The famous game development engine has been making big news over the past year or so in the professional 3D markets, like in architecture with the use of its Unreal Engine in Abvent’s popular Twinmotion, for example. (see: Architosh, “SIG: New Twinmotion 2018 Powered by Unreal Engine—Now Ships,” 3 Aug 2017).
Architosh also published a feature article on Los Angeles-based visualization studio SPACIALISTS, a firm that has recently switched over to a new ARCHICAD to Unreal Engine pipeline for the majority of its visualization work. And at the 2017 GRAPHISOFT BIM CON, there was a nearly standing room only session on integrating that BIM platform with Unreal for visualization. The point is—the Unreal Engine is taking the pro markets by storm, and there is a lot of interest.
Learning Unreal for Pro Market Pros—Making It Easier
Learning how to use game development engines for interactive visualizations in markets like AEC isn’t exactly easy, however. That is why the folks at Epic have been dedicating resources and shifting directions to address better the interest in its game engine coming from nontraditional game development communities. The company has announced this past August the new Unreal Engine Online Learning site.
01 – Epic has launched a new Unreal Engine Online Learning Site for markets beyond just gaming.
Epic’s new learning platform for Unreal Engine will be the host and home for all new training series and video tutorials on the Unreal Engine. The extensive online training walks learners through the common workflows working with the Unreal Engine.
MORE: Gaming Tech Takes Over—SPACIALISTS Touts Its Unreal Engine Viz Pipeline
There are learning tracks split into various market focuses, including not just Game Development, but Architecture, Industrial Design, and Media and Entertainment (M&E).
Additional tracks separate content by job roles, like Designer or Programmer, and each video is labeled with levels like “Getting Started” or “Master Level.”
Free Access for Everyone
Epic’s learning platform for Unreal Engine is completely open to everyone. Free. You can check it out by going here and login using common credentials like your social media IDs or your Google Gmail.
Architosh Analysis and Commentary
Epics’ decision to make this new learning content open and free to everyone is a great decision. Offering free learning on anything relevant is a great way to attract the mice, sort of speak. The next part is building a great mousetrap—which an attractive and organized learning site can be.
The site looks like a professional learning provider website like Pluralsight, for example. It is well organized into a structure that begins with Industries, Roles, Workflows and Engine Concepts.
02 – This image is what the Architecture industry level page looks like. The images below are separate courses with their titles. The right arrow button lets you scroll through the dozens of courses just for Architecture.
Under Architect, for example, you are greeted with a large series of courses, like “Introduction to Materials For Design Visualization.” That course consists of 13 videos totaling over 58 minutes. The course on “Datasmith,” is 17 videos and 80 minutes of instruction. There are courses that help users who have explored or are using Unity, the game engine, for their visualization needs.
To test the “free” aspect of the learning community, I logged in and registered with my email. I was surprised to find out that someone else in the community already took the username “Architosh” so I had to register with a different name. Logging into the learning community site is easy.
If you are not familiar with Epic’s Unreal Game Engine, this learning community is a good place to start.