Unreal Engine - mmo character creation screen - part 1

hello in this video we're going to look at how to create an mmo style character creation screen using unreal engine now i've done this using the enhanced assets for my skeletal mesh but you can use whatever assets you like so the techniques here are pretty universal so they should be applicable to many types of assets that you can use so in essence this is what we're creating like we've got this um character creation screen where we can determine the race the gender the hair options and stuff like that and apply those changes to the skeletal mesh uh this is actually a relatively long process so i'm gonna split this up into multiple videos so in this first one we're just basically gonna look at the overview so what that means is we're just gonna have a look at the demo of what it is that we're building and cover the prerequisites uh before the next episode so the next episode we're going to look at how to create those options inside and that can be actually pretty complicated because of the nesting right so for example when you change your race or when you change your gender your hair options will change right so uh males will have different hair options to females so every time you make those changes you want to then propagate the changes to your other options right so that's what we're going to be covering in the next episode the one after that we'll probably take those options and start applying them to the actual skeletal mesh and perhaps after that we'll start integrating with a custom server so that's kind of the plan here so uh we'll get started with a demo so uh like the general overview is captured inside this blog post but like i say it will have multiple blog posts as per the videos right so each video will have its own blog post associated to it so let's get started with the demo so uh this is essentially what we're building so we've got ourselves a character skeletal mesh here uh oh and the rotation i've actually covered in a different video that's also referenced in the blog post and we can change for example the race so you can see the material is changing i didn't have a different scalable mesh so i'm just changing the material but you could also change the mesh as well right similar to the gender right so when you toggle the gender you've got a different material and a different mesh so then you can also change your hairstyles and you can see the hairs uh changing hair color uh you can also add a beard so for example you can see the the beard isn't changing and when you change the hair color it's changing both the beard and the hair uh you've got different skin color options right and uh some other payloads for say for example starting class this is doesn't actually change the skeletal mesh but potentially you want to have additional payload uh to pass to other places right so that's what we're creating right and uh you'll also want to cover things like these edge cases where you know if i'm on option seven uh which mail doesn't have you want to reset it but if you're on option two you can keep it consistent so that you come back to the same model right so you want to cover some of these edge cases as well uh again that's covered in the next episode and yeah that's basically what we're going to be building here right so uh there's a lot of actually uh a lot of things going on inside and yeah let's get started so in order like the prerequisites here really is to get started with creating a map so we're not gonna look into the aesthetics right we're gonna be focusing on uh like basically the information changes right so we're not going to be looking at the design here per se we're just going to look at uh what kind of payload we need to change so in order to get started you want to first create a level so go ahead right click select level and give it a name such as like uh characters uh creation map you can call it whatever you like really so uh double click that and you should have these world settings on the right if you don't see it you can click window world settings you should see it after what you want to do is override essentially the game mode and inside the game mode you want to override the hard class and the player controller class so in order to do that you want to go ahead and create those three files so to create the game mode uh simply right click blueprint class and you see game mode base so select that and just create the the other two classes in advance so that you can start referencing them right away so in order to create the hud which is the heads up display uh right click select blueprint select hud just uh select the hud from here and the player character controller so again uh blue flip blueprint class and select the player controller right so give them whatever names you like but basically inside the game mode what you want to do is override them with the blueprints you've just created so select the player controller over here and the hud class over here right so once you've done that you want to start populating some data so inside the character controller what you want to do is ensure that uh the mouse interface is all enabled right so all of these guys are enabled because by default like for example in third person character uh you're not gonna have a mouse right so you want to enable that stuff and you'll want to just block the input as well because uh basically in the character creation screen you're not going to have a character so you're not going to be moving anything or doing anything with the character right so you're going to be interfacing with the widget so that's why you'll want to block that input in order to modify the hud you first want to prepare a widget so we'll create an empty widget by the way you can see i went through many iterations here right so this is a relatively complicated uh process right and i think i found a good way to do it so i'll share those techniques later but one of the main reasons is like i say with nesting the data became sort of explosive in a sense that there was just so many different moving pieces and for example all of these actually worked right but i really didn't like the if statements and changing the arrays and stuff so in this technique we're using um composite keys with maps right so basically you use keys with multiple pieces of data to refer to multiple options right and we'll cover that in the next video right but what you want to do for now is uh create a simple widget so widget blue print just select a widget uh give it a name that you like you know so this is going to be the root component for the character uh creation screen so uh you know like uh nice character would you you know call it whatever you like uh some obvious name right uh so that you can basically reference it in the hud uh don't worry about putting any content at this stage right we'll cover that in the next episode as well but what you'll want to do is essentially add it into here so when you um open up the hud event we can play uh create widget and then basically select the widget that you've just created and uh then add it to the viewport right so that's what you're going to want to do and this actually completes all the prerequisites because essentially now you're going to have a map and inside the map you know just make sure that you'll have a camera and uh you don't need to uh spawn any skeletal mesh again we'll cover that later but just have a think of where it will be spawned it doesn't really matter too much right not at this stage and again we're not going to be focusing on aesthetics so you're going to have like an empty map but the idea is that you could make it look as you like right so i basically use the sculpting tool you know put some trees in there put some stuff in there uh and you can design it as you like right use whatever assets you want uh you can use sci-fi mode you can use uh like this fantasy stuff like it doesn't really matter and that's why i don't focus on the aesthetics here as you can design it as you like um and that's basically it for this video right so in the next one we're going to be covering how to change the different data um but yeah any questions do ask in the comments and basically i'll try and cover them as i go through this series right so like i say this is a relatively lengthy process so obviously any questions do raise them and i will try and answer them so yeah best of luck and i'll see you in the next episode

Channel: Unreal game dev with Yaz

Views: 11,284

Keywords: unreal engine, ue4, ue5, mmo, charcter creation

Id: n1FMaiCusZs

Length: 8min 13sec (493 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 11 2022