Unreal Engine 4 Virtual Reality Projects by Mack, Kevin -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Title Page Copyright and Credits

Unreal Engine 4 Virtual Reality Projects

About Packt

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Preface

Who this book is for What this book covers To get the most out of this book

Download the example code files Download the color images Conventions used

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Reviews

Thinking in VR

What is virtual reality?

VR hardware VR isn't just about hardware though Presence is tough to achieve

What can we do in VR?

Games in VR Interactive VR VR cinema – movies, documentary, and journalism Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) and real estate Engineering and design Education and training Commerce, advertising, and retail Medicine and mental health So much else

Immersion and presence

Immersion

Using all the senses Make sure sensory inputs match one another and match the user's expectations Keep latency as low as possible Make sure interactions with the world make sense Build a consistent world Be careful of contradicting the user's body awareness Decide how immersive you intend your application to be and design accordingly

Presence

Simulator sickness Safety

Best practices for VR

Maintain framerate

Tethered headsets Standalone Headsets

Never take control of the user's head Do not put acceleration or deceleration on your camera Do not override the field of view, manipulate depth of field, or use motion blur Minimize vection Avoid stairs Use more dimmer lights and colors than you normally would Keep the scale of the world accurate Be conscious of physical actions Manage eyestrain Make conscious choices about the content and intensity of your experience Let players manage their own session duration Keep load times short Question everything we just told you

Planning your VR project

Clarify what you're trying to do Is it a good fit for VR? Why? What's important – what has to exist in this project for it to work? (MVP) Break it down Tackle things in the right order Test early and often Design is iterative

Summary

Setting Up Your Development Environment

Prerequisite – VR hardware Setting up Unreal Engine

What it costs Creating an Epic Games account The Epic Games launcher Installing the engine Editting your vault cache location Setting up a Derived Data Cache (DDC)

Setting up a local DDC

Launching the engine

Setting up for mobile VR

Creating or joining an Oculus developer organization Setting your VR headset to developer mode in Oculus Go Installing Android Debug Bridge (ADB) Setting up NVIDIA CodeWorks for Android Verifying that the HMD can communicate with your PC Generating a signature file for Samsung Gear Deploying a test project to the device

Setting up a test project

Checking that your OculusVR plugin is enabled Setting a default map Clearing the default mobile touch interface Setting your Android SDK project settings Setting your Android SDK locations

Launching the test project

Using the Epic Games launcher

The Unreal Engine Tab Learn

The content examples project Gameplay concepts and example games

Marketplace Library

Setting up for C++ development

Installing Microsoft Visual Studio Community Recommended settings The UnrealVS plugin

Installing the UnrealVS plugin Turning on the UnrealVS toolbar

Unreal debugging support Test everything out

Building Unreal from source code

Setting up a GitHub account and installing Git

Setting up or logging into your GitHub account Installing Git for Windows Installing Git Large File Storage Installing a Git GUI Connecting your GitHub account to your Epic Games account

Downloading the Unreal Engine source code

Choosing your source branch Forking the repository Cloning the repository to your local machine

Option 1 – Cloning using GitHub Desktop Option 2 – Cloning from the command line

Downloading engine binary content Generating project files

Opening and building the solution Updating your fork with new changes from Epic

Option – Using the command line to sync changes

Setting the upstream repository Syncing the fork Reviewing the Git commands we just used

Option – Using the web GUI to sync changes

Creating a pull request Merging the pull request Pulling the origin to your local machine

Re-synchronizing your engine content and regenerating project files Going further with source code on GitHub

Additional useful tools

A good robust text editor 3D modeling software Image-editing software Audio-editing software

Summary

Hello World - Your First VR Project

Creating a new project

Setting your hardware target Setting your graphics target Settings summary Taking a quick look at your project's structure

The Content directory The Config directory The Source directory The Project file A summary of an Unreal project structure

Setting your project's settings for VR

Instanced Stereo Round Robin Occlusions Forward and deferred shading

Choosing the right rendering method for your project

Choosing your anti-aliasing method

Modifying MSAA settings

Starting in VR Turning off other stray settings you don't need Turning off default touch interface (Oculus Go/Samsung Gear) Configuring your project for Android (Oculus Go/Samsung Gear)

Verifying your SDK locations

Making sure Mobile HDR is turned off (Oculus Go/Samsung Gear) Mobile Multi-View (Oculus Go/Samsung Gear) Monoscopic Far Field Rendering (Oculus Go / Samsung Gear) Project Settings cheat-sheet

Decorating our project

Migrating content into a project Cleaning up migrated content

Deleting assets safely Moving assets and fixing up redirectors

Setting a default map Testing our map on desktop Testing our map on mobile (Oculus Go/Samsung Gear)

Setting up a game mode and player pawn

Creating a VR pawn Creating a game mode

Assigning the game mode Overriding a GameMode for a specific map

Placing a pawn directly in the world Setting up the VR pawn

Adding a camera Adding motion controllers Setting our tracking origin.

Adjusting our Player Start location to the map. Testing in the headset. Packaging a standalone build

Summary

Getting Around the Virtual World

Teleport locomotion

Creating a navigation mesh

Moving and scaling the Navmesh Bounds volume Fixing collision problems Excluding areas from the navmesh Modifying your navmesh properties

Setting up the pawn Blueprint

Iterative development

Make it work Make it right Make it fast Do things in order

Setting up a line trace from the right motion controller Improving our Trace Hit Result

Using navmesh data

Changing from line trace to parabolic trace

Drawing the curved path Drawing the endpoint after all the line segments have been drawn

Teleporting the player

Creating Input Mappings Caching our teleport destination Executing the teleport

Allowing the player to choose their landing orientation

Mapping axis inputs Cleaning up our Tick event Using thumbstick input to orient the player Creating a teleport destination indicator Giving it a material Adding the teleport indicator to the pawn

Optimizing and refining our teleport

Displaying UI only when teleport input is pressed Creating a deadzone for our input Fading out and in on teleport

Teleport locomotion summary

Seamless locomotion

Setting up inputs for seamless locomotion Changing the pawn's parent class

Fixing the collision component

Handling movement input

Fixing movement speed Letting the player look around without constantly steering Implementing snap-turning

Setting up inputs for snap turning Executing the snap turn

Going further

Snap turn using analog input

Summary

Interacting with the Virtual World - Part I

Starting a new project from existing work

Migrating Blueprints to a new project

Copying input bindings

Setting up new project to use the migrated game mode

Additional project settings for VR Testing our migrated game mode and pawn Adding scenery

Adding a NavMesh Testing the map

Creating hands

Migrating hand meshes and animations from the VR Template project Adding hand meshes to our motion controllers

Creating a new Blueprint Actor class

Adding motion controller and mesh components Adding a Hand variable Using a Construction Script to handle updates to the Hand variable

Adding BP_VRHand child actor components to your pawn Fixing issues with Hand meshes Replacing references to our old motion controller components in blueprints

Creating a function to get our hand mesh

Animating our hands

A quick word about access specifiers Calling our grab functions from the pawn

Creating new input action mappings Adding handlers for new action mappings

Implementing grab animations in the Hand blueprints

Creating an Animation Blueprint for the hand Creating a blend space for our hand animations Wiring the blend space into the animation blueprint Connecting the animation blueprint to our hand blueprint Creating a new enumerator for our grip Smoothing out our grip animation

Summary

Interacting with the Virtual World - Part II

Creating an object we can pick up Creating a Blueprint Interface for pickup objects Implementing the Pickup and Drop functions Setting up VRHand to pick up objects

Creating a function to find the nearest pickup object Calling Find Nearest Pickup Object on the Tick event Picking up an actor Releasing an actor Test grabbing and releasing

Fixing cube collision Letting players know when they can pick something up

Adding haptic feedback

Creating a Haptic Feedback Effect Curve Playing the haptic effect on command

Going further Summary

Creating User Interfaces in VR

Getting started

Creating a new Unreal project from an existing project

We’re not alone – adding an AI character

Migrating the third-person character blueprint Cleaning up the third-person character blueprint Examining the animation blueprint Creating a companion character subclass Adding a follow behavior to our companion character Examining the AI controller Improving the companion's follow behavior

Adding a UI indicator to the companion pawn

Creating a UI widget using UMG Adding a UI widget to an actor Orienting the indicator widget to face the player

Implementing the Align UI function Calling Align UI from the Tick event

Adding a new AI state to the companion pawn

Implementing a simple AI state Indicating AI states using the UI indicator Using events to update, rather than polling Being careful of circular references

Ensuring that UI is updated when our state is changed

Adding an interactive UI

Adjusting the button colors Adding event handlers to our buttons Attaching the UI element to the player pawn Using widget interaction components

Sending input through widget interaction components Making a better pointer for our interaction component

Creating an interaction beam material Creating an impact effect

Summary

Building the World and Optimizing for VR

Setting up the project and collecting assets

Migrating blueprints into the new project

Verifying the migrated content

Using the VR editor

Entering and exiting VR Mode Navigating in VR Mode

Moving through the world Teleporting through the world Rotating the world Scaling the world Practicing movement

Modifying the world in VR Mode

Moving, rotating, and scaling objects Using both controllers to rotate and scale objects Practicing moving objects

Composing a new scene in VR Mode

Navigating the radial menu

Gizmo Snapping Windows Edit Tools Modes Actions and System

Making changes to our scene

Optimizing scenes for VR

Testing your current performance

Stat FPS

Determining your frame time budget

Warnings about performance profiling Stat unit Profiling the GPU Stat scenerendering

Draw calls

Stat RHI Stat memory Optimization view modes CPU profiling Turning things on and off

Addressing frame rate problems

Cleaning up Blueprint Tick events Managing skeletal animations Merging actors Using mesh LODs Static mesh instancing Nativizing Blueprints

Summary

Displaying Media in VR

Setting up the project Playing movies in Unreal Engine

Understanding containers and codecs Finding a video file to test with Adding a video file to an Unreal project Creating a File Media Source asset Creating a Media Player Using Media Textures Testing your Media Player Adding video to an object in the world Using a media playback material Adding sound to our media playback Playing media Going deeper with the playback material Adding additional controls to our video appearance

Displaying stereo video

Displaying half of the video Displaying a different half of the video to each eye Displaying over/under stereo video

Displaying 360 degree spherical media in VR

Finding 360 degree video Creating a spherical movie screen

Playing stereoscopic 360 degree video Controlling your Media Player

Creating a Media Manager Adding a Pause and Resume function Assigning events to a media player

Summary

Creating a Multiplayer Experience in VR

Testing multiplayer sessions

Testing multiplayer from the editor

Understanding the client-server model

The server Listen servers, dedicated dervers, and clients

Listen servers Dedicated servers Clients

Testing multiplayer VR

Setting up our own test project

Adding an environment Creating a network Game Mode

Objects on the network

Server-only objects Server and client objects Server and owning client objects Owning client only objects

Creating our network game mode

Creating a network client HUD

Creating a widget for our HUD Adding a widget to our HUD

Network replication

Creating a replicated actor

Spawning an actor on the server only Replicating the actor to the client Replicating a variable Notifying clients that a value has changed using RepNotify

Creating network-aware pawns for multiplayer

Adding a first-person pawn

Setting collision response presets Setting up a third-person character mesh

Adjusting the third-person weapon

Replicating player actions

Using remote procedure calls to talk to the server Using multicast RPCs to communicate to clients Client RPCs Reliable RPCs

Going further Summary

Taking VR Further - Extending Unreal Engine

Creating a project to house our plugin

Installing the VRExpansion plugin

Installing using precompiled binaries Compiling your own plugin binaries Verifying the plugins in your project

Understanding plugins

Where plugins live

Installing plugins from the Marketplace

What's inside a plugin?

About licenses Inside a plugin directory

Finishing our brief tour

Exploring the VRExpansion example project Finishing our project setup

Using VRExpansion classes

Adding navigation Adding a game mode Updating the PlayerStart class Adding a VR character

Setting up input Setting up your VR character using example assets

Making effective use of example assets Migrating the example pawn

Making sense of complicated blueprints

Begin by checking the parent class Looking at the components to see what they're made of Look for known events and see what happens when they run Using inputs as a way to find a starting point in your blueprint

Setting breakpoints and tracing execution

Viewing the execution trace Managing breakpoints with the Debug window

Using the call stack Finding variable references

Using more of the VRExpansion plugin Summary

Where to Go from Here

Final word

Useful Mind Hacks

Rubber-duck debugging Just the facts Describing your solutions in positive terms Plan how you're going to maintain and debug your code when you write it Favor simple solutions Look it up before you make it up

Research and Further Reading

Unreal Engine resources VR resources

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