Planning to clean this doc up by at latest: 4/13/2023
For now, please excuse the messiness and feel free to suggest edits
This repo aims to assist in the discoverability of Unreal Engine learning resources, covering everything from art to coding. Learning Unreal Engine alone as an indie or aspiring game developer can be extremely difficult and thus I hope this helps ease your journey somewhat.
Table of Contents
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What does this repo actually contain?
At the moment, nothing too much. The goal is to be pretty thorough, but for now, this will be a place to add in various resources I run into over time as well as larger suggestions I end up running into.
tl;dr: I need to come back and rewrite this question in the future
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I want to get into game development but have never done game dev before. Am I at the right place?
I - Jawad - have two very very strong recommendations:
- Make the simplest game possible, all the way from scratch to full release. It's alright if you have a dream game, but there are so many complexities and aspects to a large game that you definitely want to start as small as possible then work your way up to larger projects. Start with a sample tutorial project, slap on a couple levels, add menus and such, and release it! You'll be very glad you did
- If you have 0 prior game dev experience, then I suggest starting out with Unity instead of Unreal. For Unity, there's an extremely diverse set of learning resources for Unity development- massive depth and breadth of community resources. In contrast, Unreal has a very high learning curve with a far more sparse set of learning resources (hence why this repo is being created). Thus, Unity is a great place to first cut your teeth in reducing the pain on creating games and then you can later switch to Unreal once you have at least some basic experience.
Disclaimer: I started out with Unity years ago during my college freshman year before I had done any programming or the like at all (Software Engineer background) and thus I'm heavily biased towards starting out with Unity first. Unreal has become both easier to use and easier to learn since then, but the learning curve is still pretty darn strict. However, perhaps this repo will grow to the point where it'll provide you with what you need to journey forth with Unreal immediately =)
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TODO: I want to learn Unreal. Where should I start? (Recommended before following questions!)
TODO: Suggest grabbing a course off of Udemy to start off with (and when it's on sale). Also mention course I used
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I have no background in VFX, including particles and materials. How do I get started?
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TODO: How do I get started with animations in Unreal?
TODO: Suggest wiiiidie variety of vids. Disclaimer that not fully confident here and SHOULD be an easy way, but only way known so far as a solo dev (without learning directly from others)
This section covers resources specific to learning how to use Unreal
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Unreal Official Free "Courses" - TODO, sparse in some ways but many hidden gems here for both beginners and advanced devs
TODO (only have been looking at this recently), but makes it easy to find some nice gems for advanced concepts such as Dynamic Audio. Worth quickly looking through what's available here
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Unreal Official Youtube - Large but messy gem of resources
The official Unreal Engine channel has a ton of resources. If you're trying to learn a new component of Unreal - or just trying to get perspective on how professionals work with Unreal - then drop on by to this channel. Recommended to check out playlists as well as use the search bar.
As a quick disclaimer, these vids do have various quality and utility. Thus, YMMV (your mileage may vary)
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Mathew Wadstein - Creator of the legendary WTF series
One day you'll find yourself searching what exactly a Blueprint node does or how exactly a specific feature works. That day, you'll find yourself drawn to this Youtube channel full of simple to understand yet in depth explanations of exactly how individual nodes and features work. And on that day, you'll remember the legendary channel (or at least video series) that became your savior.
Seriously though, the official Unreal docs needs to get on this level. Epic, please hire Mathew Wadstein.
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CodeLikeMe - Massive variety of tutorials, useful as a starting base for new concepts such as IK
This is a begrudgingly given recommendation, as the channel's quality of videos isn't the greatest- often they're 30-40+ minutes long involving the dev figuring things out as he goes. However, this channel is a massive treasure trove diving into all sorts of concepts. In addition, once you're aware ahead of time that the dev doesn't always have the "best" (most efficient) approaches as well as that the vids often are so long due to following the dev's natural development process, then this channel becomes extremely valuable and understandable for why you'd want to dive in.
In short, don't go to this channel if you're looking for high quality tutorials with best practices but definitely check out this channel for various overviews on how to implement various extremely diverse concepts.
Thank you for the channel creator for doing this for so many years and for creating so many vids so often, this channel is a really damn good treasure trove to get an idea on how to start out.
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Nitrogen - TODO (wide variety of very high quality tutorials)
TODO
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Tom Looman's YT - TODO (in depth tutorials from a professional dev and skilled teacher)
TODO
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Ryan Laley - TODO (widely recommended by others)
TODO
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Ryan Manning - TODO (widely recommended by others)
TODO
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Matthew Palaje - Variety of popular tutorials including both Unreal-specific and general game dev tutorials
This channel has a wide variety of content that may or may not appeal to you. I'd suggest looking through the wide selection of videos and watching those that pique your interest, such as the recreating Overwatch ability tutorials.
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Udemy - Various paid courses and a highly recommended starting point for beginners
Udemy is an extremely useful resource for beginners, with courses ranging on how to create your first games to Tom Looman's Multiplayer Games with C++ course.
Key note regarding price: Unless you're extremely impatient (or want to support the creators more with expensive purchases), I highly recommend never buying a course at full price. Udemy has a sale practically every month for courses and - especially towards the end of the year, including Black Friday until New Year's - every course across the site even drops down to around $5-11. Highly recommend to wait and check frequently until a course is around $5-20 before buying.
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Skillshare - Subscription based course site with some overlap with the same courses on Udemy
Compared to Udemy, Skillshare doesn't offer a very wide variety of Unreal-specific courses (or game development courses in general from my experience), but it does have significant overlap with some Unreal courses on Udemy. Thus, if you already have a Skillshare subscription or interested in getting one for other sort of courses as well, then highly recommend checking out what's available. Who knows, you may find some nice quality gems or at least save some money compared to buying overlapping courses from Udemy
TODO: Add various links from that one reddit post regarding personal journey w/ learning Unreal's animation systems
This section is currently a catch-all for all things that go into creating a level, including lighting. Will break up into further sections as the need arises.
As a side note, I'm trying to refrain from bloating this file with general resources for becoming an environmental artist, including both Unreal specifics as well as regarding the essentials + basics (eg, creation of game ready assets and otherwise modifying assets outside of Unreal). If you're interested in that sort of thing but feeling lost, feel free to reach out to me directly.
-Quixel YT - Rich resource giving good overviews regarding building environments
This channel does have a strong focus on using Quixel tools in general, but there's also many quality videos regarding building environments within Unreal specifically. Recommend checking them out.
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Lighting Beginner Course - Extremely valuable introduction to lighting in Unreal
This course covers the different lighting options in Unreal and how they work at a high level, but more importantly to what I've seen, this course answers many frequently asked questions regarding many common lighting issues people face. I recommend this as an essential course for all indie devs
-Lightmass and Beyond Video - TODO (recommended in depth for lighting in Unreal)
TODO (need to watch it all the way through myself)
51Daedalus - Home of the Unreal 4 Lighting Academy
TODO. 51Daedalus created the highly recommended and highly praised Lighting Academy series, which will teach even a beginner on how to beautifully light all sorts of different scenes.
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Valkyrie Sound - Sound-related YT tutorials
This YouTube channel provides a wide variety of Unreal-specific tutorials on creating sound effects, ranging from what specific sound cue nodes do to how to bullet flybys to adaptive audio. If you're interested in how to create various SFX in Unreal, then this is the channel for you.
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UnrealCG - Popular channel with a wide variety of quality visual effect tutorials (TODO)
TODO
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Dean Ashford - Wide variety of visaul effect tutorials, ranging from solid particle systems to special shaders (TODO after more usage)
TODO
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Ben Cloward - Collections of detailed visual effect tutorials (TODO)
TODO as haven't personally used any of these tutorials and also includes a bit more than just visual effects
Notable collections:
- UE4 Material Editor - Shader Creation. This playlist includes 46 videos but note that's due to this large playlist also including the videos from the following playlists as well
- Rain Materials in Unreal Engine 4
- Procedural Noise Materials in Unreal Engine 4
- UE4 Water Material Tutorial
- UE4 Foliage and Vegetation
- UE4 Ray Tracing
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gameDev Output - TODO (Thorough series of Niagara videos, need to look through other videos more)
TODO
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Gabriel Aguiar Prod - Broad set of Unity VFX tutorials which are easily applicable to Unreal VFX
TODO: Answer, what's the difference between Cascade and Niagara?
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Useful Starting Guides
These guides are listed in my personal recommendation order to go through:
Focusing on materials/shaders...
- Excellent Single Vid Material Intro Vid w/ Realtime 3D NowYoshi. Sooo good, excellent efficient introduction for beginners which teaches a wide variety of common techniques as well
- Unreal's Official Intro to Materials Series. A bit old but not outraded and goes through all key aspects of materials rather thoroughly
Focusing on older Cascade tools...
- Particle Systems Intro Vid w/ Realtime 3D NowYoshi. Another pretty solid succinct intro tutorial, this time on particle systems and several common techniques related to them. Note that this is with the older Cascade particle systems so may not be entirely relevant for you.
- Unreal's Official Intro to Cascade Series. Again this tutorial series is about the older Cascade tool for creating particles, but it should again give you a pretty good foundation before moving onto the more powerful Niagara. Feel free to quickly skim through these vids to see how valuable they'd be to you
Finally focusing on Niagara...
- Udemy Niagara VFX Course by Gabriel Aguiar.
- For more in depth Niagara knowledge and experience, go through gameDev Output's extensive video series on Niagara as well
- TODO: More solid Niagara guides!
Note that you can skip all Cascade related tutorials if you feel that understanding and modifying older particle systems is not relevant for you.
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Additional Quality Courses
Here are additional quality paid courses which I have not personally taken but have been used by many satisfied students.
- VFXApprentice - Containsa range of VFX courses for beginners and up, including both 2D and 3D VFX
- Overdraw's Advanced Materia VFX Course - Advanced VFX course which requires "basic knowledge of working in Houdini and Substance Designer and an intermediate level in working in UE4"
This section aims to provide a non-exhaustive list of very notable game dev resources to help you on your journey. Personal recommendation is to subscribe to these channels and frequently watch various game design Youtube videos that interest you in your casual free time.
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GDC (YT) - Collection of various professional talks given for Game Developers Conferences
An extremely valuable resource to keep in your back pocket. Not much else to say, other than you should take an immediate peak at their catalog of YT videos to get an idea of what game changers you may be missing.
As an aside, do note that the GDC Vault itself exists as well, which is the official collection of recorded GDC talks. Not all recorded GDC talks are free and the Youtube channel doesn't contain all free recorded talks either.
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Game Maker's Toolkit - Extremely popular general game design YT channel
If you haven't seen GMTK yet, you really really should. Extremely valuable YouTube channel covering a very wide variety of game design topics.
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Adam Millard - The Architect of Games - Very popular general game design YT channel with his own spin and approach
Similar to GMTK, Adam goes into a wide variety of game design topics using various games as examples. A large number of videos also try to boil down the lessons into a few key takeaways or even acronym to use in your game design journey
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Snoman Gaming - TODO (Broad game design channel w/ focus on good game design BUT what's their key differentiating factor?)
TODO
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Design Doc - Specializes in graphic design as well as comparing and contrasting good + bad examples from various games for wide variety of game design topics
This channel often touches on its unique topics that isn't covered in other popular channels, while often using both strong good and bad examples to hone in on the primary points at hand. In addition, this channel also covers graphic + UI design in the very popular Good Design, Bad Design series.
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Razbuten - Game design channel full of interesting takes on various mechanics and design elements, often including takes and perspectives you may not have considered before
Razbuten is a pretty interesting channel with his own unique twist on game design concepts, ranging from opinionated but eye opening pieces on various mechanics to the Gaming For A Non-Gamer series showing how non-gamers view games.
Definitely a channel that will broaden your perspective and make you a better game designer all around
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New Frame Plus - TODO (Animation in games)
TODO
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Game Score Fanfare - TODO (Music w/ focus on games and relevant analyses)
TODO
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Sideways - TODO (Music, not a focus on games but - as a non-musician - this is really good and much easier to watch than straightforward music theory vids)
TODO
There are various compilations on writing for video game and fiction in general (like this one), but this section lists resources that I've personally used and loved. Note that I don't have a storytelling background of any sort, so these may be overly geared towards beginnings
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Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques (Book) - TODO (Currently reading, goes into basics and key elements really well at least)
TODO
- Getting Started in Real Time VFX? Start Here! (Real Time VFX thread)
TODO
TODO (Add Unreal Slackers discord?) (Unreal official forum)
TODO (Don't feel comfortable freely listing discord links atm. Hmm... may need to remove this section)
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ArtStation - TODO (Need to use this place more myself too)
TODO
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Real Time VFX - TODO (Great community of VFX artists but haven't delved in at all yet really)
TODO
TODO: I haven't really used any of these, so need to go over these -> understand why they're valuable and unique -> turn into spoiler/expandable format with more details