When I first started to try and learn UE4, I followed official Epic videos.
I like them very much because the instructor was very professional and explained everything to the tiniest details and, which many courses lack, why he was doing things.

I had to stop because I’m too new to UE and those videos are too old (2014) so the version of Unreal they use is rather different from mine and having to deal with version discrepancies on top of learning new matter was too much.

But now, I’m going back to those videos to help me fall asleep at night – seriously! – and I like them more and more.

For example, I just watched a video about materials were the instructor was Multiplying a tint – a base color – with a black and white image to get different materials and I think I never understood so clearly how and – mostly – why the Multiply nodes were used.

I’m at 82% of my current course, I might go back to the official Epic videos after that, they might very well be what I need. I’ll then decide whether it’s worth it to delve into the hundreds of hours of the C++ Udemy course.

Doing a socket tutorial, which, basically, puts a sword into the hand of a character.
After doing so, every time I swing the sword when facing the camera I have a graphical glitch; quite hard to explain, it’s like if the sword was springing out of the screen to cut my nose.
Funny.

First thing I do is go to the Questions and Answers section of the course and ‘lo and behold, what do I read as answer to that very problem?

Christopher — Instructor · 2 years ago

I’m writing a document to remember the different steps in each blueprint development and, at the moment, I’m working on montages.

Continue reading →

Wonder what the hell that means?
So do I.

That’s Unreal Engine my friend, the must in obfuscated modern nerdware™.
It’s quite new to me. Having learned difficult concepts over the years – like multi-dimensional matrix calculations or nuclear reaction equations – I either understood or didn’t.
Here, it’s more complicated: I understand what I learn, but it’s useless to understand since I will not be able to remember what I have learned when I will need it to build my own project: there are way too many functions doing way too many things. The UE4 API is so complex that if you Google ‘Unreal functions count’ or anything close to it, you won’t get any link. Not a single one. There are thousands of functions and truckloads are added every year.

Basically, the course answers questions that I don’t ask myself. So, I’m parroting what the instructor shows and will use whatever material I find over the internet as foundation for Althea IV but it would take years to know what each function does and being able to remember the name of a function you need when you need it.

By the way, ‘Get Hit Result under Cursor by Channel’ is used to determine what is under the mouse pointer at any moment to take appropriate actions, highlight an object, display a tooltip, display a health bar, stuff like that.
What an insightful name for a function, isn’t it?

I’m now at 78% of the first course, still going strong.
But grumbling every day, that’s for sure!
Damn IT nerds, I fart in their general direction!

Thinking about everything the project needs, mounts and water spring to mind.