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

The physics of materials


Each material in Unreal Engine 4 follows some physical properties to be defined by a designer. This is somehow different from the previous versions of the engine. Unreal Engine 4 gives developers and artists more options to create complex materials with higher performance compare to old versions. Also, you can invent or create dynamic materials with this structure.

As you can see in the preceding screenshot, there are a number of commands on the left-hand side of your material blueprint editor in the Palette section. Some have shortcuts to use. For example, you can drag and drop Constant from here onto your screen, or simply hold the 1 key on your keyboard and left-click your mouse on the screen. Both these methods give you a constant number to connect the input of the other box in the blueprint. Also, each box has some properties in the Details menu. These properties can be customized.

Now let's make a material, based on physical rules, inside the Unreal Engine 4...