Book Description
Over 100 recipes to accelerate the process of learning game design with UDK book.
An intermediate, fast-paced UDK guide for game artists
The quickest way to face the challenges of game design with UDK
All the necessary steps to get your artwork up and running in game
Part of Packt's Cookbook series: Each recipe is a carefully organized sequence of instructions to complete the task as efficiently as possible
In Detail
UDK is a free, world class game editing tool and being so powerful it can be daunting to learn. This guide offers an excellent set of targeted recipes to help game artists get up to speed with game designing in UDK.
Unreal Development Kit Game Design Cookbook contains everything you need to jumpstart your game design efforts. The lessons are aimed squarely at the artist's field of production, with recipes on asset handling, creating content within the editor, animation and visual scripting to get the content working in gameplay.
Unreal Game Development Kit Game Design Cookbook exposes how real-time environments are built using UDK tools. Key features are examined – assets, animation, light, materials, game controls, user interface, special effects, and game interactivity - with the view of making UDK technically accessible so users can transcend technique and focus on their creative design process. The book has well prepared recipes for level designers and artists of all levels. It covers core design tools and processes in the editor, particularly setting up characters, UI approaches, configuration and scripting gameplay. It is a technical guide that allows game artists to go beyond just creating assets, and it includes creative, extensive demonstrations that extend on mere functionality.
Table of Contents
- Unreal Development Kit Game Design Cookbook
- Table of Contents
- Unreal Development Kit Game Design Cookbook
- Credits
- About the Authors
- About the Reviewers
- www.PacktPub.com
- Preface
- 1. Heads Up—UDK Interface Essentials
- Introduction
- Installing UDK and folder structure
- What content comes with UDK?
- Beginning, building, and testing a new level
- Deciding on your preferences
- UI survival steps
- Navigating the Content Browser
- Accessing assets in the Content Browser
- Creating and managing packages
- Importing your own content
- Cooking a map in Unreal Frontend
- Mobile device emulation
- Kismet debugging
- 2. Notes From an Unreal World—Constructing Game World Elements
- Introduction
- How to handle BSP geometry
- Building a hollow room
- Adjusting surface properties of BSP
- Generating volume from the BSP brush
- Handling StaticMesh actors in the scene
- Setting collision in the Static Mesh Editor
- Creating Terrain, Deco Layers, and Material Layers
- Creating a Landscape
- Scattering meshes on a Landscape using the Foliage tool
- Creating a steamy plume in Cascade
- 3. It Lives!—Character Setup and Animation
- Introduction
- Installing ActorX and exporting skeletal animation
- Importing SkeletalMesh content into UDK
- Morph targets and .FBX importing
- Setting up sockets
- Attachments to SkeletalMeshes without using sockets
- Setting up a custom AnimTree
- Defining animations in your AnimTree
- Configuring your character to use your AnimTree
- How to use a single bone control chain to correct an offset crouch animation
- Setting up a physics asset using PhAT
- Adding limits to physics asset joint rotations
- Adding a physics-driven tail to a key framed SkeletalMesh
- Enabling the head to face in a given direction for tracking purposes
- Setting a LookAt target for head rotation in code
- Setting morph weights in code
- Calling up SkeletalMesh animation using Matinee
- Associating sounds with character moves in Matinee
- Sound for non-Matinee controlled animation
- 4. Got Your Wires Crossed?—Visual Scripting of Gameplay in Kismet
- Introduction
- Kismet UI essentials
- Creating a simple enemy Bot
- Event-based movement of scene objects in Matinee
- Trace actions in a shooting situation
- Revealing and hiding scene actors during gameplay
- Producing sounds through Kismet
- Using Take Damage events to produce explosions
- Understanding the usage of Named Variables
- Tidying up Kismet networks using Sub-sequences
- Tidying up Kismet networks using Remote Events
- Toggling Materials through Kismet
- Toggling lights through Kismet
- Animating PointLights in Matinee to mimic texture animation
- Making a comparison following a countdown
- Using Integer Counter to count enemy deaths
- Controlling node flow using a Gate action
- Making Bots follow a path
- 5. It Is Your Destiny!—Scripting Complex Gameplay Flow in Kismet
- Prefabs including Kismet references
- Swapping control of a Bot using Possess Pawn
- Ways to stop a recurring loop
- Setting up cinematic cameras
- Animating cinematic cameras
- Obtaining a trigger event off a RigidBody
- Creating a firing pattern based puzzle
- Allowing the player to pick up, carry, and place an object
- Exploring 'following' and 'attracting' behaviors
- Creating a regenerative health shield
- Creating a per-session checkpoint series
- 6. Under The Hood—Configuration and Handy Tweaks for UDK
- Groundwork for adjusting configuration defaults
- Enabling the remote control for game inspection
- Changing the Play in Editor view resolution
- Removing the loading hints and similar articles
- Editing DefaultEngineUDK to allow 4096x4096 texture compression
- Setting the preview player size reference object
- Binding a keyboard shortcut to a player action
- Adjusting player speed
- Creating your own Kismet node for speed
- Changing the default player sounds
- Replacing the HUD
- DrawText and GameType concerns
- Handling level content streaming
- Spawning objects from a hit impact
- 7. Hi, I'm Eye Candy!—Ways to Create and Use Particle Effects
- Introduction
- Editing the color graph of a particle over time
- Animating particles using SubUV charts
- Adding one particle's movement to another
- Making collision detection work for particles
- Controlling sort order for translucent Materials
- Making animated textures using particle systems
- Making trails with AnimTrail TypeData
- Assigning Level Of Detail (LOD) to a particle system
- Leaving a bloody trail
- 8. Then There Was Light!—Manipulating Level Light and Shadows
- Introduction
- Emissive lighting
- Comparison of static and dynamic lighting
- Light exclusivity using channels and levels
- Adjusting shadows through light environments
- Distance field shadows
- Penumbras and hotspots
- Accessing the main PostProcessChain
- Ambient occlusion
- Depth of field
- Ensuring shadows work with translucent or alpha based materials
- Enabling and controlling light shafts
- Enhancing sunrays using lens flares
- Creating caustics using projected imagery
- Translucent colored glass
- 9. The Devil Is In The Details!—Making the Most of Materials
- Introduction
- Animating a Material Instance Constant in Kismet
- Forcing a mesh to always face the camera
- A cloth-like effect using WorldPositionOffset
- Creating murky liquid
- Creating a scanning effect
- Quick glass
- Creating transitions between Materials
- Static Cubemap creation and real-time reflection
- Wet surface reflections with dynamic actors
- Making a holographic effect using Bump Offset
- Interactive Foliage Actors
- Getting varied hit impacts off models using a PhysicalMaterial
- 10. The Way Of The Flash UI—Scaleform, CLIK, and Flash Interfaces
- Index