Design Post Update: basics

Showing posts with label basics. Show all posts

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Read BSPs - The Building Blocks of UE4 Now

Scene showing BSP Brushes

What is a BSP?

A BSP stands for Binary Space Partition. These are objects that placed onto your level. You find these in the Place Mode. There are a variety of different shapes to use for a BSP including cubes, cylinders and stairs.

Place Mode

Step 1: Dragging it out

Before we show how to drag in a BSP, we will first get rid of all of the BSPs already in the level. You can either hide or delete these by using the Scene Outliner.

Blank Level

After all of the existing BSPs are removed, you can now drag in your own BSPs. You can start with an easy shape, for example a cube. You drag it out by clicking on to BSPs on the Place Mode, select your shape and drag it on to the level with your mouse.

Block

Cylinder

Cone

Step 2: Adjustments

When it’s dragged out on screen, you can use the mouse to adjust the camera angles so you know where exactly you want the shape. Also, by pressing the Space Bar, you change what sort of adjustments you want including direction, rotation and size.

Direction

Rotation

Scale

If you ever want to use a BSP to make a building or a lighthouse, you need to make your BSP hollow. You do this by selecting your BSP, going to the Details Panel and ticking where is says HOLLOW.

Hollow

If adjusted the size before you made it hollow, you will notice that it goes back to its original size. If this happens, you can still scale it back to how you had it. When a BSP is hollow, you can view it from the inside, you cannot do this when it’s solid.

Inside Block

Step 3:Stairs

When you have a hollow cylinder or cube, you can also be able to drag in stairs into them. There are 3 types of stairs curved, linear and spiral. When making adjustments to your stairs, we recommend, using side view.

Curved Stairs

Spiral Stairs

Linear Stairs

Side View

Once you have all of your BSPs dragged onto your level, you can manipulate them for any use for your level that you want.

BSPs

Read The Blender Interface for Beginners Now

SmartGirl 2.72 , 3d modelling

There's no limit to the interface once you know what you're dealing with.

Introduction

If you've seen our tutorial "Blender Basics: The Beginners Guide to Using Blender" and feel less intimidated by this software, but are still wondering what everything outside the 3D View is, and exactly what each part is used for, then this is the next tutorial for you to read. This tutorial is going to name each of the different panels you're given when opening blender, what they're used for, and how you can change them or bring in completely new panels, not seen when you start Blender up, to show you just how much you can do with this programme when you know what you're doing.

The Default Screen

First of all, lets talk about the user interface you're given when you first start up Blender. By default, the interface you are given to work with looks like this:

default view

Lets break down this default view into sections and talk about each one separately. The image below is each section broken down and colour coded.

colour coded default view

Red - This is the 3D Viewport. Also called the stage. This is the main screen used in Blender to create, edit or remove stuff from your stage. the toolbar on the left is called the tool shelf and has lots of different options to add new stuff in or edit the stuff in your viewport such as smooth the mesh. You can toggle this on or off by pressing the T key. The difference between the 3D view and the stage is that you can view the stage in different types of viewports, and the 3D view is just one viewport.

Green - This is a timeline which is used when animating in Blender. If you don't want to get into animating then you can ignore and even close this tab. If you do see our tutorial on animating.

Blue - This panel is known`as the properties panel. It is used to change the properties of anything on stage. The little tabs at the top are collectively known as the header which is where you choose what type of properties you wish to change. This panel is not to be confused with the Properties Shelf which is hidden but displayed by pressing the N key.

Orange - This panel is known as an Outliner Window and is used to show the different items that you have on your stage.

Yellow - This is known as the info window. This window shows some useful information such as the version e.g. 2.72, which type of render you're in and which set of viewports you're using. These things can be changed using the info window.

Opening New Panels

To open up a new panel look for a little triangle like this:

triangle

normally in the top right of an existing panel. click it, hold and drag. Don't do this more times than you need to as you can create an overwhelming amount of screens without knowing how to get rid of them.

Closing Unwanted Panels

To close an unneeded panel just click the triangle, hold and drag back on the previous panel.

Changing a Panel

To change a panel to what you need it to be, rather than just the 3D View, click this box:

viewport editor

in the bottom left hand corner of the viewport you want to change and select the new panel you want it to be. try them all out to see how they look. I hope this tutorial has helped you.

Read Downloading, Installing and Editing fonts in Photoshop Now

SmartGirl adobe , adobe photoshop

Design Quote from Steve Jobs

In this tutorial you will learn how to download a font from the website "dafonts", install onto your computer, and how to change and style the font using the properties of the Text Tool in Photoshop.

Step one:

Create new file

Creating a new file

Step Two:

Go to the website “dafont”. And select desired font to download. I have chosen the font called “Elkwood” for this demo.

"dafont.com" Logo

The file will download as a zip file in the download area. Double click to unzip the folder and install the font file. This will then appear in the text section in Photoshop.

Installing of the font

Step Three:

In Photoshop select the Text tool to create new text.

Text Tool option on Photoshop

Selected the font “Elkwood”. And click on the canvas. This will create a new layer.

Creating a new "Layer" in Photoshop

Step Four:

Enter your desired text. For the demo I am using a quote from Steve Jobs creator of Apple “Design is not what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works”.

Example of the text used

I am now going to add different character setting using the character and paragraph panels.

Selecting the Character and Paragraph panels to change the text

By changing the settings in the character and paragraph panels, it allows you to selected different sizes for the font, different colours. It also gives you the option to space out the letter both horizontal (across) and vertical (up and down). I have changed the font size, the colour and both the horizontal and vertical of the text. As shown in the image below.

Different options used in the Character and Paragraph for the text

Step Five:

Effects after changing the settings in the character and paragraph panels.. For this demo I have added a drop shadow to the text. To do this you need to right click on the text layer and a drop bar will appear, here you can select the blending mode to create different effects to the text. The Blending options show in the below image.

Blending Options on the drop down menu

Then I selected to add a drop shadow to the text. I added in different settings as show in the image below. This gives a shadow effect to the text. The sample is not intended to be inspiring! But rather a simple example showing that the text can be edited. Explore the various layers styles to create a text effect that suits your design project.

Setting for adding a Drop Shadow to the text layer in Photoshop

Before:

Original text with no effects in Photoshop

After adding the different effects on the text:

Drop Shadow effect and Character effects done to the text in Photoshop

Read Introduction to Unreal Engine 4 Now

SmartGirl 3D Game , basics

In this tutorial I am going to give you a basic run down of the the user interface in Unreal Engine 4. After reading this tutorial you will be able to start your own Unreal Engine 4 project and know your way around the interface you are given to create a game.

Getting started

Create an account with unreal engine. Sign in.

When you sign in, you see the menu screen.

Menu screen.

From the Marketplace, you can download different free useful packages including characters. From there you can add these to your project.

Marketplace.

All downloaded packages can be found in the library.

Launch button and Library location.

First time you launch the engine, you will see the unreal engine project browser.

Unreal project browser.

From here, you can create a new project or go on to the Marketplace and load an existing project. When creating a new project, there are a variety of different genres and also a choice of project type’s, blueprint or code.

New project.

Blueprint and C++ options.

When making settings, we recommend the following.

Recommend setting.

You then choose an appropriate location to save it and you give it a project name.

Choose location to save your project and name it.

Note: when naming, do not use spaces, use an underscore. Then you save and click CREATE PROJECT.

Create project.

User Interface

Main menu bar

Menu bar location

Menu bar zoomed in.

Pretty much any menu bar you see in computer applications, file menu, edit menu, window menu and the help menu.

File - Here you can save what you are working on, create new projects, import and export.
Edit – You can find the standard Undo, redo, cut, copy, paste. Also here you can find editor preference and your project settings.
Window – This is where you can show and hide parts of the interface that are not shown by default
Help – Direct link to the documentation, link to initial tutorials to help get you started

On your view port here are meshes already in place because you chose to include starter content. These meshes are not permanent and can be edited, as shown in a later tutorial.

3D viewport.

Mode panel

Mode panel, this allows us to change the mode the editor is currently in. You can select modes place mode, landscape, paint, foliage and geometry editing mode.

Mode panel.

Modes - Zoomed in.

Content Browser

Allow you access to any exterior generated content and special content like materials and blueprints you may have created.

Content browser.

Here you can create new folders and import different meshes, sound and textures/materials.

Scene Outliner

The scene outliner panel, shows everything that is in your level at that time. Main use is to see all the objects in your screen and select them.

Scene outliner.

It has some other functionality like here you can select, edit, parent together, hide and delete objects/actors.

Details panel

The details panel shows all editing details on a selected item.

Details panel.

Tool bar

Tool bar.

Quick and easy one click access to common tasks that you will be performing
you have your save button (but generally you can just hit ctrl+s), content to open the content browser if you don’t already have one opened. Marketplace. Your settings, control various things that you can show and hide inside of your view port and overall environment.

When editing, make sure you save your work frequently and build when progress is made.

When you press the play button a character will appear, this gives you a good idea of how your level will look and function.

Character on screen.

To escape play mode press eject. The short cut for this on your keyboard is ESC.

Viewport navigation

Mouse navigation

If you drag with the left click, to go forward you drag up and to go backwards you drag down. Move the mouse left to right while still holding down the left of the mouse to look left and right. Right click is just looking around, you can look left, right, up and down by dragging the mouse up, down, left and right. If you click the mouse wheel you can track the camera in all directions by sliding up and down, left and right. Click the left and right of the mouse at the same time does the same thing.

You can change the speed of the camera in the upper right corner of the viewport.

Camera speed options.

Camera speed option zoomed in.

WSAD keys

While holding down the right side of the mouse:
W – To fly forwards
S – To fly backwards
A – Straight left
D – Straight right
E – Straight up into the air
Q - Down
C – zoom camera in
Z – zoom camera out

Note: as soon as you release the right mouse it snaps back to where you were

MIYA style navigation

Hold down alt to use this style of navigation.
Alt+left mouse click is going to tumble the view around.
To change pivot of the tumble you can select any object in your scene and hit “f” on your keyboard.
Now when you hold down alt and drag with the left mouse you are tumbling around the object.
alt+right mouse to dolly the camera

When duplicating an object hold down the alt+click the direction you want to go in on the anchor + hold down shift.

You can also look at your level through different viewpoints. You can find the option to change views in the top left hand corner of your 3D viewport.

Viewpoint section location.

Viewpoint selection zoomed in.

In the dropdown, there are a variety of different views including perspective, top, side, and front.

Perspective.

Top.

Side.

Front.

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