Where to Start as an Artist learning Unreal Engine 4 as an Art User

Brian "Panda" Choi

Hey everyone:

So, with the recent completion of an unexpected environment art test in UE4, I have realized that I need to put the brakes on additional individual art projects and spend time learning about the Unreal Engine 4 game engine beyond just learning how to import textures, FBXs, navigating the UI, etc. A lot of this, in my head and if I am not mistaken, are skills Art Leads need to learn.

My question: Assuming I want to be a working artist who can stay in the game engine modifying, creating content like materials, scripting visual assets with Blueprint, where should I start, and with what resources beyond UE4 Documentation, learning how to be an actually effective artist in UE4?

Big Issues I know I need to learn right now:
1) Lighting Environments to a final look
2) Control and understanding over all lighting and post-processing options
3) How to create materials from scratch in Material Editor. (There's so many nodes, what do they do? How am I supposed to use them?)
4) How to modify existing textures to a material to get effects like color palatte swaps, or animating text across a space

These are the big issues I ran into, and I felt really uncomfortable and helpless within the Material Editor and lighting tools.

A lot of this seems to be math, which I have not had to really think about in the way engineers have in several years since uni.

It felt terrifying, especially in the context of the art test (I'm originally a Character Artist, so this was a curve ball when they asked me to make an environment).


In terms of approach, am I to just meet the engine with specific questions as I NEED them? Or should I pull all stops and just recreate existing examples, just slowly learning what they do and are even if I have no personal use for them at this moment in time?

JedTheKrampus

The very first thing you should do is download the Content Examples in the Learn tab of the launcher. Explore all the maps and look inside all the materials and try to understand what they do. Click on all the post process volumes and look at the properties. I promise you'll learn a lot.

Brian "Panda" Choi

@Jed: So, if I am understanding this correctly, even though the materials aren't relevant to any projecs I'm working on right now, just take the time to recreate those materials with their given textures?

JedTheKrampus

You shouldn't necessarily try to recreate them, unless it's something that you want to know. Remember, if you want to know how to do a certain thing, you can always just open up the content examples again. Just read and study the node graph.

billymcguffin

The unreal engine youtube channel has some good beginning tutorials (and some more advanced ones as well). Also check out the documentation which has a reference for nearly everything in the engine, including explanations for many of the material nodes. Also for materials, many UDK/UE3 material tutorials will still work in UE4.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Does Material Editor understanding just come with time, as people are forced to accomplish certain effects or looks?

For example, I am still bothered by my approach to problem solving because it still involves just "fixing the texture" instead of figuring out a new solution through just the material editor. At best, I have confident experience using the sliders in Marmoset Toolbag 2, but that does not count in any real way, I would think.

billymcguffin

It will come with experience. Often times you'll watch a tutorial about a completely unrelated material to the one you want but you'll still learn something which can be transferred to something you want to do.

Often times for a simple prop, all that's required is just the texture and there's no need for fancy shader tricks.

Brian "Panda" Choi

I'd imagine that creating a full on environment will definitely require knowledge of the material Editor? This was a feeling I encountered during this last environment art test. Felt completely out of my league.

Chase

I'm with ya on understanding the Material Editor. It can open so many doors if you know how to use it. There are a ton of nodes, and knowing what they do is one thing, but knowing how they interact with each other is another thing entirely. It really will just come with practice. If you're lucky, the studio will have a tech artist already haha.

Finalhart

If i had zero knownedge of UE4 i would start with these:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZlv_N0_O1gasd4IcOe9Cx9wHoBB7rxFl

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZlv_N0_O1gbQjgY0nDwZNYe_N8IcYWS-

Zak Parrish teaching how to use UDK since ancient times xD

Yeah, material editor is something you want to be good at if you want to use all UE4 potential, specially for environments can be a huge time saver. This one covers almost everything you may want to know about materials in UDK but it can be applied to UE4 easily:

http://vimeo.com/channels/udk