Hand Tracking with Unreal Engine 5

A couple of weeks ago, Epic Game's MegaJam was announced, a competition where you build something in a week. From 2015 to 2018, I was regularly going to hackathon and DIY projects that you complete over the course of a weekend. I haven't done a hackathon in a while, but I figured that my past experience would help considerably.

There is usually a theme associated with a hackathon and this one was no different, with the theme being "Antiquated Future." I remember brainstorming an idea a while ago being a force game where you can pull objects towards you and then you could push them away at an AI or your friend in multiplayer, just like how the emperor and Luke fought in Revenge of the Sith! The antique part would come from trying to push 3D models at the enemies, like old vases and antique furniture (not shown yet in above GIF).

I took a look at Unreal's hand sample projects and was surprised to see a good base already made for hand tracking in Unreal. Though, as most things go with Unreal's sample projects, I wasn't surprised to see an error, which was a visual error showing that the hand was partly cut off. I then focused on working on getting reasonable physics for the demo. I did have some fun doing level design and incorporating audio and models from Epic MegaJam's website.

I did not end up submitting for the mega jam, but I have something that I want to continue to work on the Quest 2 and am having fun doing! Stay tuned for updates with this project!