Nicole's 3D Computer Animation blog

This week, I had a lot on my plate — I devoted almost all of my time to this project. Trying out Blueprints and building the game was incredibly exciting for me, and along the way I encountered many challenges.

Here’s what I worked on this week:

1. Created the blueprint for the enemy zombies

2.Repaint the texture

In my last discussion with Serra, she suggested that I try modifying the model textures myself. Assets like the gun and the arm are way too common and a lot of people use them, so I’m planning to redraw the textures myself. Also, I noticed that the zombie and skeleton materials aren’t very high quality, so I redrew those too and tested them in Unreal Engine.

When I was painting the zombie textures, I wanted them to look more gruesome and fleshy. Although it’s not exactly bright, positive, or uplifting, it fits the overall game background.

In this game, the goddess and heroes sealed the Serpent but couldn’t kill it. Many years passed, and both the goddess and heroes disappeared without a trace. Some nobles discovered that the Serpent’s blood could cause mutations, and even had powers like resurrection and life extension. So, they built a dungeon near ancient ruins to conduct experiments. These zombies and skeletons are the tragic results of those experiments.

Skeleton texture – white and black:

Gun:

When I was painting the gun and arm skins, I actually really enjoyed it. As a player myself, I love buying skins in games, so having the chance to create them this time was exciting. I wanted to make the skins a bit more stylized and fun. Since the overall tone of the game isn’t very bright or lighthearted, I wanted the main character to look a bit more positive.

Arm:

When I was painting the arm, I added some paint-like graffiti, a fabric texture for the glove, and visible veins on the arm.

3. Build environment

Assets I used:

1.Dark fantasy greatsword pack：

2. Morbid Pack：

Morbid Pack Volume 1 – https://www.fab.com/listings/8b88ac2e-9b50-4381-91d1-46683a89178b

My process of building environment:

I tried for a long time to create volumetric lighting to achieve the Tyndall beam effect, but I wasn’t successful. So I had to make a fake light beam myself:

I added cube models, stretched them, then duplicated and rotated them six times to form the light beam model.

I used two texture assets from UE5’s built-in engine content pack to create a light beam.

The effect I get:

Create packed level actor

During the asset setup stage, I followed this tutorial and learned a really useful method called “Create Packed Level Actor.” It’s a great way to combine many different assets—it can regroup various assets into one big, rich new asset and pack it into the level, so it can be moved around freely.

The “Group” function in UE is really hard to use, because when rotating or moving, the pivot points of the parts need to be manually re-aligned. Otherwise, after rotation, their positions will shift and break the original composition.

I used this method to build almost all the complex assets in the game, such as staircases, the knight statue hall, some complex combined statues, tables, and the platform where the serpent is placed.

However, this method also has some downsides. When I try to place an actor inside a packed level actor, sometimes it stops working. Also, when complex actors are nested together, modifying them can cause some models to disappear. If I go into the original level where the model was made, all the parts are still there—but when I drag the actor into a new level, some of them are missing.

This cost me a lot of time when making the knight statue hall. I nested individual knight statues with a full row of statues and added blueprint components for the torches. The problem was, when I tried to modify the actor at the second level, going back to the first level wouldn’t save my changes—so I ended up losing the parts I just modified.

Also, in this setup, the blueprint components for the torches couldn’t display correctly. So what I did was place the torches separately instead.

When building the stairs, I also used the “Create Packed Level Actor” function. I created a stair module, so I can combine them to form multiple staircases.

When I first started building, I honestly didn’t know where to begin. The assets were like thin sheets of paper, so I had to manually align and connect the stair sections. Since there were gaps between the bottom of the assets and the stairs, I had to use single-sided walls to close those openings.

However, because these assets are quite modular and open-ended, there are many possibilities when it comes to rebuilding and reshaping the staircases.

Used plugin: Dash

I use Dash to help me better organize assets. It makes the assets more visual. Although you can also use filters in folders, Dash feels a bit more convenient.

It also lets me use physics simulation brushes to scatter objects on the ground, and vine brushes to create vines on walls. But these tools can be a bit tricky to use.

This week, I completed the following tasks in the character blueprint:

• Set up footstep sounds
• Added mouse input for aiming down sights
• Created a transition to zoom the head during aiming
• Adjusted walking speed while aiming
• Added depth of field effect when aiming
• Set footstep sounds specifically for aiming movement
• Created the weapon blueprint
• Wrote a custom event for weapon firing
• Added a weapon state machine
• Added weapon sound effects, bullet effects, and reload effects
• Implemented bullet hit effects
• Created a function to count bullets
• Built the reload blueprint
• Added natural bullet spread
• Added recoil effect when firing
• Added bullet glow effects

This week, my main focus was still on blueprint scripting. Once the character and enemy blueprints are done, I can just drag them into the map and use them directly. Although there are many follow-up steps afterward, the blueprints are definitely the top priority.

After finishing them, I’ll move on to reworking some model textures, building the scenes, creating the UI and main menu, and finally packaging the game.

Set up footstep sounds:

I selected the audio files and created a single cue. Then, I added an audio modulator to unify the pitch and volume across these sounds, while also introducing random variations in pitch and volume. This way, when played back, the audio feels much more dynamic and natural：

Then, I went back to the animation asset and added a “Notify” — “Play Sound” — selecting the sound cue I just created.

Added mouse input for aiming down sights

Similar to before, I added mouse input, set it up as IA_focus (for aiming function), and linked it inside the character blueprint. This lets me control the focus with the mouse smoothly.

I used a timer to make the aiming zoom effect transition more smoothly. This approach will also come in handy later for toggling the flashlight and handling other action transitions.

Adjusted walking speed while aiming：

In the speed calculation function, I added a condition that if the character is aiming, the selected float value becomes 150(150 for the speed of walk with aiming).

Then I add blueprints for the weapon, cause there are some functions like reload ammo and ammo calculation, I need to split these from character blueprint, otherwise, it will be mass.

Then, in the weapon blueprint, attach (or spawn) the weapon to the character’s arm.

In the weapon blueprint, I set up the following event icons: fire_weapon, change bullets, and recoil.

In fire_weapon, I configured three states: start firing, firing, and stop firing. Then I used play animation montage to connect the animation assets to each of these states.

The rest of the operations are all shown in my screen recording：

This week, I mainly worked on setting up the character blueprint, including:

• Character capsule setup and camera setup
• Character state machine setup (idle, walk, run)
• Implemented camera rotation control using mouse movement
• Added shift key input to trigger the running state and linked it to the state machine, enabling communication between the character blueprint and the animation blueprint
• Added weapon drag effect (weapon swings slightly caused by camera movement)
• Added character detail lighting (I wanted to create a warm light to simulate a body-attached light source, combined with a cold light for contrast)
• Effect testing

Before getting started, I will provide all the assets I used and the link to the tutorial I followed. Since the tutorial I found is from the Chinese platform Bilibili, I won’t be able to share a YouTube link for the video resource.

Assets used:

1.Environment:

2. Morbid Pack

Morbid Pack Volume 1 – https://www.fab.com/listings/8b88ac2e-9b50-4381-91d1-46683a89178b

3. Serpent Model I Created in Last Semester — Collaboration Units
(Full process: modeling, UVs, texturing, rigging)

4. Gargoyle Model I Created in Last Semester — Collaboration Units
(Full process: modeling, UVs, texturing, rigging)

5. Tutorial：

https://www.bilibili.com/cheese/play/ss32685?csource=Share_copylink&from_spmid=333.873.selfDef.purchased_lecture&plat_id=362&share_from=lesson&share_medium=iphone&share_plat=ios&share_session_id=B94F4E1E-BB07-40B1-83E1-A53774E26305&share_source=COPY&share_tag=s_i&spmid=united.player-video-detail.0.0&timestamp=1747402290&unique_k=528infI

Character capsule setup and camera setup：

At the beginning, I set up the Animation Blueprint, Character Blueprint, and Blend Space for the character.

When I started setting up my character, the first step was to create a Character Blueprint. Inside the blueprint, I added the character mesh and carefully adjusted its position so it sat correctly within the capsule collider. This ensures that the character’s mesh and collision boundaries are properly aligned, which is really important for smooth movement and interaction.

I applied the same process for setting up the camera. I attached the camera to the character blueprint and positioned it in a way that works well with the gameplay perspective I want to achieve.

These might seem like basic steps, but getting them right early on saves a lot of trouble later in the pipeline—especially when starting to work with the animation blueprint and player controls.

Character state machine setup (idle, walk, run)：

Inside the Animation Blueprint, I set up the State Machine, including Idle, Walk, and Run states.

In the Blend Space, I blended the Idle, Walk, and Run animations, and set up the corresponding movement speeds.

For example, I set the walking speed to 300 and running speed to 750. Since my scene is quite large, I needed the character to move a bit faster to fit the scene.

Implemented camera rotation control using mouse movement：

在角色蓝图的文件夹中，我增加了输入的文件夹，并加入了鼠标可以控制角色摄像机视野旋转的input action：

I also changed the bool input to Axis 2D, since the mouse controls the camera rotation based on X and Y movement on the screen plane. Using a bool would only allow simple on/off states, while Axis 2D lets me read continuous input values, which is more suitable for smooth camera control.

I used the Input Mapping Context to organize all the input settings and define the input devices, making the control setup more clean and modular.

I added a Look event in the event graph to call IA_look：

Added shift key input to trigger the running state and linked it to the state machine, enabling communication between the character blueprint and the animation blueprint：

Similarly, I set up the Shift key input within the Input Mapping Context.

I added an if-run boolean check in the running graph. Then, I created a speed calculation function that uses this boolean—if the character is running, it sets the speed to 750, otherwise to 300.

Added character detail lighting (I wanted to create a warm light to simulate a body-attached light source, combined with a cold light for contrast)：

This was my first attempt at adding a warm light attached to the character, so I added a point light inside the capsule.

Later during testing, I adjusted the light settings and created a toggleable flashlight-like feature for illumination.