THURSDAY
I had eagerly anticipated this class ever since my introduction to Unreal, and Serra did not disappoint. In this session, she introduced us to the material editor, providing a detailed walkthrough of its functionalities. The knowledge gained from this class fuelled my desire to further explore the material editor at my own pace, allowing me to become more familiar with its interface and layout.
Once back home, I dived into several tutorials on texturing in Unreal, the most insightful one was about transferring procedural textures from blender to unreal. This tutorial helped me a lot with my Island project. Here are the key insights I learned from the experience –
Creating stunning visuals and bringing virtual worlds to life is an art form, and one of the essential aspects of achieving this in Unreal Engine is mastering material creation. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the intricacies of crafting materials in Unreal Engine, exploring the tools, techniques, and tips to elevate your game or project to new visual heights.
Understanding Unreal Engine Materials:
Unreal Engine’s material system is a powerful tool that allows developers and artists to control the appearance of surfaces, meshes, and objects within the game world. Materials in Unreal are created using a node-based system, providing a visual representation of the material’s logic and flow.
Getting Started:
- Material Editor:
- Launch the Material Editor within Unreal Engine to begin crafting your materials. This interface allows you to build complex shaders using a network of nodes, each contributing to the material’s final appearance.
- Textures and Maps:
- Incorporate textures and maps to add detail and realism to your materials. Utilize albedo, normal, roughness, and metallic maps to define how light interacts with the surface, creating depth and complexity.
- Parameters and Constants:
- Experiment with parameters and constants to make your materials dynamic. This allows for real-time adjustments and customization within the engine, providing flexibility during development.
Advanced Techniques:
- Material Instances:
- Harness the power of material instances to create variations of your materials without duplicating the entire shader network. This efficient workflow facilitates quick changes and iterations.
- PBR (Physically Based Rendering):
- Embrace PBR principles to achieve realistic lighting and shading in your materials. Unreal Engine’s PBR system simulates the physical properties of materials, resulting in accurate and visually appealing renditions.
- Material Functions:
- Streamline your workflow by using material functions. These reusable components allow you to organize and optimise your material logic, promoting efficiency and maintainability.
FRIDAY
In this class, we delved into the significance of Anticipation in animated motions, applying our knowledge to a unique task: animating a Ball with a tail. This exercise merged our learnings from prior assignments, combining squash and stretch techniques from bouncing ball animations with pendulum-like movements for the tail.
Anticipation, a key animation principle, creates expectations before actions in animated sequences. It adds realism by mimicking how people naturally prepare for movements in the real world. This visual “breath” before an action not only builds momentum but also engages viewers, guiding their focus and enhancing emotional impact
George presented an intriguing video featuring squirrels playing in a garden. Breaking down their movements, he pointed out a fascinating detail: the tail’s delayed response. As the squirrels moved or jumped, we noticed how their tails followed through moments after the body. This observation was crucial for our task with the ball with the tail.
This session provided a real-world perspective on how anticipation works in nature, inspiring us to apply these observations to our animations. Analysing animal movements offered valuable insights, enriching our understanding of timing and the nuanced interplay between body and appendages in animation.
Upon receiving feedback on my animation blocking, I discovered an issue: the tail wasn’t synchronising correctly with the body’s movements. George offered an insightful analogy, similar to a rollercoaster with its buggies. He encouraged me to envision the lead buggy’s motion and how the subsequent ones would follow the same path. This analogy significantly aided in visualising and rectifying the tail’s movement.
Implementing George’s feedback, I decided to refine the tail’s motion to achieve better synchronisation with the body. The rollercoaster & buggy analogy served as a helpful mental model, enabling me to adjust the tail’s movements to ensure a smoother and more coherent animation sequence.