Unreal Engine

Here's my notes on Unreal Engine 5. I'll keep adding to it as I learn more.

Resources

• https://www.udemy.com/course/unreal-engine-course
• https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/lumen-global-illumination-and-reflections-in-unreal-engine/
• https://docs.unrealengine.com/5.0/en-US/nanite-virtualized-geometry-in-unreal-engine/

See addendum for more resources.

Conventions

Rationale

• Always use Lumen (and disable static lighting)
• Always use Nanite (and set Nanite to Enabled for the mesh of each object asset)
  • Nanite does not work for non-opaque materials and two-sided meshes
• Get assets from Quixel Bridge
• Use Blueprints for everything that you reuse

Non default settings

Interface

• Open project settings and pin it to the left side of the screen.

Vocabulary

Assets

Prefix	Term	Description
BP_	Blueprint	Encapsulates objects and logic
M_	Main Material	Template for Material instances
MI_	Material Instance	Instance of a Main Material
SM_	Static Mesh	Mesh that does not move
S_	Skeletal Mesh	Mesh that moves
T_	Texture	Image used for materials

Materials

Term	Description
Base Color	Color of the material
Metallic	How metallic the material is
Roughness	How rough the material is (smooth vs rough)
Normal	How much the material is affected by light

Concepts

Blueprints

• Use variables to store values. The setting Instance Editable makes it possible to change the value in the editor.
• Use functions to encapsulate and reuse logic.
• Use custom events to organize logic.
• Use event dispatchers to send events to other blueprints.

Gotchas

• When lighting shows low quality baking, try to increase the lightmap resolution of the mesh.

Important hotkeys

General

• Ctrl + Space to open Content Drawer
• Ctrl + B to find related assets
• End to drop the selected asset on the surface
• Shift + F1 to get the mouse cursor back

Mouse navigation

• LMB to move
• RMB to pan view
• MMB to drag view

Keyboard navigation

• F to focus on selected object

Graph

• 1 + RMB to create a scalar node.
• 2 + RMB to create a vector2 node.
• 3 + RMB to create a vector3 node.
• M + RMB to create a multiply node.
• L + RMB to create a lerp node.
• Drag + R to create a reroute node.

Important console commands

• stat fps to show fps
• stat unit to show frame time
• stat rhi to show gpu mem and triangles count