Product Description

Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3 is your start-to-finish guide to modding and level design with the world’s hottest new gaming engine: Unreal Engine 3. Here’s everything you need to know to jumpstart your skills and create stunning new content and games for consoles and PCs alike! Your authors aren’t just the world’s #1 Unreal game development trainers: They’ve even built the training modules that shipped with Unreal Tournament 3: Limited Collector’s Edition. Now, working with the full cooperation of Unreal Engine 3’s creators, Epic Games, they introduce every facet of game development–from simple level creation to materials, lighting, and terrain...even advanced level optimization and streaming!

Packed with tips, hands-on tutorials, and expert techniques, Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume I is all you need to create levels that look spectacular and work brilliantly...levels that gamers just can’t stop playing!

You’ll find expert tips on

• Understanding the game development process from start to finish
• Planning projects for greater efficiency, faster delivery, and better quality
• Crafting worlds with stunning beauty and clarity
• Bringing amazing realism to characters, objects, and props
• Making the most of Unreal Engine 3’s massively upgraded lighting system
• Scripting complex gameplay quickly and easily with Unreal Kismet
• Building animated game assets with Unreal Matinee 
• Testing game performance during live gameplay
• Optimizing levels by improving the interaction between lights and surfaces
• Using advanced level streaming to create vast, rich, highly playable levels

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28426 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 912 pages

From the Back Cover
Unreal Engine 3 is the gaming platform for today's hottest games, period. It is the primary development platform for the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, and a massive force in the PC gaming world. Unreal Engine 3 is the technology that works behind the scenes to actually put the video game on the screen. It handles all of the visuals, sounds, and takes in everything the user does (such as push buttons or move a mouse) in order to deliver the final gaming experience to the player. It is the core of the actual game, without which the game could not exist. The creators of Unreal, Epic Games, have extended their full cooperation in the writing of the book. The authors are widely known in the industry, through the previous edition and through the specialized training mods they supplied as part of the hit game Unreal Tournament 2004. Starting from the very basics, this book walks you through the entire process of level design, covering Unreal's level editing application, UnrealEd, and many key topics you'll need to create your own gaming environments. This book will bring you into the world of game development and modding with thorough and easy-to-understand explanations, in-depth tutorials, and all the information you need to start creating your own Unreal environments.

About the Author

Jason “Buzz” Busby is president and chief executive officer of 3D Buzz, Inc. For more than five years, he has taught 3D animation, programming, and game design through his website 3dbuzz.com, which has over 275,000 members. He coauthored Mastering Unreal: The Art of Level Design and Mastering the Art of Production with 3ds Max 4 and has created and overseen the production of more than 1,000 hours of video training.

Zak Parrish, chief of operations at 3D Buzz, Inc., has developed hundreds of video tutorials over 3D animation and game design. He helped produce training videos that shipped with Unreal Tournament 2004: Special Edition as well as those that shipped with Unreal Tournament 3: Limited Collector’s Edition. Zak also coauthored Mastering Unreal.

Jeff Wilson, 3D Buzz’s technical consultant for the Unreal Engine, helps develop the company’s Unreal Technology training videos. He has been studying the Unreal Engine for five years while creating modifications for Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004. Wilson moderates the 3D Buzz forums.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic. Everything I wanted and more.
Mastering Unreal Technology v1 is without a doubt the best resource for getting ahead in Unreal Engine 3. As the owner of a good many "how to" books on a range of different subjects, I have rather a good idea of what makes a good tutorial book - and this one ticks every box.

The tutorials are designed with practical examples in mind to work towards, and are cleverly divided into chapters which tackle specific areas. First of all, you run through a hands-on primer, which handholds you through creating a simple level which touches on most of the features of the Unreal Editor.

Later, the book goes into more depth with individual chapters devoted to each element of the editor - with sections on detailed brush geometry, static meshes, textures and more. It even encompasses areas of 3ds Max.

I can't recommend the 3D Buzz guys enough, I'd already had a bit of experience with them before thanks to the Unreal Tournament 3 Collectors Edition DVD, so I knew they'd be quite good - and off the back of this book I'm going to buy the next two in the series, as well as their 3ds Max tutorials.

If you want to get ahead, you don't need to look much further. 5 stars all the way.