Intro to UE4

Remember To Setup Your Project!

These VARlabs lessons use Unreal Engine 5 and the Master Starter Project. If you have not downloaded or set up either of these resources, click here to get started.

Woah! How does it feel to be inside a AAA game engine? Do you feel cool yet? Because you are. You’ve just begun your journey to becoming a Virtual Reality content creator.

After completing this tutorial, you will be familiar with some of the foundational components of Unreal Engine 5. You’ll also have the opportunity to experience your project in virtual reality. There’s a lot of new stuff in front of you, so let’s jump right in!

Hover over an image to zoom in

This is the Level Editor. Here you’ll be able to create your worlds, browse your assets, and edit the actors in your level.

Actors are objects that can be placed in the world. They can be physical objects like a wall, moving objects like an AI controlled entity, or invisible objects like a player spawn point.

If your Level Editor does not look like the image above, you can choose to change your layout to the UE4 Classic Layout:

• Click on Window in the main toolbar.
• Under Layout, select Load Layout > UE4 Classic Layout. Your layout should now look the same.

Navigating Your World

The large panel in the center of the editor window is the Viewport.

The Viewport is the window into your world. Here you can place and manipulate Actors in your level.

Navigating the world through the viewport takes practice!

• To rotate: hold the right-mouse button and drag.
• To move: press W, A, S, and D while holding any mouse button.

We find it’s easiest to navigate the world by pressing the right-mouse button to look and using WASD to move.

Additional Controls:

• To move: hold the left-mouse button and drag.
• To move up and down: press E and Q while holding any mouse button.
• To move forward and backward: scroll the middle-mouse button.
• To move up, down, left, and right: hold the middle-mouse button and drag.
• To get unexpected behavior: bash on the keyboard.

Camera Speed

Navigating with precision can be hard with the camera moves so quickly. The Camera Speed button in the upper right allows you to change your movement speed in the Viewport.

You can also change your Camera Speed by holding a mouse button and scrolling your middle mouse wheel. Note that changing the speed this way will not adjust the number shown on the Camera Speed button.

Challenge:

Navigate the house you’re inside of to find the 3 golden pyramids. Don’t press the Play button, this is your time to practice the in-editor controls! Try to not go through any walls or closed doors.

Viewing In VR

Above the Viewport is the Toolbar, which contains buttons for common commands in the editor.

• Click the Play button to run your game in the editor.
• Click the three dots next to the Play button to open a dropdown menu. Click VR Preview to run the game in your Head Mounted Display (HMD).

If the VR Preview button is grayed out, it means your HMD is not set up properly. First make sure you followed all the Setup Steps. Then:

• Close UE5.
• Unplug your HMD.
• Plug in your HMD and make sure your computer recognizes it.
• Open UE5.

Placing Actors

It’s time to put some Actors in our level!

Remember, Actors are objects that can be placed in the world.

Beneath the Viewport is the Content Browser, which provides access to the project’s assets and files.

Let’s create our own room. In order to do that, let’s start in an empty level:

• Open the Lesson1 folder.
• Double click the MyRoom level to open it.

Great. Now we have some space to work with. Time to place some Actors!

• Open up the Meshes folder.

The Meshes folder contains a bunch of Static Meshes separated into folders. This project has a huge set of starter assets for you to play with later, but for our room, we’re going to stick to the InteriorArchViz assets.

Static Meshes are 3D Models that we can use in our world.

• Open the InteriorArchViz > Architecture > Spacers folder.
• Click and drag the Spacer_500x500 static mesh into the viewport.
• If the static mesh appears black (with LIGHTING NEEDS TO BE REBUILT message), hit Build in the main toolbar and select Build Lighting Only.

You just placed your first Actor!

Moving Actors

Now that we have a floor in our level, let’s position it at the origin of the world.

The Details panel in the lower right shows all the details of a selected Actor.

Right now, we care about the Transform - Location, Rotation, and Scale - of the floor Actor.

• Set the Location of the floor to [0, 0, 0].
• Double click on the Actor in the Outliner (top right) to make the Viewport focus on the mesh.

The Transform of an Actor can also be edited using the 3D handles in the viewport:

As you can see, you can change the mode of the 3D handles in the upper right corner of the Viewport. The Location, Rotation, and Scale handle modes can also be selected with the W,E, and R keys respectively.

Alternatively, you can also modify the transform in the Details panel directly. You can even click on the fields and drag left/right to make small adjustments!

Challenge:

Place 3 walls and a ceiling in order to create an open room. Find the appropriate static meshes in the Walls and Ceilings folders.

Use this as an opportunity to get familiar with using the 3D handles and the Details panel for transforming Actors.

Tips:

• Pay attention to the titles of the static meshes to know what type and size they are.
• Hold Alt and move a static mesh to move a copy of the mesh.
• Right-click a static mesh Actor and hover the Transform sub-menu to get more transforming options.
• To delete an Actor, select it and press the Delete key.

Using some tips:

Here’s an example finished room:

• Now that you’ve made some changes to your level, press Ctrl+S to save all your changes!

Placing Lights

Let’s add a light inside your room:

The Select Mode dropdown in the toolbar allows access to different UE5 tools like landscape editing, foliage placing, mesh painting, destructible objects/environments with the fracture mode, brush editing and animation. The default Select mode, the mode we currently care about, allows you to place common Actors - like lights - into your level.

To add a light:

• In Select mode, open the Lights submenu.
• Click and drag a Point Light into the center of your room.

Unreal Engine 5 features five different types of light: Directional, Point, Spot, Rect and Sky.

Directional Lights simulate light emitted from a source that is infinitely far away. All shadows cast by this light will be parallel, making this the ideal choice for simulating sunlight.

Point Lights work much like a real world light bulb, emitting light equally in all directions from a single point in space.

Spot Lights emit light from a single point in a cone shape.

Rect Lights emit light from a rectangular plane. This is useful to simulate light sources with rectangular areas e.g., a television screen.

Sky Lights capture ambient light information from the far distances of the map.

Challenge:

Click on your new Point Light and edit some of its properties in the Details panel. The most fun properties to edit are:

• Light Color
• Intensity
• Attenuation Radius

Lighting for VR is tricky because it’s an expensive process, and VR requires optimal performance. For that reason, we should try to use static lighting wherever possible.

Static lighting is less expensive than Dynamic lighting because all the calculations are “baked” into the textures before the game even runs. In this way, our VR experience will not have to calculate any lighting for lights that are set to static. The draw back is that you can’t change a static light’s color or intensity mid-game. Static lights also don’t cast dynamic shadows.

To make your light static:

• Set Mobility to Static in the Details panel while the light is selected.

Once your light is in the correct place:

• Click Build in the Toolbar above the Viewport.

The engine will then calculate all the lighting and bake it into the scene.

Your lighting is now baked into the world! To demonstrate what this does, go ahead and move your light, or delete it all together. As you can see, the baked lighting still remains. The moment you press Build again, all old lighting data will be lost and the new placement of your light will be baked into the scene.

To summarize:

• Use Static lighting if you only need the light to illuminate the scene. This is best in terms of performance.
• Use Stationary lighting when you want the light to change color, change intensity, or cast dynamic shadows.
• Use Movable lighting when you want the light to be able to move and also change color, intensity, or cast dynamic shadows. This is the most expensive type of lighting in terms of performance.

If you ever forget, hover any of the light’s Mobility options in the Details/strong> panel for a helpful tooltip.