Unreal Engine courses
At BUas, we’re proud to be a Gold Academic Partner of Unreal Engine. With Unreal Engine Authorised Trainers on board, we teach both students and professionals the ins and outs of this powerful real-time engine.
Unreal Engine Authorised Trainers
One of our Unreal Engine Authorised trainers is Tim van Kan, currently working as a Technical Design lecturer for second-year students in the Game Design & Production course within the Creative Media and Game Technologies programme at BUas. With expertise in Unreal Engine’s diverse applications, ranging from foundational techniques to complex design implementations, Tim provides students with individual guidance, feedback, and comprehensive course materials, including videos, lectures, and template projects. For any questions, feel free to reach out at [email protected].
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Unreal Engine courses
Unreal Engine Deep Dive (Beginner Level)
This beginner-friendly course introduces participants to essential Unreal Engine features and tools through engaging, design-focused lectures. Far from basic introductions, each session explores both foundational and advanced techniques, empowering designers to harness Unreal’s full potential for professional growth and portfolio-building. This course aims to create awareness around awesome features of Unreal Engine.
Twin Stick Jukebox – Action Game Toolkit (Intermediate Level)
The Twin Stick Jukebox course is designed for intermediate learners ready to deepen their Unreal Engine skills. Using a provided game-development toolkit, students individually create a compelling, polished action game. Throughout the course, they learn more about concepts such as inheritance, components, interfaces, and AI behaviour trees, while collaborating in small groups for continuous feedback and improvement.
Unreal Engine Deep Dive Course (Beginner Level)
Topics Covered:
- Materials & Shaders: From Material Instances to Dynamic Material Instances and World Position Offset. It shows the power and versatility of materials in Unreal.
- Sequencer: Animating game objects and creating cinematic transitions to and from gameplay.
- Animation Blueprints: How to get started with animation blueprints, skeletal meshes, and animation montages.
- Procedural Content Generation (PCG): Combining procedural methods with manual level design. This introduction dives into PCG as a tool for designers.
- Artificial Intelligence: Behaviour trees, AI controllers, and custom AI behaviours.
- Marketplace Content (Fab): Designing, preparing, and publishing packages for Unreal Marketplace.
- Materials & Shaders
Students learn core material creation in Unreal Engine, starting from basic Material Instances to more sophisticated Dynamic Material Instances. Advanced techniques such as World Position Offset are covered to allow dynamic interactions and awesome environmental effects.
- Sequencer
This module covers using Unreal’s powerful Sequencer tool to animate game objects and create cinematic sequences. Participants will learn how to set up animations, transitions, and produce cinematic intros and outros. It also shows examples of how to use sequencer for gameplay or how to show your work throughout the block as a level designer.
- Animation Blueprints
Students explore how to bring characters to life through Animation Blueprints, learning about skeletal meshes, animation montages, and the interaction between standard Blueprints and Animation Blueprints to create compelling character animations.
- Procedural Content Generation (PCG)
This session demonstrates an introduction to PCG in Unreal engine, how do we get started with this new tool. It also talks about combining procedural generation techniques with manual level design, enabling participants to efficiently populate environments while maintaining control over key design elements.
- Artificial intelligence
A comprehensive introduction to Unreal’s AI framework, including behaviour trees, AI controllers, and custom behaviour set-ups. Students will get a better understanding of how to start creating their own AI that makes decisions and acts upon them.
- Marketplace Content (Fab)
Participants receive practical guidance on creating and publishing content for the Unreal Marketplace, understanding best practices, marketplace standards, and how to effectively target specific user groups with compelling, professional packages.
Twin Stick Jukebox Course – Action Game Toolkit (Intermediate Level)
Key Learning Outcomes
- Develop and integrate gameplay mechanics (game modes, weapons, enemies).
- Adhere to template established work flows (inheritance, commenting, naming).
- Apply Systems Thinking for effective game balancing and user experience design.
- Practise iterative game development using professional pipelines and Perforce.
- Project Set-up & Toolkit Overview
Participants dive into the provided Twin Stick Jukebox toolkit, exploring its structure including Blueprints, inheritance hierarchies, and component-based architecture. This practical toolkit is extensively designed to demonstrate core Unreal Engine development practices, enabling learners to build comprehensive action game mechanics efficiently.
- Game Development Pipeline
Participants follow an Unreal-focused development pipeline, structured into:
- Proposal & Concept Development:
- Learners conceptualise their game, specifically detailing technical implementation goals aligned with Unreal Engine’s capabilities.
- Prototype & Design Breakdown:
- Participants prototype gameplay features using Blueprints and other relevant features.
- Design documentation explicitly maps out Engine-specific implementations, focusing on things such as gameplay loops and mechanic interactions.
- Functional Development:
- Creation of core game loops and mechanics such as Game Modes, Game States, Player Controllers, and pawn/enemy interactions.
- Initial implementation of weapon and enemy behaviour systems using Blueprint and/or build upon the template its use of existing actors and behaviour trees.
- Presentable (Stretch Goal):
- Further refining gameplay using advanced Blueprint techniques, and creating polished user experiences through enhanced animations, particle effects, UI, and audio integration within Unreal Engine. At this stage it’s up to the student to decide what adds most to their project.
- Proposal & Concept Development:
- Technical Skills Development
Students gain in-depth exposure to:
- Inheritance & Components: Effective use of inheritance to build scalable game systems and leveraging components for modularity within Unreal.
- Behaviour Trees & AI Controllers: Designing complex enemy behaviours and decision-making processes utilising Unreal Engine’s robust AI tools.
- Blueprint Interfaces: Establishing efficient communication between independent game systems.
Project Deliverables:
- Comprehensive Unreal Engine project submitted through Perforce, demonstrating proficiency in technical implementations.
- Playable, packaged build suitable for presentation and portfolio purposes.
- Documentation & Resources
Detailed Unreal-specific documentation, step-by-step implementation guides, and targeted tutorial videos ensure participants achieve clear, measurable progress and proficiency in Unreal Engine.