Episode 11
Vibe Coding and Unreal Engine: Are We There Yet?
Ever feel like you're drowning in a sea of tech tools and workflows, unsure of what actually matters? Yeah, me too. In this chat, we dive into the chaos of being overwhelmed by endless options, especially when it comes to creative software like Unreal Engine and AI tools. I’m a month into this whole unemployment gig, and let me tell you, it’s been a wild ride of productivity mixed with a bit of existential dread about the gaming industry’s future. While I’m out here trying to make my cute Italian town come alive with AI-driven pedestrians, I can’t help but wonder if I'm just complicating things—like trying to find my keys in the fridge. We explore the balance of staying focused on our passions while navigating the noise of external distractions. So, grab a comfy seat, maybe a snack, and let’s get into the nitty-gritty of this creative journey together! In the colorful tapestry of creative exploration, we often find ourselves at a crossroads, surrounded by distractions and a plethora of tools that promise to enhance our workflow. After a month of being unemployed, I’m here to share my journey of embracing this unexpected freedom with open arms. It’s like stepping into a new pair of shoes that fit just right—comfortable yet exciting. My days have been filled with the joy of diving into Unreal Engine, where I can create, tinker, and dream without the usual pressures of deadlines and expectations. This podcast is my way of sharing that experience with you, as I reflect on the importance of staying true to my creative path amidst external chaos. As we chat about the challenges that come with being both a creator and an explorer, I can’t shake the feeling that the world of AI tools is both a blessing and a curse. There’s an allure to these technologies that can easily lead to distraction. I find myself questioning the future of my involvement in the gaming industry, pondering whether it’s truly the right fit for me. Let’s face it, it’s a tough landscape out there. I’m keen to hear from anyone else navigating these waters—what do you think? Do you feel the same pressures? This conversation feels like a collective brainstorming session, where we can bounce ideas off one another and draw strength from shared experiences. In the latter part of our discussion, I share my latest endeavor of bringing life to a quaint Italian town in Unreal Engine. The introduction of AI-driven pedestrians has been a revelation, transforming my once-silent streets into a lively scene. This project has reignited my passion for creating immersive environments, and I’m excited about the possibilities ahead. I’m eager to explore how to make these characters interact meaningfully, turning my vision into a vibrant reality. As I look ahead, I can’t help but feel that we’re on the cusp of something truly exciting in the creative world, and I’m thrilled to take you along for the ride.
Takeaways:
- In a world of endless distractions, staying true to our creative paths is key, right?
- Being unemployed has led me to explore my creativity, especially with Unreal Engine, feeling super productive.
- It's wild how artificial intelligence tools can shake up our workflows, making creativity both fun and confusing.
- Adding AI pedestrians to my environment has transformed my project, making it feel lively and engaging.
- Despite my doubts about the game industry, I still crave connection and insights from fellow creators.
- I’m all about merging coding with AI to simplify my work in Unreal, hoping that future updates will make it happen.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Unreal Engine
- Seed Dance
- Matrix City
- Mass Crowd
- Convey AI
Transcript
Hey, welcome back.
Speaker A:I hope you're doing well and certainly better than I do.
Speaker A:I hope you are productive and true to your own path.
Speaker A:In this external noise of amazing tools that we get to use, we just don't know if we should in the world of overwhelming workflows that we always find ourselves learning and maybe never use them.
Speaker A:In the end, I find myself constantly distracted by things I could be doing instead of doing what I should be doing.
Speaker A:It's now my almost full month of being unemployed.
Speaker A:I think I'm only three days shy into a full month, and as on day one, I feel wonderful about that fact.
Speaker A:I get to be quite proactive.
Speaker A:I get to immerse myself in the flow, undisturbed, almost flow of my creative doings in Unreal Engine.
Speaker A:Well, lately my attention has been quite divided into working with AI tools and AI tools only.
Speaker A:But I'm also true to my my own methodology of touching Unreal Engine at least once a day.
Speaker A:Not just touching it, but opening my project, working just, just a little bit, just checking in on things, staying in touch with how things work, what still needs to be done.
Speaker A:And as in the last episode, I think when I reminded myself about this very simple and very effective rule, I have a lot of fun in Unreal Engine.
Speaker A:Even though I do regularly question what's the future of this tool for me, I'm still keeping an eye on the release of Seed Dance 2.0.
Speaker A:I found that it's not quite a viable just yet.
Speaker A:The pricing is not extraordinarily high, but since I don't pay for Unreal Engine and I buy assets only when I really, really need them, paying €50amonth for video generation feels a little bit excessive.
Speaker A:Anyway, like I said, I feel like there is a lot of confusion because of the choice we get, and it's really easy to forget what the main goal is.
Speaker A:Personal Goal I abandoned the goal of breaking into game industry because I'm not entirely sure if this is what I want to be.
Speaker A:I don't think it's a healthy industry and maybe I'm just too old for this.
Speaker A:If you're in the gaming industry, if you have something to share, please do.
Speaker A:I'm very curious of how you're doing even if you don't do anything in the game industry.
Speaker A:But if you do something with Unreal Engine, I think I say it in every episode.
Speaker A:Please do get in touch.
Speaker A:Write me an email address is in the podcast description.
Speaker A:Write me about what you do, what's your biggest challenges, what kind of resources do you use.
Speaker A:Have you done any courses?
Speaker A:And how did you find them?
Speaker A:Today?
Speaker A:I want to give you a very typical, not really typical, but this is what this podcast was supposed to be about.
Speaker A:That was supposed to be my status update audio feed where I was supposed to rant and share my enthusiasm about what I just did.
Speaker A:What I just found out.
Speaker A:I haven't been doing anything with mocap, recording my facial and body performance for my metahumans.
Speaker A:I haven't done any of that lately.
Speaker A:Even though this is supposed to be my main challenge, this technology just continues to be very clunky, at least for me.
Speaker A:Maybe next week.
Speaker A:This week, however.
Speaker A:And in fact, for the last two days, I've been looking into tasks and features, plugins that I thought I won't really need that much.
Speaker A:I've been using Mass Crowd plugin, you know, all the AI driven pedestrian systems.
Speaker A:I think we've seen it properly implemented in the Matrix City demo.
Speaker A:And ever since I launched the Matrix demo, I've been blown away.
Speaker A:It's a horrible project because I feel like it's quite misleading.
Speaker A:But the traffic, the car traffic and pedestrian traffic is quite extraordinary, quite extraordinarily implemented and optimized.
Speaker A:Now I'm working on my cute Italian town environment and it has been quite hollow, soulless.
Speaker A:But for the last two days, I've been implementing metahuman pedestrian system using the mass.
Speaker A:Mass AI.
Speaker A:That's what it's called.
Speaker A:Look, I don't really know.
Speaker A:I don't see my screen in front of me.
Speaker A:Unless you haven't noticed, I'm outside.
Speaker A:Why?
Speaker A:Well, because I've been indoors for the last two days and I thought I could just take this portable recorder with me.
Speaker A:I don't know if you can hear pedestrians that are in my close proximity at all times.
Speaker A:You might be hearing Polish and German.
Speaker A:As I'm based in Berlin.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I've poured about a hundred of pedestrians, AI pedestrians into my environment and I love what kind of impact it made.
Speaker A:I can position my camera rig in any location.
Speaker A:I can.
Speaker A:I can capture very beautiful footage of a lively town in the evening with people strolling, people not yet talking to one another.
Speaker A:That's what I would like to do.
Speaker A:I would like to make those characters not only walk, but interact.
Speaker A:I would like them to be able to sit down at a cafe, at a pizzeria.
Speaker A:And maybe that's a challenge for the next couple of days, just to close this chapter of a challenge of making the life.
Speaker A:Sorry, making the city lively.
Speaker A:So what I'm looking at is I will be implementing State Trees into that mass AI system.
Speaker A:And I'll be messing around with the Convey AI plugin, which is a plugin that lets you use AI voice.
Speaker A:You can have a conversational AI in your environment.
Speaker A:Pretty.
Speaker A:Pretty awesome.
Speaker A:Quite limited when it comes to deploying it because it's quite expensive to run.
Speaker A:But as I keep on checking, this is the best thing we get right now.
Speaker A:Why am I doing this?
Speaker A:It's not even on my path towards my goal.
Speaker A:I do want to create the environment for the cinematics, not for interactive experience.
Speaker A:Well, those NPCs will be my extras.
Speaker A:I want to have my main metahuman character, the front and center my camera, and I want some people to stroll around in the background.
Speaker A:I feel like I already met my goal and at this point I'm just over complicating.
Speaker A:But the great thing about Unreal is that you can place all of those additional features on different levels and you can just toggle them on and off depending on what you actually need to use.
Speaker A:You can always disable plugins, you can disable features.
Speaker A:I have to tell you, ever since I added those people, I really feel like just roaming around this environment and just having it play.
Speaker A:You know, I feel like in my last episode I've been questioning whether I should just focus on AI generation.
Speaker A:But Unreal continues to be so satisfying and so cool to play with.
Speaker A:I'm sorry, but that's what it is.
Speaker A:What else can I tell you?
Speaker A:I want to tell you about something I'm really looking forward to.
Speaker A:I want to.
Speaker A:I want in the near future to be able to wipe code in Unreal.
Speaker A:I would like to be able to use Corsor or Claude code and connect it with Unreal Engine.
Speaker A:And I still don't quite understand why this is impossible.
Speaker A:Why those two things don't really talk to one another.
Speaker A:I've been vibe coding quite a lot lately.
Speaker A:I just finished two websites and the process was just amazing.
Speaker A:I retained a lot of control, creative control, and I don't feel like I've been wasting any time and any resources.
Speaker A:I created really two really nice two landing pages and I was even able to trigger the whole optimization of domains connecting all the DNS servers.
Speaker A:I was just using AI as my assistant, very knowledgeable assistant.
Speaker A:I'm still waiting for a moment where I can use my AI agent to help me in Unreal Engine.
Speaker A:And I really hope this is coming because when it does, I feel like I will encounter this huge milestone or cross that milestone where I can just wipe Code features that I need in my Unreal Engine project.
Speaker A:Why do I think so?
Speaker A:Well, until half of last year I haven't been touching code at all.
Speaker A:I just couldn't.
Speaker A:It was way too much for me.
Speaker A:All I could do was create a visual mock up of what I would like to be created with the help of software developers.
Speaker A:And then we were going through those, or I was going through those incremental abilities, improvement of those abilities where I could give an image to AI and say build it.
Speaker A:And initially it was very wonky, but now the process is a lot more sophisticated and I can actually talk to my AI and we can build software together.
Speaker A:So yeah, I became so powerful now in this regard and I'm lacking that power.
Speaker A:I'm lacking those abilities in Unreal.
Speaker A:I'm looking at blueprints and I'm getting a headache.
Speaker A:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker A:I would like to talk to Unreal.
Speaker A:Is it too much to ask?
Speaker A:Is it time to talk to Unreal?
Speaker A:Just when I'm thinking about it, you know, I would like to bring models that I generate or create manually, I bring them in into the level and then I get a, a chat interface where I get to type or even dictate what I would like to happen.
Speaker A:And I don't need to think which plugins do I need to activate, I don't need to think which workflow to follow exactly as I do now with websites and with web apps.
Speaker A:I think this is around the corner and I'm really, really looking forward to it.
Speaker A:And just like two years ago, I've never created any software.
Speaker A:And now my GitHub is full of green dots that represent active days.
Speaker A:You know, this iconic chart.
Speaker A:You've got a month or a year, I don't remember.
Speaker A:And depending on how many contributions you make on a day, the little box, little square turns green.
Speaker A:Well, it was all black before, for months, for years.
Speaker A:And now I feel like I've got all green all the time.
Speaker A:And I feel like it's far from just playing with.
Speaker A:I feel like I'm really productive.
Speaker A:You know, within weeks or months, vibe coding started to be taken seriously.
Speaker A:Because we can actually achieve things with it.
Speaker A:And we don't really use, we they, they us, we don't really say vape coding anymore, we just say coding with AI.
Speaker A:I've learned that, you know, the Open claw, the autonomous AI agents that you can contact through WhatsApp that works off your computer, Mac Mini quite often it was wipe coded, it was done by somebody throughout the weekend or something.
Speaker A:Like that.
Speaker A:Somebody Vibe coded that and created this incredible shift among us AI geeks, I guess.
Speaker A:And what, after a few weeks, Meta bought it for lots and lots of money.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's a.
Speaker A:It's a cute little story and we don't know the details, but it's a valid case study.
Speaker A:There is a lot of software you can currently buy and it's made by people who had an idea and they wouldn't know how to really make what they did, what they produced, but they did it because now they have superpowers, AI superpowers.
Speaker A:And you know this feeling when I open Unreal Engine and I see the empty level, the horizon, endless horizon, and I get to feel this infinite space that I can do anything with.
Speaker A:Take that, take that power of being able to throw any model at it and.
Speaker A:And then just inject interactions, animations, different states.
Speaker A:You don't know how to do it.
Speaker A:Ask your AI chatbot within Unreal.
Speaker A:I really hope this is coming in the next version.
Speaker A:I think we should be weeks away from the next release.
Speaker A:Great hopes around that.
Speaker A:All right, that's all from me today.
Speaker A:I know I've been rambling, but it's a very pleasant day and I had a most wonderful walk.
Speaker A:I'm coming back to my apartment.
Speaker A:I think I'm gonna publish this episode as soon as I get home.
Speaker A:And you will get to listen to this.
Speaker A:Once again, send me a message.
Speaker A:I'm asking.
Speaker A:Hopefully you will.
Speaker A:I don't have so much capacity to react immediately.
Speaker A:I know I just said I have lots of time, but there are other things happening in my life.
Speaker A:I've been with my daughter for a week and she has been sick.
Speaker A:So I've been with her all the time, which is alright.
Speaker A:I can work while she's around, but it's kind of hard to focus.
Speaker A:And I'm also.
Speaker A:I have a very special guest and I don't really, you know, my points.
Speaker A:Ideally, I'm on my own in my cute small apartment and I get to work on stuff.
Speaker A:And this is coming.
Speaker A:This would be happening soon.
Speaker A:Well, kind of.
Speaker A:Let me give you a bit of a teaser about what's coming in the recent weeks, in upcoming weeks.
Speaker A:So I'll be staying in Berlin for the next two weeks.
Speaker A:I want to say three weeks, something like that.
Speaker A:And then I'll be going to visit my family.
Speaker A:Now while I'm there, I will be taking a detour.
Speaker A:I'll be engaging in a different project that will consist of scanning things.
Speaker A:I will.
Speaker A:I'll be focusing on Gaussian splatting.
Speaker A:I want to scan environments and I want to play with them other than Unreal Engine software.
Speaker A:Maybe I'll be creating something with Unreal Engine, but the core of my focus for a week and a half while I'm with my family, I want to do a whole bunch of scanning and seeing what I can do with that.
Speaker A:I've been blown away, but by what Gorsjean splatting is how incredibly it works.
Speaker A:I'm aware of limitations, but yeah, I want to see what else is there.
Speaker A:So this is.
Speaker A:This is what's coming.
Speaker A:I hope.
Speaker A:I'm hoping to record before I leave, but if you have an experience, you know the drill.
Speaker A:Send me a message.
Speaker A:Let's chat.
Speaker A:And I hope you keep on listening.
Speaker A:I really do enjoy seeing those numbers grow and not on social media at all at this point.
Speaker A:I deleted my social media apps a few weeks ago and you know what?
Speaker A:I don't feel any difference apart from having less anxiety and less distractions, less notifications.
Speaker A:It's great.
Speaker A:So what I want to say is I'm not promoting this show and it's just you finding it in the podcast directory, I guess so.
Speaker A:I do appreciate that you listen and I will speak to you sooner.
Speaker A:Be well.
Speaker A:Stay productive.
