Book Image

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine 5 - Third Edition

By : Marcos Romero, Brenden Sewell
5 (1)
Book Image

Blueprints Visual Scripting for Unreal Engine 5 - Third Edition

5 (1)
By: Marcos Romero, Brenden Sewell

Overview of this book

Unreal Engine's Blueprint visual scripting system enables designers to script their games and programmers to create base elements that can be extended by designers. With this book, you'll explore all the features of the Blueprint Editor, along with expert tips, shortcuts, and best practices. The book guides you through using variables, macros, and functions, and helps you learn about object-oriented programming (OOP). You'll discover the Gameplay Framework and advance to learning how Blueprint Communication allows one Blueprint to access information from another Blueprint. Later chapters focus on building a fully functional game step by step. You'll start with a basic first-person shooter (FPS) template, and each chapter will build on the prototype to create an increasingly complex and robust game experience. You'll then progress from creating basic shooting mechanics to more complex systems such as user interface elements and intelligent enemy behavior. The book demonstrates how to use arrays, maps, enums, and vector operations and introduces the elements needed for VR game development. In the final chapters, you’ll learn how to implement procedural generation and create a product configurator. By the end of this book, you'll have learned how to build a fully functional game and have the skills required to develop an entertaining experience for your audience.
Table of Contents (28 chapters)
1
Part 1: Blueprint Fundamentals
6
Part 2: Developing a Game
11
Part 3: Enhancing the Game
16
Part 4: Advanced Blueprints
21
Part 5: Extra Tools

Exploring Materials

Earlier, we set ourselves the goal of changing the color of the Cylinder when it is hit by a projectile. To do so, we need to change the Actor's Material. A Material is an asset that can be added to an Actor's mesh to create its look. You can think of a Material as a coat of paint applied on top of an Actor's mesh or shape. Since an Actor's Material determines its color, one method for changing the color of an Actor is to replace its Material with one of a different color. To do this, let's first create a Material of our own. It will make an Actor appear red.

Creating Materials

Follow these steps to create a Material:

  1. Click the Content Drawer button to open the content browser, and then click the FirstPersonBP folder to access it. Click the Add button, select New Folder, and name it Materials. This step is not necessary, but it is good practice to keep the project file hierarchy tidy.
  2. Navigate to the newly created folder...