Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial for Beginners: Getting Started

Create Your First Actor

An Actor is an object that is placed in a level, whether it’s a Camera, a static mesh or a starting location for the game level.

You’re going to create a special type of Actor called a Blueprint, which can combine the mesh components into a single object that is used in a game.

Blueprints are more powerful than simply joining 3D models — they also can integrate complex logic with the models and together create a reuseable part to add to the game.

In its simplest sense, a Blueprint represents a “thing.” Blueprints let you create custom behaviors for your objects. Your object can be something physical (such as the submarine) or something abstract such as a health system.

Want to make a moving car? Make a Blueprint. What about a flying pig? Use Blueprints. How about a kitten that explodes on impact? Blueprints.

To create a Blueprint of your owm, start off by creating a folder called Blueprints in the Contents Drawer.

Next, right-click in your Blueprints folder and choose to create a Blueprint Class. Choose to make an Actor, and name this Submarine.

Now double-click this Blueprint Actor to open the editor for the Blueprint actor. It’s time to build your submarine model!

The Blueprint Editor

The Blueprint editor has five main panels:

1. Components: Contains a list of the current components.
2. My Blueprint: This section is primarily used to manage your graphs, functions and variables.
3. Event Graph: This is where the magic happens. All your nodes and logic go in here. Pan by holding right-click and moving your mouse. Zoom by scrolling your mouse wheel.
4. Viewport: Any components that have a visual element will appear here. Move and look around using the same controls as the Viewport in the main editor.
5. Details: This will display the properties of a selected item.

The submarine model can be assembled using components.

What is a Component?

If you were writing a blueprint for a submarine, it would describe the components that make up the vessel: the body, the windows, the periscope and the propeller. In Unreal Engine, these are all examples of Blueprint components.

Adding Components

Before you can see any components, switch to the Viewport view if you’re not already there. Click the Viewport tab to switch.

The DefaultSceneRoot is the topmost member of the model, but it will only show in the editor. Drag each of the model parts from the Content Browser into this blueprint under the DefaultSceneRoot. These model parts will again assemble into a submarine.

Choose to Compile and Save in the Blueprint editor. Always do those steps after updating a blueprint to be able to see how the changes affect the game.

About Materials

If you look closely at the submarine, you’ll see it has a checkerboard on its surface instead of a proper appearance. To give the submarine color and detail, you will create a material.

What is a Material?

A material determines how the surface of something looks. Fundamentally, a material defines four elements:

Below is an example of three materials. They have the same color but separate attributes. Each material has a high value for its respective attribute. The other attributes are set to zero.

• Base Color: The color or texture of a surface. Used to add detail and color variations.
• Metallic: How “metal-like” a surface is. Generally, a pure metal will have the maximum Metallic value whereas fabric will have a value of zero.
• Specular: Controls the shininess of nonmetallic surfaces. For example, ceramic would have a high Specular value but clay would not.
• Roughness: A surface with maximum roughness will not have any shininess. It’s used for surfaces such as rock and wood.

  Below is an example of three materials. They have the same color but separate attributes. Each material has a high value for its respective attribute. The other attributes are set to zero.

Creating a Material

Close the submarine blueprint and return to the Content Drawer, select the Materials folder and click the green Add button. A menu will appear with a list of assets you can create. Click Material.

The Material Editor

Name the material SubmarineMaterial and then double-click the file to open it in the material editor.

The material editor has several panels:

1. Viewport: Contains a preview mesh that will display your material. Rotate the camera by holding left-click and moving your mouse. Zoom by scrolling your mouse wheel.
2. Details: Any node that you select will have its properties displayed here. If a node isn’t selected, the panel will show the material’s properties instead.
3. Material Graph: This panel will contain all your nodes and the Result node. Pan by holding right-click and moving your mouse. Zoom by scrolling your mouse wheel.
4. Palette: A list of all the nodes available to your material.

What is a Node?

Before you start making your material, you need to know about the graph’s nodes and pins.

Nodes make up the majority of a material. Many nodes are available and offer different functionalities.

Nodes can have inputs and outputs, also called pins, represented by a circle with an arrow. Inputs are on the left side and outputs are on the right side.

For example, use a Multiply and Constant3Vector node to add yellow to a texture:

Adding Textures

To add color and detail to a model, you need a texture. A texture is a 2D image. Typically, it’s projected onto 3D models to give them color and detail.

Materials have a special node called the Result node, which has already been created for you in this case as SubmarineMaterial. This is where all your nodes will end. Whatever you plug into this node will determine how the final material looks.

Look at some of the components of the Result node:

1. Base Color: This describes the most important texture, one that provides basic color mapping over the surface of a 3D mesh.
2. Normal: A normal map allows significant additional detail to be added to a mesh by providing a normal vector at each pixel along the surface.
3. Ambient Occlusion: Describes areas of the surface where light is more difficult to reach.

Open the Content Drawer from the bottom of this window. Drag each of the five textures into the graph, from the Materials folder.

In the graph, make each of the connections between the RGB pin of the texture node to the appropriate connection in the Material by dragging and dropping a line between the two nodes’ pins.

In the end, your material should include all five textures:

Click Apply and Save in the Toolbar to update your material and close the Materials editor — you’re done here.