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

Creating Animation Blueprints

An Animation Blueprint is a specialized Blueprint with tools geared toward Character animation scripting. The Animation Blueprint Editor is like the Blueprint Editor, but it has some specific panels for animation.

Follow these steps to create an Animation Blueprint:

  1. Click the ADD button in the Content Browser, and in the Animation submenu, select Animation Blueprint, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 17.7 – Creating an Animation Blueprint

  1. In the next window, you need to select the target Skeleton. The animation assets and the Animation Blueprint are linked to a specific Skeleton. Optionally, you can select a different parent class instead of the default class. For this example, do not select a parent class and select UE4_Mannequin_Skeleton, which is in the /Game/Mannequin/Character/ path:

Figure 17.8 – Selecting the target Skeleton

  1. Give a name to the...