Orientation: the real-time pipeline

Mon 2:00 · Brief How a model becomes a game

A render and a game look similar in a screenshot. They are built by opposite philosophies, and this course lives on the game side of that line.

The pipeline, end to end

Here is the journey every asset in this class takes: model in Blender (silhouette, topology, budget), UV and texture so a flat image wraps the surface, export as FBX, import into Unreal, assemble in a level, then rig, animate, and script with Blueprints so the thing responds to a player. Finally you package — Unreal cooks and compiles your level into a standalone executable that runs in real time on a target platform. Miss any handoff and the asset stalls at the border.

The word that separates this from your intro course is real time. A film frame can take an hour to render; a game has roughly 16 milliseconds to render the entire frame and still have time left to run physics, input, and AI. Every decision you make about polygons, textures, and shaders is really a decision about that millisecond budget.

Render-ready vs. game-ready

Render-ready geometry is generous: subdivide freely, stack modifiers, let the offline renderer sort it out. Game-ready geometry is disciplined: clean quads, a controlled triangle count, textures sized to a budget, and a shader that a GPU can evaluate thousands of times per frame. Same craft, different constraints. You already know how to make things look good — this semester you learn to make them look good and run.

Why we teach with agents

You are entering the field at the moment AI coding agents became standard studio tooling — which is exactly why you will not touch one until Week 9. For the first eight weeks you build in Blender and Unreal with your own hands, because you cannot judge whether an agent did good work until you can do the work. From Week 9 you will direct Claude Code and the Codex CLI as instruments rather than oracles: reading what they produce, verifying it, and keeping an AILOG.md of what you asked and what you accepted. Until then Gary, the AI TA on the course site, answers questions, and that is all.

Mon 2:45 · Guided lab Install party & first project

We do this together, in order. Do not skip ahead — the backup step depends on the project existing first.

1. Install the Epic Games Launcher and Unreal Engine 5.8

   Download the Epic Games Launcher from unrealengine.com, sign in with your Epic Games account, and use the Unreal Engine tab to install Unreal Engine 5.8. In the install options, add the target platforms you'll build for. The Launcher, not the editor, manages engine versions and library — you'll launch every project through it.

   Exact steps

   1. Go to unrealengine.com/download, download the launcher for your OS, run the installer, and open the Epic Games Launcher.
   2. Sign in (top right). No account yet → Sign up, and verify the email before you continue.
   3. Left sidebar → Unreal Engine → Library tab → click + next to Engine versions → pick 5.8 → Install.
   4. Keep the default install options — platforms can be added later. Let the download run in the background and move to the next step now.

   Done when the 5.8 tile in Library says Launch.

2. Install Blender

   Grab the current release from blender.org and launch it once to confirm it runs. Blender is our default DCC; it's where every asset begins before it ever reaches Unreal.

   Exact steps

   1. Download from blender.org/download.
   2. Windows: run the installer. macOS: open the .dmg and drag Blender into Applications.
   3. Launch it once — you should land in a new General file with the default cube.

   Done when Blender opens to the default cube.

3. Create an Unreal project

   From the Launcher, Launch UE 5.8 → Games → Blank (or Third Person), enable Blueprint, name it fmx320-sandbox, and choose a folder you control. This is the project you'll grow all semester — Unreal is a real-time renderer with Lumen and Nanite available out of the box, the performance-conscious foundation for the platforms your work will target.

   Exact steps

   1. Launcher → Library → Launch on 5.8. The Unreal Project Browser opens (the first launch is slow — it compiles shaders).
   2. Games → Blank (or Third Person) → under Project Defaults choose Blueprint; leave Starter Content off.
   3. Project Name fmx320-sandbox. Location: a folder you control, like Documents/fmx320 — avoid spaces in the path and cloud-synced folders (OneDrive, Dropbox).
   4. Create, then give the first shader compile a minute.

   Done when the viewport renders and holding the right mouse button + WASD flies the level.

4. Know where it lives, and back it up

   There is no version control in this course — your backup is your own, and it starts today. Find the project folder (the one holding fmx320-sandbox.uproject), learn its path cold, and copy it to storage you control at the end of every session: a USB drive or SSD, or your cloud drive. On a lab PC this is not optional — never assume the machine keeps your files.

   Exact steps

   1. Find the folder: in the Epic Games Launcher’s My Projects, right-click the project → show in folder — or just remember the location you chose at Create.
   2. Quit Unreal, then copy the whole project folder to your USB drive/SSD or cloud drive. Zipping it first (right-click → Compress) keeps it tidy and dated.
   3. Want it smaller? Delete Intermediate/, Saved/ and DerivedDataCache/ from the copy — the editor regenerates them.

   Done when a dated copy of the project exists on storage that is yours.

Wed 2:00 · Workbench Practice, unhurried

No new material. You work on your own file while I circulate — this is the hour where the technique from the guided lab stops being something you watched and becomes something you can do.

1. Finish the lab on your own work

   The guided lab was built on the class example. Now do it on the piece you are actually submitting. That second pass is where it sticks.

2. If you fell behind, catch up here

   This is what the hour is for. Say so and I will come to you — do not spend it quietly stuck.

3. If you are ahead, go deeper

   Take the optional extensions from the lab, or push the piece further than the brief asks. Nothing graded depends on them.

4. Ask Gary, the AI TA, anything

   The tutor on the course site is open all term for questions about how and why. It explains; you build. No agents in the work until Week 9.

Wed 3:10 · Crit / share Show your green checkmark

We go around the room and each person opens their project on the projector — the level viewport, the folder it lives in, and where the backup went. This is a low-stakes first crit on purpose: the goal is confirming everyone crossed the setup finish line — and hearing, in a sentence, what fought you on the way. If your project won’t open, we fix it live so nobody starts Week 02 behind.

Homework — due before Week 02

Resources

• Epic Developer Community Learning — free guided paths; start with the Editor essentials.
• Unreal Engine documentation — the authoritative reference; bookmark it now.
• Blender — download and release notes for our default DCC.