Welcome everybody and in this series of videos we are going to be constructing a whole lot of different blueprints. Now before we get rolling into that, I just wanted to take a timeout to talk a little bit about what blueprints are in Unreal Engine four. So hopefully this becomes a little bit more clear as we go along. So first of all, what are blueprints? Well, blueprints are the visual coding system in Unreal Engine four and it enables non coders such as myself a designer by trade to quote unquote code by using a visual node based system to create gameplay elements. What you see here in this screenshot is an example of blueprint scripting some functional gameplay made by wiring together a bunch of different nodes.

Now in Unreal Engine four there are several different types of blueprints. But the two most common categories or core common categories that I like to put them in are level blueprints that contains certain codes, certain scripts specific to a level. And then there's class blueprints that contains script that is code specific to a certain class, like a character or even a movie door, that sort of thing. So let's talk about the anatomy of a class blueprints. a blueprint class is often shortened to just blueprint and it consists of components, and then graphs. What we're going to be doing when we construct a lot of these blueprints, we are going to be adding all of the necessary components for the blueprint.

So for example, we're going to be creating a spinning fan. And in this first pass, we're just going to be adding all the necessary components for that blueprint class. Things like fan blades and a central point at which the fan spins around that sort of thing. And then later on, we're going to move from this component section of the blueprint to the graph portion of the blueprint where we actually wire together some nodes to create some functionality. What you're seeing here is a screenshot from an example blueprint. This is what is known as a Character Blueprint.

So up in the left hand portion of the blueprints editor are the components panel. This is where you combine together things like a character, maybe some text, maybe some, I don't know, collision volumes, such as this capsule around him, etc. to all comprise your one blueprint. These are some different tabs in your Blueprint Editor right here. This is the viewport tab with which you can see all the different components of your blueprint and then over in the right hand side of your Your Blueprint Editor you see a Details panel. And depending on what you have selected over here is one of your components, you're going to see a lot of properties that you can alter about it.

The Event Graph tab, right here is the viewport tab. This is Event Graph tab. This is where all the blueprint scripting takes place where we wire together all those nodes. And over in the left hand side in something called the My Blueprint panel is where we contain things called functions, and variables, which there will be a lot more discussion on that to come. Now the Event Graph, which is where all that quote unquote scripting takes place. This is where we make blueprints do something and this is done by connecting nodes together.

Nodes consists of all different types of pins. These triangle shaped pins are considered execution pins. They're the things that actually say, hey, if this event happens, then Do this it's kind of like a flow of electricity that just flows from left to right. There are also color coded pins known as data input and output pins, their inputs if they're on the left hand side of a node and their outputs if they are on the right side of a node. Now each node, each node has a specific purpose. For example, there are nodes to print text out to the screen, there are nodes to add and subtract, multiply and divide numbers.

There are nodes to play a sound or spawn a particle effect, that sort of thing. Here's some more examples of some of those blueprint nodes I was just talking about. This is what they look like. Again, these triangle shapes are what are called execution pins. And these round color coded pins are known as data input if they're on the left hand side or data output if they are on the right hand side of a node. So game events in order for some bit of script to work, it must be triggered by some kind of event.

And again, we're not going to be doing any of this scripting stuff in this construction section but this is worth talking about now. Some examples of game events our Event Begin Play What do we do when the game first fires up Event Tick fires every frame event overlap fires when some object has been overlapped by another object and event hit. Make something happening when something hits a given object. Event nodes are red. There are different types of nodes you can place in your graph. And each has a specific color associated with it events are red functions are blue, something known as flow control nodes are gray and again, we will talk a lot more about that later.

Also, note that Data pins are color coded to. We will talk a lot more about this in our blueprint visual scripting section. But this is enough of a primer just to get some things percolating in your brain. Without further ado, that is a very brief summary, if you will, and what blueprints scripting is all about. Now we're going to actually get on to creating, constructing, putting together some of the components for some blueprints. We'll see you guys in the next video.