How long have I stalled? Stagnated? Secluded myself? This all must change if my goal to create a monstrous world is to be actualized.

After the controversial fiasco with Unity's pricing policy, I figured a long-term-er option in game development using Unreal Engine 5 (UE5) because it seems to have everything Unity does plus more realistic graphical content.

Kicking off my learning with a Third Person template, my first lesson involved the IK retargeter. This tool duplicates and adjusts an animated skeletal mesh to fit a new one rapidly and conveniently.

Now how does UE5 ensure different animations in a single mesh transition smoothly between one another? Enter Blend Space 1D - an animation timeline chart and a dope sheet in Blender terms.

A notable feature in Blend Space is the Preview Point, that green cross on the line connecting two animation keyframes. In-between animation rigs, that little gizmo sets the preview value of interconnected animations; the closer the Preview Point is to a keyframe, the more it presents itself on a skeletal mesh.

I tested the tool by putting three animation keyframes - idle, shoot, and jog - in a single Blend Space. To my wonder, placing the Preview Point between the shooting and jogging keyframes created a 'shoot & run' animation. Looks like my months training with Blender were not entirely wasteful!

The average construction worker should tell you what blueprints are for: to describe how a project is built in intricate detail. In UE, they have a direct role in governing how objects behave in numerous conditions. There is much more complexity to this graph; more of which I plan to decypher later on.

To be entirely truthful, I am having a troubling time remembering each blueprint action on my lonesome. Since I will remain in Hong Kong for the majority of this month, where OpenAI had un-sponsored for undisclosed reasons, I had to use Opera VPN to access my trusty coding companion ChatGPT. But that is a tale for a later time.

My game character now needs a solid shotgun instead of a mime's weapon. Entering SketchFab as suggested by my tutorial video, the one made by Jonathan Steylaerts will suffice.

The shotgun materials need their appearances mapped like how actions need blueprints to run sequentially in-game. This mesh has five maps in total: base color, metallic, roughness, normal, and ambient occlusion. Today is not the day I individually explain what each of these maps are or how they alter the mesh's appearance.