Hi everyone! First post, first day here! I have a graphic design background, went to school for 2 years and then I realize I would be happier working in game design compagny.So I learned all the basic adobe sofware but I really want to get into Vfx for games.To be clear im pretty lost haha.All I know is Unity and Unreal are the 2 main software to create Vfx for games.
Am I supposed to learn blueprint in order to create Vfx in unreal engine?
Im gonna be honest here, I almost watched all the particule tutorial on Youtube
And the only thing I really dont understand is blueprint, Everything else make me thing of after effect wish is great!
So I guess my question is Could someone explain me blueprint and why I would need it or not.The main thing I understand is blueprint are simplified Code to help people that are to programmer to program things hahaha. Thanks a lot for your read and by now u probably know english is not my main language so thanks for your understanding!
Blueprints are the UE4’s visual scripting language, and so is their role: scripting.
You can do most VFX without learning Blueprints. We’re talking about things that just appear and “play”, without any further interaction, like explosions, muzzle flashes, spell projectiles, e.t.c… All you really need for them is Cascade/Niagara to edit particle emitters and some texture and mesh authoring tools - Photoshop and Blender/Maya/Max should be enough.
I’d also highly recommend you to learn the UE4’s material creation system, as many common techniques, such as “soulercosters” or UV distortion are imposible to do without basic material knowlege (techically, UE4’s materials are more like shaders in other engines).
Blueprints come into play when you want to create some more advanced effects, that interact with their enviroment in some way: blood, that spawns splatter decals on impact, smoke, that is affected by wind, character wounds, that appear where the bullet/sword hits and stuff like that. For that, you’ll need to understand blueprints, as you are likely to be expected to set up such systems at least partially on your own, maybe with some tech artist’s guidance, if your studio happens to have one.
You may also require bleprint knowlege to set up your VFX in game: to make a bullet actually spawn an impact FX on hit, but it depends on the studio: in some cases i was expected to do everything, from first concepts to getting ready FX into the game myself, and in others i only worked with particles, and all the “getting it in the game” work was done by tech artists.