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Technology & experiments

Unreal Engine Tank Project

Sergei Almazov2 min read

I started learning about the Unreal Engine last year. Lockdown provided an opportunity to explore a new direction for me.

Before that, I was already familiar with game development. Working as an IT instructor, I designed and created 2 courses (how to create 2D and 3D games accordingly) on learning the Unity game engine.

Unreal Engine has opened up new possibilities for exploration, learning something new. And while investigating a new engine, I decided to do this small project in order to practice. I was really impressed what UE4 could suggest for developers - ArchViz, Automotive, Virtual Production for filming, games from 2D to 3D, AR/VR e.t.c.

As a child, there was a game about tanks on the SNES console and I took the basic mechanics from there as a basis.

Unreal Engine has also amazing water system: lakes, rivers, oceans...

To understand the engine, it was not enough for me to figure out how to add 3D models to the scene. It was important to understand how such models are created. In the past I have studied Maya. Now it was nice to find that all I need is in Blender. Since version 2.8, Blender has received an excellent and user-friendly interface that can compete with major market players.I passed official tutorials from Blender, couple of courses on LinkedIn Learning. To keep things as simple as possible I took base model from Jorge Vazquez and slightly changed it to create "tank boss" with 2 cannons.

There were also problems with imported models, where the pivot point was offset from the location I wanted. And Blender helped me in solving that task.

I created several levels that came to my mind. It was like "Why not create a level on the moon"? Great idea! And after a couple of hours the level on the Moon is ready. I also put UFO to the moon surface.

Ready-made models and materials from Quixel greatly help to advance in the development of the game. You don't have to waste time trying to find the right model for rock, canyon, or texture for snow.

Many thanks to Epic Games and the Blender team for these tools.

Used models and materials: