When I started this project I started with the wrong idea in mind. At first, I wanted to start with the project MetaHumans, a tool from UE4 where you can modify a very good model of a person and is ready to animate and everything. I wanted to experiment with this tool.
I realised that this was the wrong approach and that I needed to properly learn UE4 to be able to use this tool how is intended to be used.
Lucky for me unreal have an online learning community. I started with the basics. I found an online course with a few videos that are specific for Virtual Production and I find it very interesting that I started from there, the first videos introduce me to the interface of Unreal.
After introducing you to the interface and how to move in it, we create our first project working with starter content and free content from the Marketplace to build our first level.
Then after we got a bit more used to unreal it’s more of a free learning path, there are a few more videos after this that explain the structure that unreal follows and what’s the best way to organize your folders. Also how to import content from outside of unreal and move content from one project to another.
Then we have some real-time rendering concepts explained with a few videos and examples so we can start to understand how it works.
After following this path I started to work on my project, my idea was to create a virtual set to use in a virtual production with an LED screen like the ones used in The Mandalorian.
I started exploring how to create a landscape with a procedural texture that depending on the altitude of the landscape would blend to a different texture.
We create material functions that are basically the base material where we feed him with the landscape coordinates.
This material then we create another material where we feed him the different materials we want to blend with a blend material attribute.
This will be the material that we apply to the landscape. The material going into node A will be at the bottom and the material going into node B will be at the top.
Once the material is created we then make an instance so we have a backup, and we apply this material to the landscape. Creating an instance is like duplicating the material. This is the material where we can see that we have created 4 nodes that we can modify: blend height, which will determine the altitude needed to change to the other material, blend sharp, which will determine how strong is the blend, scale, which will tile the texture and specular range to control how the light affects it.
After experimenting with this I discovered that with megascans you could blend 3 different materials exported from quixel bridge and use the paint tool to blend the materials and this way you could be more precise on what you want to achieve as a texture.
You can select 3 materials in order, the first one you select is gonna be the bottom one, the second in the middle and the last on top.
We can see how the material changes when we tweak some nodes on the material, it give us control over how we want the texture to look.
Once I decided which textures to use and how I started painting and placing assets from quixel. This is what I end up with.
I had some issues and limitations during the learning path. Is true that the main idea was to start learning unreal as much as I can to be able to use it on my FMP. That I think I have achieved my goal because now I’m confident enough to use it with a more clear and advanced idea.
The problems I faced were that I started this learning path wrong and lost a few weeks while I was deciding how to proceed. As I said first I wanted to start with metahumans, which made my schedule change because I used some of my time to play with this tool that I end up not using. It was to advance for what I wanted to do.
Then it took me some time to find a clear path of what to do and follow because I didn’t have someone to teach me unreal, and I knew that, I knew that the uni doesn’t teach unreal and I would be on my own for most things, I had the help of my teacher in a way of ideas and things I could try to do but I didn’t have a clear path on how to learn unreal. So it took me some time to find it and I started my project later than I wanted to.
Once I find it and start working on it, I had some hardware difficulties. My computer is not the best of all, is about 7-8 years old and everything I do takes a bit more time than usual with a newer computer, but unreal was very demanding especially to create what I wanted to do. That slowed my process.
I could use the computers at uni that are much better than mine but then my problem was that I was using Quixel Bridge to export the assets I was using in the project. And there is a weird policy with quixel that in a university you have to enroll for a license and someone already had it in my Univesity but we didn’t know who. So I could only work on my computer freely with all the space I needed for the assets.
But apart from these problems, I’m quite happy with the result. I expected more to be honest because I have experience with Unity another game engine, but as I was learning unreal I was realising that it wasn’t as easy as I thought it was. So the end result of the video could be better but overall the core aspect of this project was to learn UE4, I’m happy with what I achieved.
Now I’m excited to try the early access for UE5 that was announce a few days before the submission for this project. So the learning path continues!