Today, we’re diving into the idea that to create truly immersive digital environments, we’ve got to step away from our screens and into the real world. I mean, let’s be real: there’s no substitute for feeling the grass under our feet or soaking in the atmosphere of a city we’re trying to recreate in Unreal Engine. I’ve been holed up in front of my computer for weeks, but now that I’m outside by the River Spree, it’s all clicking – those genuine experiences are what fuel our creativity. We’ll chat about how my recent travels, including a little jaunt to Poland and an upcoming trip to France, have shaped my approach to environment design and why it’s essential to immerse ourselves in the nuances of real-life locations. So, grab your headphones, kick back, and let’s explore how getting out into the world can elevate our 3D creations from sterile to sensational! Sitting by the River Spree in Berlin, I found myself reflecting on the chaos of creativity and the importance of stepping away from the grind. You know how it is—sometimes you get so wrapped up in your projects, especially when you're deep in Unreal Engine work, that you forget to breathe. I'm talking about that moment when you realize you've been glued to your screen for weeks, and the outside world starts to feel like a distant memory. So, here I am, holding my mic like a lifeline while I embrace the outdoors, soaking in the vibes instead of pixels. It’s a refreshing change, and it got me thinking about how crucial it is to experience the environments we aim to recreate. There's something magical about touching the grass and feeling the sun's warmth that you just can’t replicate in a 3D model, right? As I munched on some delicious Indian food, I couldn’t help but reminisce about my recent travels, which have really opened my eyes to the nuances of environment design. Whether it was wandering the streets of Poland or planning my upcoming trip to France, each experience adds another layer to my creative palette. We're not just creating digital spaces; we're trying to capture the essence of a place, the way the light dances through the leaves or how the air feels on your skin. It's kind of like drawing—it's all about observation and feeling before you even think about the execution. I’ve learned that if I want my virtual environments to feel alive, I need to invest time in the real world first. But let’s be real for a second. It’s easy to get lost in the technical side of things, especially with the rise of AI in creative processes. While AI can be a handy sidekick, I’ve realized that it’s no substitute for genuine human experience. I’ve spent a good chunk of time working on an NPC system that's meant to mimic real social interactions, and trust me, there’s a lot more to it than just plugging in a chatbot. It’s about understanding the subtleties of human emotion and interaction, and that’s something you can only grasp by being out there in the world. As I sit here contemplating all this, I'm excited about the potential of my projects and the new directions they could take, fueled by real experiences and genuine connections. And who knows? Maybe I'll share more of this journey with you as I dive back into the coding chaos after this lovely break!

Takeaways:

• Creating virtual environments requires real-world experiences to truly replicate their essence.
• Embracing AI in creative processes can lead to more effective and innovative solutions.
• It's essential to disconnect from screens and immerse ourselves in our surroundings for inspiration.
• The journey of developing NPC interactions is complex and highlights the need for a nuanced understanding of social dynamics.
• Traveling influences creativity in game design by providing fresh perspectives and experiences.
• The balance between technical skills and personal experiences is crucial in producing engaging content.

Contact me at [email protected]

Here in this lovely little spot by the River Spree in Berlin.

And I'm trying to record this podcast.

I'm using camera as well because that's what I've been trying to do.

I've been trying to embrace the idea that podcasting is now a video.

I'm not really done with this, but I'm holding my microphone, I may as well hold the camera.

So that's all what it is.

If you are just listening to it, you're not missing much.

But if you are watching this, you should know that this thing was meant to be listened to, not watched.

I'm sitting here in this little lovely square because it's lovely, it's very relaxing and I think it's gonna be raining very soon.

Clouds are very heavy.

I've got really full belly eating this Indian lunch.

And I appreciate this moment of being away from computer because that's what I've been at for the last few weeks, sitting in front of the computer, just working on my projects, working on Unreal Engine adjacent at this point project.

And I found that it's impossible to.

It's impossible to record a podcast because I just postponed this and I'm just focusing on creating things rather than talking about creating things, which was the premise originally, right?

I was going to make this podcast so I can share my enthusiasm and you know, I have so much of it, but it never ends.

I just work on my project and I cannot make myself walk away from the computer.

So the fact that I'm now outside makes it ideal because all those loose thoughts that I have about my project cannot be implemented.

They need to wait.

And before I get into talking about AI and you know, AI coding in Unreal Engine, I want to talk about something high level, which is environment and environment design because I obviously changed my environment.

Right now I'm here outside and I'm touching the grass.

Basically, I'm touching the grass.

And you know, it's not the perfect grass, but it's a grass.

When I create spaces in Unreal Engine, it's really easy to forget that they're meant to represent a real place.

And when we don't travel, when we don't experience those places, when we just think that we know it, we've been there, we've seen it, we've seen photos of it.

It doesn't mean that we can recreate it.

And that's maybe underlining problem with AI generated images.

And you know, there are also now 3D generated environments.

We have this unique experience of being there and feeling the grass, feeling the air, the way how sun lands on our skin, the wind, the noise.

There's so many little nuances that we need to experience before we start creating this environment in 3D.

So I've been actually, apart from what I said, I've been traveling quite a bit lately.

I had made a little trip to Poland where I went to actually explore environment.

I went to explore, explore the city.

It's not too far away from Berlin, but I was always curious about.

And I will be traveling to France in two weeks.

It's going to be less of an exploration, but it will be exploration as well to some degree.

And you know, all those experiences are helping me to create better environments.

The project that I'm working on is based in Mediterranean Town and it happens to be Italy because that's, that's asset kit that I bought.

But I would say it's country agnostic.

And you know, I.

When I go to France, I will be doing exactly those things.

I'll be not only taking reference photos, but I'll be also looking at how I feel when I'm there and when I'm recreating this moment in space and time in 3D.

I want to capture and communicate exactly that.

And I wonder where else does this idea extend to?

Right.

Is it just about the environment or is it about doing things in the real world in general?

You know, if you're building NPC system and if it's meant to mimic social interactions, it's probably a good idea to investigate these as well, right?

It's not just purely technical mechanism where you've got back and forth.

There is a whole lot of nuances that you need to understand and feel before you move them into your project and you will try to replicate them.

I know I've done it the wrong way and my games or my projects would always turn out to be really sterile and cold and lifeless.

But now I think I can feel the depth of what I need to create because I feel like at the core of it, there's always need to experience it first and then to recreate it in 3D, you get me?

I know it's a little bit messy, what I'm saying.

As you can see, I don't have any notes and I don't edit this, but I'm just trying to make it up as I go.

In order to create it, you need to know it, see it, feel it, and it can be applied to many creative disciplines.

Right.

Many years ago I was very much into drawing and there was this really thought provoking idea that the art of live drawing is like 70, or let's say 80% it's looking and 20% is drawing.

You don't just look at a model or whatever you're drawing, and you go directly to paper and just draw.

You mostly look, you mostly observe.

And then you can replicate this idea, you can replicate this object with very simple pencil movements.

And there was always something very beautiful about it because.

Yeah, I remember on live, during classes, people would often go deep into their sheets of paper and they would just, you know, try to imagine things that were still pretty or interesting or dramatic or just crazy, but they would not be what they were meant to be.

So let's say there was a model sitting on the chair, and we were supposed to draw that lady.

And, you know, people would come up with a lot of interpretations of that, but it would not be that lady on a chair.

It would be some fantasy.

And very few people were able to actually draw that lady to make her recognizable.

And even if you want to put some imagination into your vision, even if you want to put your identity there on the drawing, in this case at the base, it needs to be what it is.

And on top of that, there needs to be your artistic interpretation.

So bringing it back to Unreal Engine, that's still exactly what it is.

Touch the grass, talk to people, look at objects.

Touch objects that you want to create.

Don't create them just for a photo.

You know, touch the texture.

Maybe go to a museum, look at the sculptures, look at the.

Look at the old buildings.

Go to places and see how you feel in those environments that you're trying to create.

I know you cannot always do that, right.

If you're creating some futuristic location in your game.

I don't know, maybe to some extent you can.

You know, I've been to this shopping mall just now, and it was.

The whole complex is, I would say, for enterprise, corporate crowd.

So everything is very sterile.

And there were sections that were not really open to public.

Somehow I wanted to make a shortcut, and I went through this really cold industrial space.

And it looked.

If I was into that stuff, I would probably take a lot of reference photos, but you know, with different lightning, with different lighting, and with different additional flavors.

It could have been like a spaceship interior, you know.

So I think I made my point and I'll just move on to what I.

What I really want to talk about is how my project has been lately.

Now, this project is something that I. I started two years ago when I began to play with unreal engine.

And yeah, I had a couple of warm up projects, a couple of little things that I started with, but this was, you know, I made a donut in blender and all that.

But this open world esque situation that I'm building for a couple of years now is a project that completely consumed my idea.

What could I do in 3D when I'm thinking about what I would like to do is this district, this town that I want to build and invest my money and energy and attention to.

In all of those iterations, I've been creating my models, I've been creating buildings, characters.

And like I said, I lost it all a few times.

And in the end, right now I'm using assets that I bought.

I bought the Italian Town asset from Scan's factory, I believe.

It's incredible, it's really amazing.

And I live with the fact that I bought the big chunk of the identity that I want to have in this project, right?

Like just different assets that I took from different places.

Because it's not just that, right?

There's a lot of assets that I downloaded or bought and downloaded.

But I realized that this environment, no matter how many assets I'll put inside, it'll be always dead.

It'd be always soulless and empty.

And I was reluctant to use AI with Unreal because I was thought, yeah, I'll get into it.

How good can it be?

And I know in recent episodes I've been sharing with you my process and I made a video also from my channel that is now completely outdated.

I need to make new one.

Basically the whole workflow changed and there's really a lot of new ways, simpler ways, more effective ways to work with AI.

And it's a irreplaceable sidekick, this AI agent that looks over me, that follows my guidance, my instructions.

So I promise I will make another tutorial video and maybe a demo of my project.

For the last couple of weeks, something like maybe eight weeks now, I pretty much walked away from Unreal Engine because I've been working on the underlining engine that drives NPC interactions.

All I really wanted to do is I wanted to have NPCs talk to one another and I wanted to talk to NPCs as well, which is kind of easy to do, right?

You just connect chat GTP into NPC and that's pretty much it.

But I wanted to have a system where information can circle around and information stays and it makes change.

And this turned out to be incredibly difficult.

And I started to work on this system and Before I knew it, I completely abandoned Unreal Engine for a couple of weeks and I had to decouple it even.

I first had my Unreal Engine project, then I had this system.

Then I realized, okay, system becomes bigger than the, the Unreal Engine project.

I need to decouple it so it's cleaner.

And now I need to connect it again so the whole thing works.

But what I want to say is this engine, I call it cps, it stands for Context Propagation System.

I had this idea where CPS could become its own thing for different applications, even like very serious applications, like research for social science people.

It could be an engine for games for sure.

It could be something to study how societies work, how information spreads and travels.

And you know, I went.

It was a big detour.

But at this point I can say I did accomplish something that I didn't know I want to build.

And the result is I'm extremely proud of it.

And I cannot wait until I connect it to Unreal Engine again and I can talk to NPCs with different characteristics and see how the conversation I have with them affects the situation.

So my idea right now is that CPS will drive those conversations and the whole game will be basically this environment, almost self aware NPCs and a problem.

And the solution is somewhere hidden by me, right?

And you need to somehow, through interactions, through conversations, you need to solve the problem and also experience the situation.

That's the premise.

But also I'm trying to promote CPS on its own because I feel like it could be something very serious.

And you know, I told you that I'm considering renaming this podcast into Unreal Engines because I see now how Unreal Engine itself is just a part of the whole stack of expression of idea.

And those days we do have a lot of very unreal engines and tools that are worth talking about.

I don't want to start another podcast about AI, but I think I'm gonna reframe this podcast into a podcast about very fascinating tools and what they can give us.

I'm not gonna do it now, but I will probably make this announcement several times now.

And maybe it's not something extraordinary because I doubt that there are people nowadays out there who use one software, one piece of software exclusively, right?

And now with AI, not only those tools are interconnected, but also it's becoming less about a tool, it's more about the process and definitely more and more about project that you're doing.

So I'm gonna leave you with that.

I think it's gonna be a short one, 20 minutes.

I took longer, but I'm noticing that the clouds are becoming heavier and it's time to go.

And also I cannot wait to sit down back at my computer and implement some changes.

Actually, since yesterday, I've been looking again into Unreal Engine, into the project.

And with great joy, I've been moving some meshes and blueprints around, solving some light issues.

It's entirely different kind of work, you know, like when I work with AI, I use terminal and a chat, and it's everything but visual work.

And it's extremely satisfying because you feel like you're solving problem and everything else is just distraction.

But sitting down yesterday and today with Unreal Engine was just really satisfying, just being in that virtual space and feeling the project right.

Touching virtual grass.

The very last thing I want to mention, you are probably watching this after the event, but I think tomorrow it's the annual state of Unreal event.

It looks like 5.8, Unreal 5.8 will be released.

It's now in beta.

It looks quite interesting.

And there are those features, some of which I really look forward into, like the new Metahuman Crowd system.

It's something that I'm heavily using right now for my NPCs.

I'm not gonna jump into it because.

And you should consider that as well, whenever a new version comes out, a lot of your plugins, plugins that you've been relying on will misbehave.

They might be not optimized yet.

So it may break your project and it may slow you down quite a bit.

And as you know, once you upgrade your project to the newer version of Unreal, you cannot really go back.

Not easily, at least.

So if you're going to experiment with 5.8, make a backup copy and don't chase the latest features.

It's great that they're there.

I'm very excited about new Unreal 5.8, and I think it's going to be now a regular thought for me.

I bought my work computer, I think two weeks.

I bought components for it and I assembled it two weeks before Unreal Engine 5.6.

And it was a milestone.

And it's kind of like a timestamp where it kind of.

It creates a timestamp for me.

When did I start to be serious about Unreal Engine?

Before I'd been working on a gaming laptop and it was a torture.

My hands were getting cooked.

It was super loud and insufficient, completely insufficient in terms of, you know, what my project needed.

It's the same project still.

I started working on it from the laptop.

Okay, guys, I said goodbye already.

I'll leave you with this unfinished thought that maybe it's not even worth communicating.

But thank you for listening, thank you for being here, and thank you for watching and listening.

And I'll talk to you soon.

Take care.

Appreciate you.