In May 2021, EPIC officially released a preview version of the Unreal 5 engine. Once released, it caused a huge response in the game industry. While shocking the engine's light and shadow effects, many domestic game teams even changed their research and development plans as a res

In May 2021, EPIC officially released a preview version of the Unreal 5 engine. Once released, it caused a huge response in the game industry. While shocking the performance of the engine's light and shadow effects, many domestic game teams even changed their research and development plans as a result, including "Black Myth" ": Wukong", all of them have been replaced from the Unreal Engine 4 engine previously used to Unreal Engine 5.

In April 2022, the Unreal 5 engine was officially launched, which once again caused a heated discussion. At the same time, some game DEMOs produced by the Unreal 5 engine have also appeared on the market. Among them, a game called produced by two graduates of the Central Academy of Fine Arts The independent game "Vientiane Gate" has aroused good response at Station B. So far, it has been played by nearly 500,000 people, and it has even been called a "AAA level" work by many netizens.

Two college graduates spent 6 months in isolation at home and made an independent game using Unreal 5 engine. The story-telling plot attracted the attention of Game Daily . After some research, it was discovered that these two graduates were able to use UE5 to create "Vientiane Gate" thanks to a course specifically based on the Unreal 5 engine offered by , the School of Urban Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and . Game Daily had an in-depth chat with Jiang Ke, a teacher from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, about the specific situation of the Unreal Engine 5 course in the academy. In an interview with

, teacher Jiang Ke told Game Daily that the college’s biggest original intention of offering Unreal Engine 5 courses is to improve students’ learning and creative efficiency. In terms of course formulation, the course requirements for students with different majors are also different, such as a preference for games. The direction of planning and art mainly includes courses such as game art setting, level design, white box design, and scene design. Courses that focus on game programming mainly include interaction-related applications such as blueprint systems, particle effects, and animation. Teacher Jiang Ke said that after the course, most students will be able to develop their own games.

Unreal 5 engine demonstration video screenshot

In addition, during the interview, Teacher Jiang Ke also mentioned content related to school-enterprise cooperation. For example, cooperation is mainly divided into two major aspects: content co-creation and hardware and technical solutions. Specifically The format is slightly different from that of other universities. Please see the interview transcript for details of the cooperation.
Game Daily officially launched [Special Report on College Game Majors], aiming to create a "little red book" linking candidates, colleges and enterprises. We welcome more heads of game companies and schools to contact us and co-create this series of reports.
The guest in this issue is teacher Jiang Ke from the School of Urban Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
The following is the specific interview record:

Q: Thank you for accepting the interview. First of all, please give a brief introduction.

Jiang Ke: Hello everyone, I am Jiang Ke, a teacher at the School of Urban Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. I am mainly responsible for teaching related tasks such as game design, game development, digital development, digital animation and special effects. In the past two years, I have mainly studied and researched artistic expression in the fields of game interaction, digital animation and special effects, digital people and virtual photography based on Unreal Engine.
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Q: What is the original intention of the college to launch the Unreal Engine course in 2020? What are the considerations for setting up such a course?

Jiang Ke: The biggest original intention of is to improve students’ learning and creative efficiency. Unreal Engine’s WYSIWYG visual presentation greatly improves students’ creative efficiency. At the same time, Unreal Engine is developed based on a programmatic method. , it is also more flexible in writing rendering nodes, and can better complete some stylized creations.

For 3D animation rendering, we have updated and iterated the traditional rendering method in the course. The creation tool uses the newer Unreal Engine for rendering output, which greatly improves the creation efficiency and enables students to see the results in a very short time. The real-time artistic expression effect also enhances students' enthusiasm and enthusiasm for creation.

For game creation, students at the Academy of Fine Arts are all art students. The biggest difficulty is code programming. Unreal Engine's visual blueprint programming also greatly reduces the difficulty of programming, making it easier to create your own works.

Q: Which group of students is the current Unreal Engine course mainly aimed at? Are there any special requirements to take this course?

Jiang Ke: Unreal Engine-related courses are currently offered in the Digital 3D Animation Studio, Future Media Game Direction, Future Media Interaction Direction, Second-year Cultural City at the School of Urban Design, and public elective courses at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. Related courses. Next semester, a related course will also be offered to second-year graduate students.

Talking about the requirements, since most of the majors offered are compulsory courses, we can only recommend that students lay a solid three-dimensional foundation before class, so that they can be better integrated in the future. All elective courses in the college are offered based on course selection. This course requires students to have a certain three-dimensional foundation to take this elective course.

Q: What is the schedule of this course? Ideally, what knowledge and skills can students master after taking all courses?

Jiang Ke: will still be slightly different according to each professional direction. Of course, learning and mastering the software is a must. However, the creative needs of each major are different, and the course arrangements will be adjusted accordingly.

The direction of three-dimensional animation is more towards completing an independent short film. During the course cycle, a series of complete three-dimensional creation processes including idea conception, design draft drawing, model construction, texture production, terrain editing, particle special effects, animation output, dubbing and editing, etc. must be completed. After this part of the course, students can master the entire process of 3D short film creation and independently create a 3D short film.

game direction is roughly divided into two parts. The first part focuses on game planning and art, mainly including game art settings, level design, white box design, scene design, etc. The other part is more focused on programs, mainly including interaction-related applications such as blueprint systems, particle effects, and animations. After the course, most students will be able to develop their own games.

Q: How many teachers are there teaching the Unreal Engine course? In addition, will some relevant game industry practitioners be invited to give lectures or lectures? Jiang Ke: Currently, I am mainly teaching students at the School of Urban Design. Of course, official Unreal Engine lecturers will also be invited to teach together in the course. The lectures are still very rich, and relevant experts from first-line game companies such as , Tencent Games, , Zulong Games, etc. will be invited to give lectures in stages.
Q: What abilities will this course mainly assess at the end of each semester and at graduation? Are there any student works that stand out?

Jiang Ke: The ability examined is mainly the practical creative ability related to the professional training direction, that is, using the knowledge learned to complete the corresponding creation. After the course, if there is an opportunity, we will usually take the students to participate in some creative competitions, on the one hand to consolidate the knowledge learned, and on the other hand to verify the students' own abilities.

There are quite a lot of outstanding student works, so I won’t list them all. I will mainly talk about some of the participating works. For example, in the 2020 and 2021 "Unreal Engine" official college game creation competition, I took students from these two majors to participate, and almost won all the awards in the two competitions. In the 2021 game creation competition guided by the "Beijing Dongcheng District Party Committee Propaganda Department" and sponsored by "Perfect World Group", the first and second prizes were also won by our students.

In the 2021 Beijing International Game Creative Innovation Competition guided by the "Beijing Municipal Party Committee Propaganda Department", the student work won the "Best Visual Award". The above works can be seen on the official website of the organizer. Interested students can go to the organizer's website to check it out.In addition, this year's game work "Vientiane Gate" created by graduates in the game direction using UE5 has 3A-level quality, and the number of views on Station B has almost exceeded 500,000. At the same time, this work also won the Theme Creation Award for the graduates of the Central Academy of Fine Arts.

Graduate work "Wanxiangmen"

Q: In terms of school-enterprise cooperation, what are the current cooperation models? Are there any special forms of cooperation in Unreal Engine? Jiang Ke: The cooperation model can be roughly divided into two aspects: content co-creation and hardware and technical solutions. In terms of content co-creation, we have cooperated with well-known companies and project teams such as Unreal Engine Official, Roblox Official, Monument Valley , Tencent Honor of Kings and other well-known companies and project teams. Companies share the latest industry technologies, solutions, and project development experiences with students. We generally co-create and apply them in the form of projects or workshops. The purpose is to enhance students' in-depth understanding of the industry and enable students to learn and understand the importance of teamwork during school. In terms of hardware solutions,

also cooperates with hardware manufacturers to jointly establish an industry-university-research laboratory. The laboratory will provide students with cutting-edge hardware and technology. Students can use the latest hardware and technology to create new art forms.

Unreal Engine has just concluded a cooperative course "Game Scene and Interactive Theme Creation Course". This course is in cooperation with Tencent King of Honor . Tencent will share their creative experience, worldview construction, plan formation process, etc., and will also provide students with certain information and digital assets of Honor of Kings. Students use Unreal Engine to recreate the world view and art form. Through course cooperation, we can also better learn from the creative experience of first-line game manufacturers, thereby better exporting talents to the industry.

Game scene and interactive theme creation class teaching scene

Q: What are the general employment destinations of graduates majoring in games? Are there many people going to game companies or the game industry? Jiang Ke: Most of the employment destinations are in the gaming industry. Students have found jobs in major game companies such as Tencent, NetEase, Perfect World, and ByteDance. I have the impression that more than half of the students who graduated last year got offers from NetEase. Of course, some students chose to take the postgraduate entrance examination, and some are engaged in independent game development.
Q: What advantages do you think the establishment of the Unreal Engine course can bring to game majors in the industry? Jiang Ke: With the official release of Unreal Engine 5, we can see that Unreal Engine has more in-depth applications not only in the field of games, but also in animation, automobiles, architecture and other fields. I have always believed that technology is productivity, and mastering a good The tools used will help students complete better creations. I have talked with friends who work at first-line game companies before. In the past two years, more and more games have been developed using Unreal Engine. Especially large project teams are generally developed based on Unreal. There is currently a huge gap in Unreal Engine talent. .

Student Works

Q: What kind of impact do you think this kind of learning system course, students with "professional background" will have on the entire game industry? Jiang Ke: I think students from the Academy of Fine Arts have several special abilities. The first is their rich imagination and creativity. I believe they will create innovative content and forms in the game industry. Secondly, they all have good aesthetic ability . I believe their joining will definitely have an impact on the game. The artistic quality of the industry has improved to a certain extent.

Q: In your career, have you encountered any misunderstandings about the game design profession? For example, parents have the misunderstanding that learning game production means playing games.

Jiang Ke: This may be a common problem. After all, each parent’s experience and industry may not have enough understanding of game design and there may be some misunderstandings. However, I believe that as the times develop, this voice will become more and more common. The less. In my opinion, games are a very comprehensive subject. It involves plane, three-dimensional, animation, architecture, computers, and even psychology and philosophy. I have always believed that people who can learn games well are very Excellent people.

Student Works

Q: What would you say to young people who want to major in game design or enter the game industry in the future? Jiang Ke: Games are a very comprehensive subject. Game development integrates program planning, art design, 3D production, animation production, program development, as well as psychology and philosophy. Therefore, learning games is not as easy as everyone thinks, and requires more effort than other subjects. But if you can learn the game well, I believe you will be a rare comprehensive talent.