks
something like this here so they enter
in code line by line and they have their
project and other information there on
the right some people like to develop
their games in this manner which is
perfectly fine on the other hand some do
not like looking at lines of code all
day or they do not come from a
programming background
maybe they're artists or level designers
or some other form of designer blueprint
and Unruh Engine 4 is a way of scripting
those same lines of code but allowing
you to do so in a more visual way and
this is done by connecting a series of
nodes which have some functionality
attached to them together to create that
same functionality that was
traditionally only available to
programmers so on the right here we have
a couple nodes that have been wired and
connected together to turn on the
collision of a trigger box now that
trigger box could be used to signify
some gameplay event in our level and
we've done it through a visual way by
connecting these nodes so in many ways
Blue Point works identically to writing
code in fact when you are working inside
of a blueprint and creating blueprint
script you are coding believe it or not
you are just doing so in a more visual
way by connecting those nodes together
to get the functionality that you need
now even this concept is not entirely
new to Unreal Engine if you're coming
from Yui 3 or UK we had a system called
kismet and kismet was a form of visual
scripting similar to blueprint however
when working with kismet the script that
you created was all based around and
contained within each of your levels so
if I created several scripts for enemy
behavior or maybe an elevator lift of
some sort you would have to copy and
paste those portions of script in each
of your levels for that functionality to
exist because they were self-contained
in each individual level so this brings
us to the visual scripting system in ue4
blueprint which is the successor to
kismet as kismet no longer exists now a
bit of a terminology timeout here you
may see blueprint abbreviated to just BP
for short or you may see or hear the
term blueprints as individual things
which they are when we say blueprint we
are usually talking about blueprint
visuals scripting the system and when we
say blueprints we are talking about the
objects that are created as a result of
using blueprint visual scripting so I
just wanted to mention case you're on
message boards or forms and so forth and
you see blueprint vs. blueprints
that's kind of what it means excuse me
but back to the differences between
kismet and blueprint and really the main
difference because the two are still
very very similar blueprint is no longer
bound to individual levels you can
create several blueprints safer enemy
behavior or that elevator lift as I
mentioned earlier and you can drop those
blueprints into each of your levels and
they will just automatically work again
if you did this in kismet you would have
to copy and paste all your scripts from
level to level to make sure that that
functionality exists in all of your
levels which you no longer have to do
with blueprint so it's it's blueprints
the evolution the the second coming of
kismet essentially now there are several
different types of blueprints that you
can create in fact if you prefer you can
kind of still script things the old
kismet way on a per level basis using a
special type of blueprint called the
level blueprint which we are going to be
working out of in the next video in this
series actually and then there's also
what's called class blueprints which
we'll jump into
later in this series and for these for
lack of a better analogy these are
modular portions of script that can be
used throughout your levels so that
elevator sample that we wanted to create
we would create that out of a class
blueprint and then we can just populate
our level any of our levels with this
class blueprint and they will just work
automatically and where blueprints are
really shine is with this class boo
blueprint we could expose parameters to
allow us to adjust how our elevator
actually functions maybe we want well
one elevator to move faster than the
others maybe we want one to move in a
different direction etc we can expose
those parameters in blueprint and allow
us to create variants of that same
elevator script and just toggle the
things that we want to change with
blueprint very very easily so it's very
good for quickly prototyping out
concepts or scripted behavior or events
very quickly through blueprint now the
other thing that I wanted to touch on
when talking about the transition from
Yui 3 to Yui for back in Yui 3 we had
something called unreal script which was
very similar to coding this has been
completely
replaced actually removed as there is no
unrealscript anymore with the
implementation of blueprints if you
prefer the method of line by line coding
you could do that in C++ and actually
blueprints and C++ are very closely
connected you could create a class in
C++ and expose it to blueprint so that
your artists are level designers can
then tuna tweak the functionality or
take it and expand upon it in blueprint
the idea is that the heavy lifting the
back-end stuff networking stuff etc can
be delegated to programmers who code the
function functionality for it in C++
while your designer artist types work on
the systems that kind of tie things
together or provide the moment-to-moment
gameplay scripted events or other
gameplay related bits of functionality
so to sum up all of this information
that was just thrown at you blueprint
and Unreal Engine 4 is our visual
scripting system which allowed you which
allows you to connect nodes together to
create some form of scripted behavior or
functionality and there are several
different types of blueprints which
we'll start to explore in the next video
starting with the level blueprint and
then moving forward into the class
blueprint and then we'll talk about how
you can actually start working with
blueprints to get the functionality that
you need so that's actually going to do
it for this video here this intro to
blueprints in the next video we will
start working inside of the level
blueprint and get our hands dirty and
and start actually working with the
system thank you guys for watching and
we'll see you then