Week 1 Independent Study

Instead of following the outlined question, I find it better to 'list 5 points that I have learn't about UE design better than I have when I used the software previously'.

1. Using the UE curated online tutorials have drastically helped my 'two left hand' syndrome when it comes to gaming engines. They are logically structured and cover a range of topics that are applicable to beginner level design (including advice on smart iterative level design). This has helped me a lot over using the software last semester, however I don't find the program as intuitive to use as cry-engine.
2. Setting you camera view port on top of a light is a great way to maintain a lit space within a level while moving and building.
3. When applying textures I find it very strange that you can't adjust the scale, orientation and other factors of a texture in a simple manner. This (as far as I know) must be done in blue prints, which is pretty un-intuitive when compared to cry engine's ability to visually manipulate textures by right clicking on a selected object.
4. 
   

In Class Week 1

UE4 Navigation

• UE4 is a designer-centric editor which has been deliberately (visually) stripped down as to not overwhelm the user. The 'window'menu is the gateway to be able to show and hide the important parts of the interface that are hidden by default.

• Tumbling is a great feature that allows the user to rotate around a specific object easily. This is done by selecting an object in the scene > press f key > hold alt and then drag your mouse while holding the left button. This is really helpful as an architecture based user because you frequently check out small details and objects within a scene from many angles and in a gaming engine like cry engine you would find yourself rotating away from the object you wanted to see.

• The Unreal Market Place is a key feature within the UE gaming engine. It's what 3D warehouse is to Sketch up or even, an essay writing service is to a UNSW student (too soon?). In any case it is a helpful fremium game style online repository of models that can be bought (however some are free) to then place, dismantle, reconfigure or just build upon within your own level. This is a huge advantage over cryengine as it taps into the world of shared design.
  
  
• The use of WASD keys as an alternate navigation utility is a great feature for a designer who has just returned to reality from a weeks long World of Warcraft sesh. Yes it does make it easier to navigate scenes as you don't have to continually scroll the mouse wheel, however it does hinder your ability to use hot-keys and other tasks. All in all a nice feature but not my favorite. 

• The Blue Prints editor is one of my most admired features of UE! From a computational design standpoint it feels like you're back in the Grasshopper wilderness. It is a logical data-flow method to affix textures, programs, movement and more to a level.