Facilitator: Escape Studios – Jurian Van Váli.
Dates: Starts January 17th 2022
Duration: 10 weeks (3 hours of video content and 9 hours of self-study and practice per week)
Venue: Online Part Time (Distance Learning)
Cost to Immersive Technologies Skillnet Members: €450 pp (£895 via Escape Studios)
How To Become an IMTSkillnet Member: Participate in a Workshop, Course or Event!
Registration & Payment Deadline: January 15th 2021
Course Profile
Participant Profile
Curriculum & Timetable
Teaching & Learning
Technical Requirements
Facilitator
Registration

Entry requirements: Aged 18 or over with a good understanding of written and spoken English and knowledge of Unreal Engine fundamentals.
On this occasion, the Fundamentals course will not commence until February. If you need to participate in the Fundamentals workshop first, Register here.
The Blueprints course will be available later in the year.

WEEK 1 AND 2: INTRODUCTION TO VISUAL SCRIPTING
- Introduction
- Setting up your project
- Under the Hood
- Intro to Blueprints
- Variables and logic flow
- Triggers and debugging
- Triggering lights
- Timelines
- Animations
- Assignment
By the end of this module, you should feel comfortable using the Unreal Engine 4’s Blueprint interface.
You will also understand the basics of visual scripting, how it works under the hood and leverage some basic techniques.
WEEK 3 AND 4: VISUAL SCRIPTING CORE KNOWLEDGE
- Introduction
- Flow control
- Customisation
- Loops and arrays
- Functions and macros
- Inheritance
- Custom events
- Blueprint Communication
- Spawning Blueprints
- Assignment
By the end of this module, you should feel comfortable using some of the core techniques in object-oriented programming. You will have seen how to make your Blueprints adjustable within the engine and have a broader knowledge to produce more complex content.
WEEK 5 AND 6: LEVERAGING IMPORTANT VISUAL SCRIPTING TECHNIQUES
- Introduction
- Material communication
- Line traces: functionality
- Line traces: practical
- Timer by function name
- Creating splines
- Splines continued
- Distributing actors over spline
- Assignment
By the end of this module, you will have knowledge of some core techniques used within Blueprints in Unreal Engine. These techniques are often used for quick set-dressing and more complex interactions. Combined with the previous weeks you will have a broad knowledge to tackle some basic blueprint tools and gameplay interactions.
WEEK 7, 8 AND 9: FINAL PROJECT
You will combine all the knowledge you have learned through previous projects over the past weeks in one final project. It will challenge you to think creatively and problem solve.
WEEK 10: LIVE Q&A
This will be a live Q&A session, where you can ask questions about your next steps. You will simply need to submit your questions at the beginning of the week and your tutor will answer them in the live session.
- This course is based on independent learning and will take ten weeks (3-4 hours of video content and 9 hours of self-study and practice per week) to complete.
- The course consists of engaging video demonstrations and there will be no slides.
- The tutor will evaluate your work with a practical assessment. This involves submitting your projects, questions, strengths and challenges each week to your tutor to be assessed. This encourages a dialogue between you and your tutor and helps for you to receive more structured feedback.
- You will receive an asynchronous video feedback each week, which may also include annotations of the video, to ensure you understand the comments.
- On the Smashcut platform, you will have access to discussion forums where you can speak to a studio assistant or other students on the course.
- Check out Unreal Engine’s website for software and hardware requirements on using and running Unreal Engine on your personal computer.
- This course requires you to have Unreal Engine 4.26 installed on your computer and a knowledge of the Fundamentals of Unreal Engine.
- The course will be hosted on Smashcut. In order for the platform to work properly, you must use the Chrome web browser on a desktop or laptop computer.
- It is recommended to have some basic understanding of Unreal Engine before starting this course.
- To get the most out of the course you’ll need a webcam and microphone. If you have a dual Monitor Set up – even better!
Juriaan is currently a Technical Artist at Framestore in the Immersive department working on a wide range of projects from high end to mobile. Recently he has also become an Unreal Engine Authorized instructor.
Juriaan has 5 years of industry experience, of which 2.5 years as a tutor. His previous experience is as a Tutor at Escape Studios for their Undergraduate Game Art course. For this course, he built a VR Toolkit that was used in student projects during their VR Module. He also has experience in freelance architectural visualisation work.
IMPORTANT: Places are open to Irish based Enterprise, SMEs and sole traders only. Companies and sole traders outside the ROI do not qualify for the Immersive Technologies Skillnet subsidised workshop.
There is a 7 day cancellation policy in place. Fees cannot be refunded if places are cancelled inside of the 7 day period prior to the commencement date (but can be transferred to another participant up to 24hrs in advance of commencement date).
Register and Pay Below Before Jan 15th
NOTE: If you would like to pay for more than 1 participant to attend, please ask them to register individually and select the ‘invoice’ option. You can then contact manager@immersivetechnologiesskillnet.ie with details for invoice.
For further information, please email manager@immersivetechnologiesskillnet.ie
For technical issue with applying on the website please contact admin@immersivetechnologiesskillnet.ie
- Unreal Engine - Blueprints
17th January 2022 - 25th March 2022
8:00 am - 8:00 pm