Welcome!

In this chapter, we’ll have an overview of what we will learn, and see how you can follow this training.

Table of contents

What will we learn about in this training?

• Setting up Unreal Engine and Visual Studio Code

• The Python basics

• The UE Python API

• Make a Python tool that rename assets

  

• Make a Python tool that create materials with different and random properties

  

• Make a Python tool that manipulate actors

  

Why learning Python?

• Python is becoming more and more used in CG pipelines and video game pipelines
• Python is one of the easiest language to learn, and there is many available tools and libraries
• Learning Python is a good first programming experience that can lead you to more complex subjects, such as compute shaders, sound synthetization, etc.

What can we do with Python?

You can do pretty much anything you want with Python. Websites, tools, operating systems, games, and much more.

But let’s focus on what you can do with Python, in CG.

• Automate tasks
  • Exporting a thumbnail or a video of all your vfxs
  • Bake, copy, rename, …
• Creating and managing assets
• Manipulating textures (channel swap, merge, export, crop, etc.)
• Generating and manipulating geometry
• Connect things together
  • Make a substance tool that communicate with your Unreal Engine Python tool
  • Download images directly from a website into Unreal Engine