LerpworksAcademy

Courses Materials Glossary Trainer Profile

Graphics19/21 Math and physics15/15 Tech art Art Environment World and levels45/45 Effects Animation Game design Interface and UX Programming Character AI Multiplayer Sound Production and release Reference0/1

Sections

Basics

Color is numbers Normals and light UV: how a picture gets onto a model Shader: a function for every pixel Surface properties: roughness, metallic, AO Material: a shader plus data

Space

Spaces: where a point is Tangent space and normal maps

Textures

Texture settings for every map

Materials

A master material from scratch

Light

Direct and indirect light Shadows: maps, cascades and soft edges Reflections: cubemaps, SSR and Lumen Baked and live light: lightmaps and Lumen

The frame

How an engine draws a frame: passes and the G-buffer Depth buffer: what is closer to the camera Transparency: Opaque, Masked, Translucent Anti-aliasing: stair-steps, flicker and TSR LOD, instancing and Nanite: drawing a million blades of grass Fog and post-processing The frame budget on the graphics card

Vectors

Vectors: arrows you can add Dot product: how much two arrows point the same way Cross product: an arrow perpendicular to two others

Angles and rotations

Angles, sine and cosine: a point on a circle Matrices: new axes, not a table of numbers Rotations in 3D: Euler angles and quaternions

Transitions, randomness, numbers

Interpolation: lerp, smoothstep and remap Randomness: seeds, distributions and fairness Numbers in a computer: integers, floats and precision

Physics of motion

Motion: velocity, acceleration and the time step Forces: gravity, friction and drag Springs and damping: a smooth camera and soft motion Collisions: how the engine knows that objects touch Why fast bodies fall through walls Buoyancy: objects on waves

The idea

How a world is built: from large to small World scale: meters, minutes and density Open-world design: regions and landmarks A world you believe in: where people live and where the roads go

Level design

Wayfinding: how players find the way Metrics: a level built around the hero’s body Blockout: a world of boxes Layout: loops, forks and dead ends Pacing: tension and rest Gates and keys: a world that opens piece by piece Verticality: height as a tool

Space and combat

Composition in 3D Interior and exterior Encounters: arenas, cover and lines of fire Stealth levels: light, shadow, patrols and cover Multiplayer maps: balance, lanes and chokepoints Level scripting: triggers, doors and scenes

Terrain

Landscape: terrain from a heightmap What real land looks like Gaea: first steps Erosion in Gaea: water, talus and deposits Terrain from a generator into the engine Ground material: layers, slope and tiling Masks from terrain in Gaea: slope, flow and deposits Caves, arches and overhangs: when a heightmap isn’t enough

Water and roads

Water in the world: lakes, rivers and shores Lake and river in Unreal Roads and trails

Vegetation and placement

Biomes: how a forest is built Scattering by rules Plant a forest by rules in PCG Placing things along roads and shores

Large worlds

Air and distance: fog, sky and time of day Open world: how it loads in pieces Open-world budget

World breakdowns

Zelda: Breath of the Wild — triangles and gravity Firewatch: a forest built by a small team Horizon Zero Dawn: placing a world by rules Far Cry 5: a world built by rules in Houdini Ghost of Tsushima: the island, the grass and the wind Epic’s PCG samples: assemblies, flat ground and biomes

Level breakdowns

How to study someone else’s level de_dust2: why the map has lasted for decades Dark Souls: a world that folds back on itself Hitman: Sapienza, a town built as a sandbox

Progress

Profile Knowledge map

All pages by type

All flows All cheat sheets All breakdowns All pitfalls

Tools

Unreal material nodes

On this page

Progress

Profile

Profile Knowledge map

On this page

Esc

↑ ↓ select Enter open Ctrl K open from anywhere