How to make jaw droppingly awesome looking characters using Unreal Engine 4

By Ryan Fleming September 26, 2013

how to make jaw droppingly awesome looking characters using unreal engine 4 uneal — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Although much of the gaming world’s attention has been on the next generation hardware and what it can do, behind the hardware are the tools that create software to take advantage of that new tech. These game engines are what make it possible for companies that may not have a massive budget to spend on programming – or a resident genius on staff – to develop high quality games that can compete. These engines are what drive game development, and one of the biggest is Epic Games’ Unreal Engine.

The current engine, Unreal Engine 4, began development in 2003, primarily thanks to Epic founder Tim Sweeney who worked on the engine alone until 2008 – it finally debuted in 2012. Unreal Engine 4 offers tools that are made for experienced developers to design games for PC and next-gen hardware, but with a little work anyone can use it – as long as you are willing to pay the license fee.

In the video below, Epic discussed some of those tools, specifically how they work when it comes to character aesthetics. Using the Unreal Engine 4 tools, it is easier than ever before to create a high level of detail in games that will help to create some astounding graphics. It also provides a brief glimpse behind-the-scenes of game development. Check it out.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

PC Gaming

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Ryan Fleming is the Gaming and Cinema Editor for Digital Trends. He joined the DT staff in 2009 after spending time covering…

Computing

How Immortals of Aveum wants to rethink PC optimization with Unreal Engine 5

Jak winds up his magic fist in Immortals of Aveum.

Immortals of Aveum is introducing a new way to think about optimizing your games on PC. It's called the Performance Budget Tool, and it's meant to help guide players through the dense graphics menu to understand how settings impact their performance.

Games have hinted at this type of feature in the past, offering a general sense of how each setting impacts your GPU and CPU with a slider (Resident Evil 4 and The Last of Us Part One, for example). Immortals of Aveum assigns a CPU and GPU number to each setting that increases as you turn the option up.

Gaming

Fortnite: How to find Cursed Llamas and use the Techniques they drop

Screenshot showing a Cursed Llama exiting a rift

Continuing with the trend of anime crossovers, Jujutsu Kaisen has come to Fortnite, bringing with it a new reward track and a fresh collection of themed challenges. But perhaps the most fun addition is the two exciting curse powers that players can now find and use in matches as part of the Break the Curse! event. If you want to get your hands on these Hollow Purple or Straw Doll Techniques, you'll first need to find some Cursed Llamas on the Chapter 4 Season 3 battle royale map. Here's how to find Cursed Llamas and how to use the Techniques they drop.
How to find Cursed Llamas

Much like the normal llamas that have populated Fortnite's battle royale map for years, Cursed Llamas can spawn in a variety of random places. Since there are no guaranteed spawn points, you'll just need to play until you eventually find one. Luckily, these special llamas will show up on your map when they spawn to give you a heads-up about where you can treat them to some bullets. When you round one up, shoot them like any other llama until they pop and drop you some healing and utility items alongside both of the new Mythics: the Hollow Purple Technique and Straw Doll Technique.
How to use the Hollow Purple Technique

Gaming

How to get the true ending in Pikmin 4

A red Pikmin looks around in Pikmin 4.

You might expect a more simple, casual game like Pikmin 4 to have a straightforward path to a single ending. While that was the case for prior games, this time around you will need to do quite a bit more work if you want to see the true conclusion to this tale. If you only play to the point of seeing the credits, you are leaving nearly half the game on the table unplayed. The post-game content is arguably longer than the main game and is the only way to see the true ending. Here's how you can see Pikmin 4 top its true conclusion.

Note that we will only spoil the names of locations and bosses below, not the content of either ending.