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The new Sequencer tool that replaces Matinee is the big new exciting thing in this release. If it goes as planned we'll see a lot of animators using Unreal with

by exodust 10y ago

The new Sequencer tool that replaces Matinee is the big new exciting thing in this release. If it goes as planned we'll see a lot of animators using Unreal without ever needing or caring about the gaming side of things. I'm still learning Unreal for game dev, but finding the Blueprint system quite difficult to get to grips with. Coming from javascript, I thought it would be easy, but I never seem to know what node to connect to what module for the outcome intended. I guess I will stick with it. I felt the same when I first started with Jquery, I hated it for months then began to enjoy it.

wlesieutre 10y ago
I dabbled with Blueprints a while back, and I got a strong impression that experience with C++ is still valuable background because it gives you a better grip on the types and the general structuring of how the parts communicate. To a pretty large degree you're composing C++ bits and pieces visually, but it makes a lot more sense if you can intuit why something is structured the way it is. And that all ties back to the underlying engine.
- exodust 10y ago
  Yes I think in my case I need to push through that language learning stage where you have the documentation open constantly looking up methods, selectors... forums posts from other users on tricks and shortcuts. I was hoping blueprints were more intuitive, but it still has a complex syntax of its own nature -nice challenge. Marketplace is also interesting.. very good, but sometimes the things sold could be assembled easily by just having the required blueprints. So I wonder if this creates a sort of restrained help community on the sharing and caring front of blueprints and solutions to common need such as "Info bubbles on any object! just $19.99 now from the market" and it's just a handful of blueprints essentially - at least for the non-asset offers on the market. Javascript has always been generous and happy to share code snippets and plugins and so on, but in Unreal there's this economy around that, which is cool if a bit cunning.
TrevorJ 10y ago
Blueprint is just a visual wrapper for the C++ API - a large amount of the functions exposed to you are 1:1 representations of functions from the API. Once you spend some time reading over the API documentation it becomes easier.
- exodust 10y ago
  Yes true, I will stick with it. For basic things all is well, but naturally we always want to do complex things too early.. I need to be patient.
  - TrevorJ 10y ago
    Looking at other people's layouts did a ton for me. Epic has some killer example projects you should check out.

by exodust 10y ago

wlesieutre 10y ago

I dabbled with Blueprints a while back, and I got a strong impression that experience with C++ is still valuable background because it gives you a better grip on the types and the general structuring of how the parts communicate. To a pretty large degree you're composing C++ bits and pieces visually, but it makes a lot more sense if you can intuit why something is structured the way it is. And that all ties back to the underlying engine.

exodust 10y ago
Yes I think in my case I need to push through that language learning stage where you have the documentation open constantly looking up methods, selectors... forums posts from other users on tricks and shortcuts. I was hoping blueprints were more intuitive, but it still has a complex syntax of its own nature -nice challenge. Marketplace is also interesting.. very good, but sometimes the things sold could be assembled easily by just having the required blueprints. So I wonder if this creates a sort of restrained help community on the sharing and caring front of blueprints and solutions to common need such as "Info bubbles on any object! just $19.99 now from the market" and it's just a handful of blueprints essentially - at least for the non-asset offers on the market. Javascript has always been generous and happy to share code snippets and plugins and so on, but in Unreal there's this economy around that, which is cool if a bit cunning.

TrevorJ 10y ago

Blueprint is just a visual wrapper for the C++ API - a large amount of the functions exposed to you are 1:1 representations of functions from the API. Once you spend some time reading over the API documentation it becomes easier.

exodust 10y ago
Yes true, I will stick with it. For basic things all is well, but naturally we always want to do complex things too early.. I need to be patient.
- TrevorJ 10y ago
  Looking at other people's layouts did a ton for me. Epic has some killer example projects you should check out.