Mo has been silent for a while. That’s due to him spending his days finishing projects and yelling at Unreal Engine. The goal is getting to a point where we’re comfortable bringing together Houdini workflows and UE. That road is long.
To discover Unreal, the first thing we found useful was building a sandbox in which we could import 3d meshes, play with FX and test shading techniques. We set it up sloppily but straightforward. In this first video covering our efforts, we’re gonna build camera controls that behave like our editor camera controls. Using Blueprints.
Links
Matthias Winckelmann’s UE quickstart workshop.
Hello Moritz,
Thanks for another interesting tutorial. I wanted to pick your brain on Linux.
I have been looking for benchmarks and I found that on Linux, Houdini performances are better. At least, according to what I found on-line. I wanted to hear your opinion on that, I am sure there are pros and cons to consider. Most of the software you use, is available on this platform and I am sure it is something that you have considered. I am aware there’s no photoshop.
Another question is about your personal background. I am a self thaught 3D Artist, recently touching on subjects as Python, C and I have to admit it takes time to assimilate certain concepts. I was curious to understand if you have a background in Computer Science and you naturally evolved into the more technical side of 3D or if you had to learn it the hard way as I am doing. I guess I am looking for some comforting words, ahaha! Thanks again for this amazing collection of resources!
Hi Giacomo,
regarding Linux: It is indeed faster. In the setups I tested around 20-25%. I ran Linux Mint for a while but went back to Win 10 due to the fact that most of our audience still is on Windows, also I was missing an editing tool (although by now Resolve might fill that gap). The only truly annoying thing I found in Linux was mounting a NAS – that’s cumbersome, arcane and generally not user friendly. Apart from that – there’s no reason not to use Linux IMHO.
Regarding my educational path I dropped out of a CS program and then went on to study digital media, which is a mixture of design, animation and programming. So yeah, I’ve been scripting on the side for most of my life. Started out with BASIC when I was 12, then hopped a bit from Pascal to Delphi to VisualBasic. In university we used SML, Assembler, Java, Javascript, Processing, Arduino, PHP, HTML. That definitely helped when getting started scripting in any other tool, as the languages have some similarities / you get used to reading docs & references.
I think self teaching is possible though if you have the stamina and take your time. I usually recommend starting with programming basics through Daniel Shiffman’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvjgXvBlbQiydffZU7m1_aw
Cheers, Mo
Thanks for this tutorial, very helpful. looking forward to others in this series.
Wow: as ever, you’ve managed to create an incredibly dense yet clear info-dump 🙂 Time to start getting my head round Unreal, I guess, not least because of the incredible convergence of technologies going on.
I’d love one of your and Manuel’s coffee-time chats about the whole topic of convergence. Blender’s Eevee renderer seems have been the first real cross-over, bringing almost-realtime rendering to the non-game sector, but we’ll soon have Redshift RT doing the same sort of thing. And if 3D artists in the offline world (like me) though they could get away without needing to understand game engines, Jon Favreau’s use of real-time game engine rendering to power the StudioCraft LED-wall volumes in The Mandalorian – well, that’s kinda put paid to that 🙂 It’s hard enough trying to keep up with all the updates to Houdini and Redshift at times, but these macro-level shifts in technology need to be watched too…
Thanks for this quick Unreal primer, it’s hugely appreciated – and the way you edit and concentrate them down is a god-send to time-poor folk like me. Thank you thank you thank you!