Unreal Sensei Opens Up About His 3D Journey

Zach Hunter, the creator behind the popular Unreal Engine learning YouTube channel Unreal Sensei, recently shared his background in 3D, what inspired him to teach, and his experience using Substance 3D tools in combination with Unreal Engine 5.

Like many others, Zach's journey began with a passion for game development, sparked by the desire to create his own worlds after playing his first game. He picked up Unreal Engine 3 and built his first environment. But even in the early days of Unreal Engine 4, environment artists didn't have the wealth of 3D asset libraries we now enjoy, such as Substance 3D Assets, Fab, and Quixel Megascans. Back then, to create something, you almost had to learn the entire 3D asset pipeline.

This led Zach to explore programs like Blender, which was still relatively small at the time, and eventually discover the Substance 3D suite. Upon downloading it, Zach quickly realized that Substance 3D Painter and 3D Designer were incredibly efficient for creating high-quality textures and materials. Their deep integration with Unreal Engine through the Substance 3D plug-in made the workflow even more seamless.

Zack was greatly inspired to create tutorials after watching Blender Guru. At the time, he observed a significant gap, there were far fewer Unreal-focused YouTube channels compared to the thriving Blender community. As the 3D industry began shifting towards real-time workflows, he recognized an opportunity to grow alongside Unreal Engine's increasing popularity. His goal was to bring the same accessible learning experience from Zak Parrish and Blender Guru's tutorials to Unreal Engine 5.

The most recent tutorial Zack published is an introduction to Substance 3D Painter. It starts with a beginner-friendly approach, where he creates a simple texture for the Meet MAT asset. From there, he walks through the process of exporting these textures to Unreal Engine and demonstrates how to customize them further using in-engine tools:

Read the full article here and check out Unreal Sensei's YouTube channel, a great resource for beginners and anyone wanting to stay up to date with the latest in Unreal Engine 5:

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