Customer Reviews

Mastering Unreal Technology: The Art of Level Design

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I was a little skeptical before purchasing this book because I already own and watched the Unreal Tournament 2004 Special Edition training videos produced by the same authors as this book. I was afraid that the 60+ hours of content in those videos would cover all the same material as the book. Boy was I wrong.

Not only does the Mastering Unreal Technology: The Art of Level Design go into detail far surpassing the training videos, including a surprisingly enlightening (and helpful) section on the theory behind how the Unreal Technology works, but Mr. Busby, Parrish, and Van Eenwyk guide you step-by-step through designing a level. As they begin introducing new, more advanced, features they'll explain - option by option - how the feature works and provide numerous examples of where it would be useful. For a level designer, having a single clear guide of what each of thousands of settings do is an invaluable resource.

This book serves as an excellent introduction to Maya reference as well. As I said earlier, having watched through the video tutorials, I was already somewhat familiar with the Maya package. But even for complete novices, the book will quickly bring you upto speed with the basics of the package, and help you learn how to use it to import your own creations (such as static meshes) into your Unreal levels. The Maya content in the book alone, is worth the price of admission.

The previous reviewer mentioned that he uses 3DS Max instead of Maya. While I have no doubt that Max is an awesome package, it should not be overlooked that Maya has a free personal learning edition - that ships with Unreal Tournament 2003/4. Consequently, I am very pleased that this package was used instead of Max, because in doing so no initial investment beyond a copy of this book is needed. Heck, they even ship a copy of the Unreal Engine Runtime with the book! This means that people who don't own Unreal Tournament 2004, but wish to learn about level editing, can do so. Overall, I was extremely impressed. :) Way to go.

I read this book cover to cover; it is the best way to start creating levels. UnrealEd is a level editor aimed towards artists, the info within this book is the best coverage of a level editor that I have seen. You don't need to know scripting or any programming to create your own levels. The book starts by giving you some generals about game development, goes on to basic UnrealEd, then into more complicated UnrealEd. The last third of the book is basic Maya 5 PLE tutorials, which I found helpful because I hadn't used Maya before.

** !!! You need to own a copy of Unreal Tournament 2004 in order to follow along with the tutorials in this book !!! **

UT2004 Level Editors - This book is aimed at you. If you are already playing UT2004, you have everything you need and this book will help you find out how they made all those cool things you see in the game.

Architecture Visualizing - This book will definitely help you find out how you can take your ideas into a real-time render engine to show your clients. You could get by with the Unreal Runtime engine that comes on the CD with the book. However, in order to fully understand the tutorials, I believe you would need to pick up a copy of UT2004 with this book.

3D Artists & Game Developers - If you are already working with other game engines or a 3D animation package and want to look into Unreal, this is the ticket. Like I said before, you do need a copy of UT2004.

There were a couple of errors in the book, however they have all been addressed at [...].

This book is the definitive bible for creating 3d content using Unreal 2.5 Engine. I have been using it a lot for the level, I'm working on. Instead of scouring the web looking for a tutorial on how to do "that", you can check the index and learn what "that" does and how to use it in your level.

The book covers everything from learning Maya PLE, learning 3dsmax, unwrapping, vehicle modeling, everything that 3D Buzz's team has on their website for download as a video tutorial is in this book, except the information's is right at your finger tips.

I was recommended to this book from a friend who works in the gaming industry and even his company uses the book for a quick reference. Jason Busby, Zak Parrish & Joel Van Eenwyk thank you for making one of the best references a level artist could possibly have!

Wow! This book does a great job at explaining the Unreal Editor in a simple, easy to understand way. When I first opened the editor, I was intimidated by the all the menus and commands, but this book really takes the mystery out of it. It also gives you the confidence you need to succeed in making your own levels in Unreal! The wording is coherent, the text is easy on the eyes, and the images are well organized and inspiring to look at. It even covers character modeling, rigging, and animating in Maya. What a deal! Level editing should be fun and this book does just that.

I was brand new to all aspects of game design, and I had no idea where to start. So I opened up the book preview in the Unreal Tournament folder and saw this book. I went up to borders and bought it a week later. I've had this book for almost 3 weeks now, and Holy Crap! From the start, it explains the history of the Unreal engine and gives you a close up look of all the tools used. It has in-depth tutorials that make designing your first map a breeze. The CD contained in the book also has the May 5 Personal Learning Edition on it. In fact, the CD is my only complaint. This book expects you to use the CD for every texture and static mesh used. Overall, the book is a must buy for any begginner.

I think that as a former QA guy in the game business, you should learn that if you want to use a game editor, you should buy the game. It cost $39.00 when it came out. This book is for those who want to make levels that modify the game. For that it works flawlessly, and explains things masterfully.

If you download the Free Unreal Runtime from UDN, yes it will not work, but you cannot make levels for the game with just the RunTime. The RunTime on UDN is to show what the engine can do, not to allow you to make custom content.

The tutorials in this book are crisp, well thought out and extremely accurate. It is by far the most comprehensive collection of content for building unreal levels that exists on the market today.

If you are looking to purchase this book, please realize that the people who know what they are doing love it, and praise it.

I've used a lot of these types of books for learning Maya and other such programs. While those books tend to be difficult to follow and sometimes inaccurate, I am happy to say that Mastering Unreal Technology is like none of these.
If you're looking to learn how to build maps in unreal tournament this book is a must. I've looked on the internet for tutorials for UTE and they are often confusing or simply don't cover what you need to know. In this book you will find just about everything you need to know and it is all presented with tutorials on cd for easy learning. My only complaint is that the book isn't in color. Defiantly recommended.

I bought this book to help use the editor that comes with the UT2004 PC game. It gives an excellent description in the text of how to do the different things you need to do to make a new level. I have found it very helpful and am enjoying the tutorials. It comes with all the files needed for these and you can transfer the files to your computer.

The one difficulty I had,and this is a minor point, is that the graphics could be better. They seem to be black and white reproductions of screen shots clipped directly from the game. This means that the pictures of actual perspective views are very dim and that the picutres of viewports showing top or side views are very difficult to use. The top and side viewports in the actual game use colored lines to show shapes and positions of objects. In the book's reproductions, the colors have almost the same gray as the background, and you almost can't see them. I had to use a magnifying glass and study for a while to figure out what they were supposed to show.

I bought this "book" a few months ago and have been periodically trying to learn the uncanny amount of skills in this 962 page monster. It went into much clearer detail than many of the tutorials i've seen floating around the internet and gave an insight into the ways that most of this program works. It also includes maya and a 100 pages on how to use it which have proved to be very useful to me. For the people complaining about not being able to do the tutorials without having the game, i can only ask them why they want to learn how to make a game that they aren't even willing to pay $25 for.

As for its shortcomings, the worst in my opinion is that it seems to be missing small pieces of information which can lead to frustration. Also the fact that the pictures are all in black and white makes some things hard to figure out from them. Also the first time i opened it the spine cracked and now it tries to open to the same page no matter what. that just annoys the hell out of me. Overall, the $30-$40 for this book can easily be justified by its usefullness.

Struggled to find accurate, well-explained tutorials and guides for UnrealEd? Fed up browsing endless forums, only to find no clear explanations for that problem you have with your custom game level in UnrealEd? Don't want to waste yet more precious hours following bad links to useless web pages full of inaccurate tutorials?

Mastering Unreal Technology will change all that - for good. Since I got this book, and have been follwoing its tutorials, my experiences with UnrealEd have stopped being confrontational and unresolved, and have become positive, productive and educational. Who knows, at this rate I might even end up releasing a level or two I can be genuinely proud of!

The book packs in to it's almost 1000 pages just about every golden nugget of UnrealEd lore there is - from basic level design with UnrealEd to advanced modelling and animation techniques using Maya PLE (included on the CDRom) with UnrealEd. Straight away I was learning how to do stuff that had always baffled me... from curvy corridors to dynamic lighting, from shader making to terrain handling - it's all covered.

Best of all, this book is beautifully designed - clear, easy on the eye and illustrated throughout. It has been written in plain English for the artist/designer rather than the programmer and this means everyone, of just about any level, will be able to easily pick up the techniques discussed and follow the many tutorials with ease.

ESSENTIAL reading for all budding UnrealEd mod-makers, artists, level designers and machinima makers. 10/10.