Week 3 Day 1 - Project Beginnings
0I covered these topics today:
1) The use of edge detection in image compression.
2) Setting up a group project. After having tried Git and Dropbox, I recommend using Perforce to set up sharing on a UE4 project - https://www.perforce.com/blog/vcs/how-use-unreal-engine-4-perforce
3) I went over the mod and UE4 project proposals
4) The RTX Showcase shows different uses of RTX - I suggested ways it could be integrated into the design of a game so that it was tactically interesting and more than just improved graphics.
5) I gave a brief talk on how the skeleton mesh/skeleton/animation system works in UE4:
A skeleton shows how bones on a skeleton mesh connect together
A skeleton mesh shows how to draw something with bones, for example a human. Multiple skeleton meshes can and probably should share the same skeleton if they're all humans.
An animation targets a skeleton (not a skeleton mesh) saying how the bones should move over time. If your skeleton meshes are of significantly different size, or if different skeleton meshes use different skeletons (which happens - they have the same bones but name them differently) then you need to go through the retargeting system to fix them up.
I'm not an animator, so I just import assets, of which there's a lot of free ones on the Marketplace, including all the paragon assets (which are huge), "Mixamo Animation Pack", the "UE4 Mannequin: Mobile" (which has a couple new mannequins and some animations), and the "Animation starter pack" which has a lot of free animations.
6) I talked a bit about the sockets system with the skeletons. How you can add a socket to a skeleton, and then in the world you can attach an object to a mannequin or whatever using that skeleton by right clicking and choosing "Attach To..." and then moving it over the socket so it lines up. Then when the skeleton animates, the thing you attached to it moves along with.
**Make sure the thing you attach is moveable, not static**
7) I provided links to where you can find information in the documentation or on YT for working on your project:
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/InteractiveExperiences/ArtificialIntelligence/BehaviorTrees/BehaviorTreeQuickStart/
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/InteractiveExperiences/ArtificialIntelligence/AIPerception/
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/Resources/Showcases/BlueprintMultiplayer/
https://docs.unrealengine.com/4.26/en-US/Resources/ContentExamples/Networking/1_1/
https://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=Landing_page
and Ryan Laley has a really good tutorial series on YouTube on a variety of topics: https://www.youtube.com/c/ryanlaley