G—P / FMX 320 / Tutorials / Tutorial 00

Tutorial 00 · Setup

Set up the project 20 min

One Third Person template project carries all four tutorials. Make it once, enable the plugins once, and every later page starts at its own step one instead of at a restart dialog.

Start A fresh Unreal Engine 5.6 or newer install, signed in to your Epic accountTime 20 minutes, most of it waiting on plugin restartsNeed Unreal Engine 5.6+ and about 25 GB free; MetaHuman also needs internetServes Every Unreal tutorial on this page, and Weeks 8–10

Download the demo projectUETutorials-demo.zip, 71 MB. Unzip it and open the .uproject in Unreal 5.8 to follow along.

Download the answer keyUETutorials-answer-key.zip, 72 MB. Every tutorial finished, so you can check your work against it.

By the end of this tutorial you can

Build · 20 min One project, six items

Do these in order. The plugin step restarts the editor, so finish it before you start placing anything.

ItemWhat to doWhy
ProjectGames → Third Person → Blueprint. Name it UnrealTutorials. (5.8 has no Starter Content switch; the template's own content is all these tutorials need)Gives you a rigged mannequin (Manny and Quinn), a playable level and an animation blueprint to copy from
PluginsEdit → Plugins. Enable MetaHuman, Control Rig, IK Rig, StateTree, GameplayStateTree, Common UI, Mass Entity and Mass AI. Restart onceEach one needs an editor restart, and one restart is better than six
NavMeshPlace Actors → Volumes → Nav Mesh Bounds Volume. Scale it over the whole level, press P to see the green walkable areaEvery AI tutorial depends on it. No green, no Move To
Enemy meshDuplicate BP_ThirdPersonCharacter, name it BP_Enemy, give it a red material instanceA visibly different body makes the AI readable from across the room, and in your own screenshots
Spare contentAdd the Game Animation Sample project and a free Fab soldier or zombie pack to your libraryBackup assets if a download fails during a session
Epic accountConfirm you are signed in. In the Epic Games Launcher, under Library → your engine version → Installed Plugins, install MetaHuman Creator Core Data, then check that a new MetaHuman Character asset opens without a red warning in its viewportMetaHuman requires an Epic login, and the Creator's presets, hair and textures are a separate download that is not part of the engine install
File → New Project: Games, Third Person, Blueprint. In 5.8 the Starter Content switch is gone; the template's own content is enough for every tutorial here.
Edit → Plugins, search StateTree. Both StateTree plugins ticked. The restart prompt appears at the bottom once the last plugin is ticked.
Press P with the viewport focused: the Nav Mesh Bounds Volume turns the walkable floor green. No green means the volume does not cover the level yet.
BP_Enemy placed in the level with its red material instance, selected so the Details panel shows its transform and animation class.
Keep a clean copy

Once this project is set up, duplicate the folder and leave the copy untouched. When a tutorial goes wrong you can start that one again from a known state in thirty seconds instead of re-enabling plugins.

Before you close this