Book Image

Unreal Engine Physics Essentials

By : Devin Sherry, Katax Emperore
Book Image

Unreal Engine Physics Essentials

By: Devin Sherry, Katax Emperore

Overview of this book

This book gives readers practical insight into the mathematical and physics principles necessary to properly implement physics within Unreal Engine 4. Discover how to manipulate physics within Unreal Engine 4 by learning basic real-world mathematical and physics concepts that assist in the implementation of physics-based objects in your game world. Then, you'll be introduced to PhAT (Physics Asset Tool) within Unreal Engine 4 to learn more about developing game physics objects for your game world. Next, dive into Unreal Engine 4’s collision generation, physical materials, blueprints, constraints, and more to get hands-on experience with the tools provided by Epic to create real-world physics in Unreal Engine 4. Lastly, you will create a working Vehicle Blueprint that uses all the concepts covered in this book, as well as covering advanced physics-based topics.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Unreal Engine Physics Essentials
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Creating the first material


Before we start working in Unreal Editor, we will need to have a project to work with. Perform the following steps:

  1. First, open Unreal Editor by clicking on the Launch button from the Unreal Engine launcher.

  2. Then, start a new project from Project browser by selecting the New Project tab. Now, select Blank and make sure that With Starter Content is selected. Name the project material_test.

  3. From Content Browser, click on the Props folder. You will see a series of models that you can drag and drop onto the stage. Select SM_MatPreviewMesh_02 and drag an instance of it to the stage. Then, press the F key to focus the camera on your shape. We will use this shape to describe the physical aspects of materials in the game. You can choose other shapes and follow the next steps.

  4. Now, click on the Materials folder and right click on an empty space in the preview section. From the menu, select Material and then enter mymaterial as the name for the new one. Now, drag and drop this...