Category Archives: Unreal Engine 4

Unreal Engine 4

Unreal Engine (UE4) – Free

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Yesterday I heard about and then received an email confirming that UE4 has been released for free. Previous subscribers will be given a 30.00 credit to the online store but the major news is no more monthly payments. I is all free now. This news could not come at a better time. I had been pondering the thought of purchasing a pro licence for Unity3d for 1500.00 and then I would need to maintain the license every year (1500.00 again). UE4 going free put a new spin on everything entirely while I wait for Unity’s big anouncment to happen today. I am hoping for Unity free to go away and have just the pro version for everyone and maybe a subscription rate because I have gotten used to Unity’s work flow but I’m not to invested time wise with it so switching would not be that much of a problem.

Time to wait for the announcement……

Unity, Unreal Engine 4

It has been a while

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Wow, I have not been here in a couple for weeks. The time has been spent productively working in Unity, UE4 and Blender. I must head to bed right now but I will post some of the work/play I have been doing the last couple of weeks when I get into work tomorrow morning.

TPS_BasicMaterials_Floor1-V02

 

This is the base model I have been working on in Unity and the view if your were looking down the hall from my room.

Town_Place_Suites_UE4-V01e

This is a screen shot of the work done in UE4. I love how this engine works including the work flow. This was from a tutorial learning the interface but I created and added my own textures. After finishing this up I tweaked the carpet and wallpaper (to the right).

Unreal Engine 4

My Home – Model

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I have been working on a model of the place I stay here in Owasso, OK using Blender, Unity with the ProBuilder asset and Unreal Engine 4 (UE4). This for the purpose of a walk through or maybe a game at some point. Since I left the pictures I am going to post at home and we no longer have access to Dropbox here at work I’ll have to wait on posting those. The modeling in Blender will be simple as it is all halls, doorways and windows (being a contract Manufacturing Engineer I live in a hotel) and the furnishings will be the same throughout the entire place until I get to the entry way. With that said I am going to model in Blender last because I know that the best and want to learn other tools. Unity with the ProBuilder asset has been very easy and presise which I love but when it comes to the materials and lighting, that will take the most time because I know nothing about that aspect of Unity. I the small tutorial for UE4 yesterday and was very impressed with the limited capabilities out of the box when it came to creating a basic room with materials/textures and shaders. Literally within minutes I had something quite nice. This this point in the tutorial, I am going to do some models in Blender, import them into UE4 and see how that works out. With just this little bit of playing around it is looking like I may do a lot of the modeling in Blender for import into UE4. I will know for sure after this 3 day weekend.

Now for the rant of the day – Last Monday (5/19/2014) I decided, since I had no work on my plate that day I would take the day off. The next weekend was going to be a three day weekend as Monday is a holiday and I would have a bunch of work to do Tuesday – Friday and it could possibly bleed over to the next Tuesday and since I would not be able to take Friday or Tuesday off and make it a 4 day weekend because of the work load I made the decision to have two three day weekends instead of one four day weekend. That was a run on sentence I couldn’t break up….

Anyway, prior to the start of my task for the week I was waiting on other people complete their tasks so I could receive their data and start mine. It is now Friday, I have not received any data from the other parties and I just opened an email stating their task will have to be pushed out and they could not give an ECD as to when it would be complete. This means I could have had my four day weekend and not taken two three day weekends. This may not sound like it is a problem but I do not like three day weekends at all.

To top it off, this data I was to receive was supposed to be the exact same data I received during our testing. No changes required, take the same information and complete my task. The email I just go tells me that the information I had during testing was doggy doo doo and the testing was worth nothing….. 🙁  <end rant>

 

I’ll upload the screen shots of my (small amount) of work so far as soon as I get home, and I am leaving early today to start the weekend.

Miscellaneous, Unreal Engine 4

Unreal Engine, Google Glass etc.

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I have been playing with my Google Glass the last couple of weeks and as I had suspected, it is a rather expensive toy. Don’t get me wrong I do like playing with this toy and I am learning to use more and more of the features all the time. One item I really like is the ability to look at my eBooks using the Amazon reader in a web browser. I can pull up one of my reference books (Unity, Blender, Access etc.), look up an issue/problem I am having at the moment and without taking my eyes off the screen (almost) get a solution and continue with my project. This came in handy with some scripting errors I had in Unity.

The next new toy/program is the result of a new pricing structure for Unreal Engine 4. Just starting with Unity (the Free version) and wanting to see what the other game engines could do at 19.00 a month without any penalty for canceling the subscription I thought what the hell, I love learning new things especially in the 3d world so why not go for it. To me the 19.00 is well worth it when I usually can not get as much use out of any free 30 day trials I have ever downloaded. This way, it is up to me as to the amount of time I need to experiment and I can cancel at any time if I decide it is not for me or I feel Unity has everything I need. 30 days to try Unity Pro like I said is not enough for a hobbyist to experiment with all the bells and whistles and what makes Unreal so attractive is when or if I cancel the subscription I can still use the program uninhibited. I just can’t get updates to the software although I would still owe them a 5% royalty off the gross profits which of course would be a cost of doing business so the 5% is not exactly 5% when you look a the tax deductions involved. A tax deduction is not a dollar for dollar savings but it does lower that 5% figure.

Having more choices at my finger tips at the beginning of my adventure into new hobbies is great as far as I am concerned and at 19.00 for this first 30 days is a no brainer.