Blueprinting with Friends

I been following lots of different UE5 Tutorials on YouTube to figure out a way to make the game engine work, I spent the last the weekend researching and practising blueprints on UE5, and when needed, going back in Maya to change and adapt my gun parts, constantly switching between Maya and unreal just to make sure everything was going smooth and made more parts to import.

First I imported all the 3D models in Unreal Engine, and create sockets so that the models can be combined.

I made sure that all the models could be connected to each others and there no clipping issues between them.

these are the main components for each weapon.

The next step is to create sockets in the main gun body so that the parts could easily be connected and they would spawn in the correct position.

I created More socket for the Gun A for each parts to be attached.

GUN A

GUN B

GUN C

Then I proceeded on my least favourite part, blueprinting the gun and creating the modular system.

I made sure that each part had a collision box to be interacted with and that placed them in the game engine.

All the parts for GUN A are combined and I did the same for the other two weapons, the models have a collision and various different components.

Each Attachment will have their own collision box that the player will interact with and collect the part. this will be attached to the main body in game.

The main Gun Body have a collision itself and the player will be able to interact and use Gun A.

I did the same thing for Gun B and C.

All the weapons are inserted in the game engine and ready to be Interacted by the player.

I followed This tutorial to create the blueprint to pick up the gun.

Today 12/10/22  I went in class to figure out a way to make my blueprints work.

I had some issues with my blueprint so I asked my follow comrades to help me out figuring out the logic behind the my blueprint and how i can connect the meshes into the socket of my Gun.

Some blueprint got disconnected from the main gun so we went back to reconnect the nodes and make sure it worked.

The gun body can be collected and equipped to the player character in game.

I detached the components because they were suppose to be separated from the main body and interacted separately. When collected they will be applied to the main body and the same type of attachment will be updated if interacted by the player

The blueprint to pick the gun up was working correctly. the issue was to figure out how to attach the components to the Gun.

I tried to create some blueprint nodes to make the meshes collectable but I had many issues on making them attached to the gun A.

I realized I was spending too much time working on my blueprint so I decided to take a break to focus on my 3D skills a bit. I made sure my models were all correctly UV mapped again and all the material were connected to the sources in unreal engine.

On 15/10/22 I spent some time with my lecture re analysing my nodes and we somehow manage to make it work. but the blueprint stopped connecting the meshes again. 

This is the main node for the Barrel mesh A that suppose to be connected to the gun.

The blueprint to make sure the barrel mesh got updated between the types of barrel in game.

This is the blueprint inside Gun A to update the barrel Meshes when the gun already has a mesh on it in game. this blueprint will allow the gun to update and change the meshes depending on the barrel that the player interact with.

I did the same thing for the stock, but the blueprint wasn't working correctly and the player wasn't able to attach the stock component to the main gun body.

A few test have been made to check if the components were attaching to the Gun but i wasn't able to make it work. I realized I spent too much time and I decided to spend this final day fixing what blueprint I currently have and move on to my main work, making 3D models.

I realized my limitation when it comes to Blueprinting, is best that I focus on what makes me more feel confident, my skills on 3d modelling. I have a solid understanding on how Maya works and I already have lot of past experience making weapons, armour, vehicles and other models during my years in University and my participation of past Game Jams. 

I will continue my research and journey on 3D modelling weapons.

Moral of the Story, I'll stick with what I can do best, and that is clearly not Blueprinting.