UDK

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[Game] Tombstone WIP 3 – Cloth

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/tombscarf NULL.jpg)Since my last update I’ve added a cloth skeletal mesh to the scene. Cloth inside the Unreal Development Kit is something I’ve always wanted to take a look at. After watching a quick tutorial over at 3D Buzz (http://www NULL.3dbuzz NULL.com/vbforum/sv_showvideo NULL.php?v=3830) I was ready to start setting up my cloth in Maya. The video is good, but it skips the entire rigging process and starts with a pre rigged 3D plane brought into the UDK. I looked around on the internet for some Maya specific tutorials, but there weren’t any. The first thing that caught me while working this out was the use of the term “bone“. A lot of the tutorials instruct the reader to add two bones to the mesh. In Maya you don’t really lay down bones. You’re laying down “joints” and what I would consider the bones are the shapes Maya creates between those joints. Before you start you’re probably going to want to jump into Maya’s Animation tab so all the rigging tools are on your shelf. The first step in Maya is to place two joints in a chain along the X axis fairly close together. The next step after you’ve created these joints is to use a “smooth bind” to pair the joint chain with your mesh. That command is under the Animation Menu > Skin > Smooth Bind. Now with the joint chain bound to your mesh you can begin to “paint” your vertex weights. After being bound each joint in the chain stores a separate value for each vertex. Every individual vertex value lets the joint know how much influence it should have over that particular vertex. A value of 1 means the joint would act upon that vertex with 100% of it’s influence (or movement). A value of 0 means that the vertex will not follow that particular joint at all. Below I have a diagram showing how your joints should be setup and named. UDK will later ask us which bone we want associated with the cloth movement. (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/bonesetup NULL.png)

Now that the mesh is rigged go into “Object Mode” and use the right click menu to access the “Paint Skin Weights Tool“. Make sure you have textures enabled in your viewport when you’re doing this. You also have to be in the “Default Quality Rendering” mode under your perspective views “Panel” menu to see the weights change as you paint. The first joint “bone1” is going to be associated with all the parts of your cloth mesh you don’t want to move. For my scenario I have painted all the vertices of the knot white and all the vertices of the two scarf arms black. I do this because I don’t want the knot to move at all. I’ve included two diagrams below to show the weighting of my vertices to both bone1 and bone2. (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/bone1 NULL.png) (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/bone2 NULL.png) After you’ve weighted your vertices you can export the mesh as a FBX for import into the UDK. On import the UDK should recognize your mesh as a skeletal mesh and give you a different window type when it’s opened up through the UDK Content Browser. After import there are a few properties you need to activate in your mesh.

First you need to open up your cloth mesh in the content browser. You should now have the AnimSet Editor open. This is because UDK is treating our cloth as a “Skeletal Mesh“. The first property we want to activate is “Force CPU skining” this will tell the UDK that we want our mesh to be treated as a cloth. It’s found under the “Skeletal Mesh” roll out in the “Properties” pane. The second and final property we need to change is under the “Cloth” roll out. When there expand the “Cloth Bones” roll out and hit the green cross to add an entry to the Cloth Bones list. Now click in the name space for that entry and call it whatever you named the second joint in Maya. In my case it was “bone2”. With this done you’re now ready to place your mesh into your game scene. (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Scarf NULL.png)

Make sure your mesh is selected in your content browser and then right click in one of your views so that you may add your mesh to the scene. Once your mesh is in the scene you need to change a couple of it’s properties that we couldn’t access from the AnimSet Editor window earlier. Under the “Skeletal Mesh Actor” roll out there is a sub section called “Cloth” expand this. Under here we can (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Scarf2 NULL.png)see the first option “Enable Cloth” and a lower option called “Cloth Awake On Startup“. Enable both these options. As an optional step you can play around with the wind values to try and get your mesh to receive a constant blowing force. To now see your cloth in action you can rebuild your map and launch the level, or simply right click in the perspective viewport and chose “Play From Here“. Cloth doesn’t animate in the viewport’s “Game Mode“.

That’s it for this Tombstone project. I hope anyone following along found some cool tips to help them get a little more out of the UDK.

Cheers,

Terry Matthes

[Game] Tombstone WIP 2 – UV Work

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/tombstoneWIP4 NULL.jpg)Since my last update I’ve stopped working in ZBrush and started testing in the UDK. My goal for this update was to have the light maps working with a basic material in place. The first shot on the left shows the low poly tombstone with it’s UV’s layed out. These are also the same UV’s I used for the light map. If you plan your layout you can make sure that you use the same set of UV coordinates for both diffuse and light map.You still have to put the light map UVs in a second channel within Maya, but this can save you a lot of time. Making the UVs for the light map is a very similar process to making proper UVs for a normal map. You want to ensure that you have separated any faces that break out of the continuity of the surface flow. To illustrate this I have colored all of those faces blue. These faces happen to correspond to all the chips and scrapes in the model. These faces all have one thing in common. They are sharply opposing the direction of the faces around them. Faces like these have to be broken off from the model and separated into UV Islands. You’ve probably heard this term before. UV islands prevent normal map errors when baking down from your high res model to your low res mesh in programs like xNormal. A general rule of thumb is that if a face comes close to or is more than a 90 deg. angle from the regular surface flow it should be separated into it’s own island joined by any adjacent faces with the same behavior. The map pictured here is 1024 square. I should note that I left a little bit of padding around each UV group as this helps with normal and light maps.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/tombstoneWIP2b NULL.jpg)In the picture on the right you can tell the light maps are working correctly because the shadows in the second picture are falling over the crosses as they should. If there were errors in the light maps you might get strange blotches or shadows showing up on the wrong faces. Again it’s important that we separated all those sharply angled faces so that we don’t get these errors. It’s also of note that the lower the resolution of your texture, the more padding you need to give those islands. If they are too close the shadows will start to bleed from island to island. In the UDK the entire shadow maps are being baked down to very very low resolutions to save memory. If you look at the ground shadows they are set as high as you can go with 1 pixel of screen space being dedicated to 1 pixel in the light map. You can not do this for every asset in your map or you will kill the texture memory of your video card. I only did this as a test for myself to see how far I could push the shadow correctness. Now you might look at those shadows and think they aren’t that sharp, but in a game with a textured ground and movement they are more than enough to sell the realism of the shadow.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/tombstoneWIP3 NULL.jpg)Here we have a simple material with a diffuse, specular and normal map along with a 1 Variable Constant set to “10” being plugged into the specular power. To drop a constant down in your work area you can simply press 1, 2, or 3, on the keyboard and left click. Specular Power operates like Eccentricity on a Maya material. The higher you put the number the more “glossy” your highlight becomes. We are dealing with stone here so we’ve entered a low value of 10 as the porous nature of the stone surface would scatter a lot of the diffuse light being cast. The map we’ve used for the specular is actually a darkened version of the cavity map with some noise applied to help sell the diffuse nature of the stone surface. The cavity map works well as a specular base because it stops the cracks and depressions from casting light out into the scene and in turn sells the sunken nature of those areas. One last thing I wanted to touch on was your low poly mesh’s normals. I found that if I let the UDK set my vertex normals (which is does by default) my faces looked too sharp where the texture seams were running and I generally wasn’t happy with the result. I spent a bit of time setting all the normals in Maya and I wanted to use those instead. Luckily you can do this when importing.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/tombstoneWIP5 NULL.jpg)When you choose to import your mesh you can select a couple options that will stop the UDK from wiping out your normal values. Under the General section and Static Mesh sections there are two options; Import Tangents and Explicit Normals. Check both of these off. If you do all of this and your still having trouble with shadows falling improperly over your object you probably haven’t turned your light map settings up high enough in your mesh’s properties. If it’s the “ground” that isn’t showing shadows correctly then the same holds true for whatever surface the shadows fall onto. Remember though that with a static mesh you want a higher number for a crisper result and with BSP geometry it’s a lower number that casts a crisper shadow.

That’s all for now :) I’ll be back with more soon and hopefully have some of the actual scene to show. If anyone has any questions email me or just ask them in the comments section within this post.

[Game] Tombstone WIP – Sculpting

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/tombstone_wip NULL.jpg)Over the past few years I have really started to feel dependent on Maya as my 3D application of choice. It’s an amazing piece of software, but when it comes to creating game assets ZBrush eventually came impossible to ignore. This is my first attempt and producing a game asset from start to finish in ZBrush. To help me get started I sat down with a friend of mine who is a character artist by trade and spends a lot of his time in Zbrush. After learning about some really important concepts such as Poly Groups and using Zspheres for retopology I was on my way. The low poly on the left clocks in at ~1K polys which is what my target was. The original on the right was about 4 mil, but that doesn’t really matter because we are only using it for baking our texture maps. The next step for me is to UV map the low poly version and then it’s off to xNormal (http://www NULL.xnormal NULL.net/1 NULL.aspx) for transferring the details from the high to the low.

The stub mesh I started with was created in Zbrush using Shadowbox and the black and white texture below. I looked at my concept art and created a Z axis portrait and a X axis portrait of the tombstone for the Shadowbox alpha. I really like this work flow as it’s incredibly fast and can save you a lot of time when it comes to creating your base to sculpt on. The cuts in the rock surface were made with the clip curve brush and then I used the Trim Dynamic brush to flatten out the sharp edges. The rocky noise was made using Surface Noise and then repeating the process after masking off certain portions of the mesh using the Mask by Cavity function. (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/grave_D NULL.jpg) One thing I found useful was the ability to save out noise profiles for later use. I have about six tombstone to make so not having to toy with the noise curves for each one will save me a lot of time. The last step was to go in by hand and carve in individual cracks with the Dam Standard brush. This mesh is going to be used in a scene I’m creating for the UDK. I’m really excited to attack this mesh with poly paint after it has UVs as I recently watched a great video (http://www NULL.cgnuggets NULL.com/collections/frontpage/products/september-2011-video-polypainting) on the subject by Jesse Sandifer. More to come soon :)

Material Editor Keyboard Shortcuts

Unreal Development Kit User Interface Diagram

Posted these shortcuts a while ago at Eat3D (http://www NULL.eat3d NULL.com). I though I would repost them here to share with anyone who doesn’t frequent that site. If you aren’t though you should. They have amazing video tutorials.

Material Editor Shortcut Keys

Num Key 1 1 variable constant

Num Key 2 2 variable constant

Num Key 3 3 variable constant

Num Key 4 4 variable constant

E key Power node

R key Reflection Vector

T key Texture Sample

U key TexCoord

I key If node

O key 1-x node

P key Panner node

A key Add node

S key Param ‘None’ (0) node

D key Divide node

L key Lerp node

C key Mask (R G) node

V key Param ‘None” (0,1,2,3)

B key BumpOffset node

N key Normalize node

M key Multiply node

Unreal Unit Meshes – “UBlocks”

After digging into the 2DPlatformerStarterKit (http://udn NULL.epicgames NULL.com/Three/DevelopmentKitGemsPlatformerStarterKit NULL.html) I began thinking about how I should go about creating my 2D test level. This level would be a staging ground for all sorts of pre-production tests. Things like lightning, particle systems, and mesh design would all be roughed out here. I always find if hard to visualize what sizes my meshes should be while working in Maya. I was thinking that a quick way to rough out the size of a level and it’s meshes would be to use pre sized blocks like LEGO (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/legos NULL.jpg).

I’ve made several different sizes of cube type meshes that area all using the same parent material. Each square on the grid texture represents 64 units in the Unreal engine. If your Maya grid isn’t setup to work with the UDK change your grid settings to match these values…

Maya to UDK Grid Settings – Length and Width:2000 Grid Lines Every:64 Subdivisions:8

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ublocksweb NULL.jpg)

UBlocks in default UDK Scene

The material network is pretty self explanatory, but I’ll go over it quick. There is a texture coordinate node that is being multiplied my a custom parameter node. This lets you control the parameter node’s value separately in all instances of this material. The “U” and “V” coordinates in the “Texture Coordinate” node are represented in the texture by red and green. Multiplying this node’s output will multiply each color channel in the texture. Increasing the value of red and green will tile the material. The new multiplied red and green values are then plugged into the grid texture’s UV input.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ublocks_mat NULL.jpg)

Shader network for UBlock parent material

Download UBlocks (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/public/UBlocks NULL.zip) – I don’t mind if you redistribute the meshes with your projects, but please link this post or include the original ZIP file in your download.

UDK Platform Starter Kit Scene Scale

I was checking out the Unreal Developer Network (http://udn NULL.epicgames NULL.com) last night and found out they’ve released what is essentially a template for a 2D platformer (http://udn NULL.epicgames NULL.com/Three/DevelopmentKitGemsPlatformerStarterKit NULL.html). My brain just about exploded when I saw this. I’ve been trying to code my own bare bones 2D platform game class for quite some time, but most of my skills are geared towards art. I did however purchase the Introduction to Unreal Script (http://www NULL.eat3d NULL.com/unrealscript) from Eat3D.com (http://www NULL.eat3d NULL.com/). It helped me setup a proper development environment for the UDK, but I found the technical depth quite shallow. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me given that it’s an introduction :\

At any rate the documentation for the kit is pretty decent and if you have a basic understanding of level design you should be able to jump right in and start building your own levels and swapping characters. Before I went to work today I took some measurements of an in game shot to get an idea of the mesh sizes I’ll need to create in Maya. If you’ve never created anything for the Unreal Development Kit in Autodesk Maya then the first thing you will want to do is adjust your scene scale. Here is a YouTube video (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/user/jonathanvillaverde#p/u/18/v62ZJhryFP4) from Jonathan Villaverde’s channel (http://www NULL.youtube NULL.com/user/jonathanvillaverde) to help you get that done.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/ScalePlatform2D NULL.jpg)

Default 2D Scale Measurements for UDK 2D Platformer Kit

UDK Intro: Geometry Mode

Introduction

You will have to recalculate the BSP every time you want to see the changes you have made.

This lesson will cover the use of geometry mode to transform a brush’s shape, or create an entirely new brush. There are several different ways a brush can be manipulated in “geometry mode” . Select your builder brush and then hit the geometry mode button (diagram 1).

Unreal Development Kit "Geometry Mode" Button

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_02 NULL.png)

Diagram 1: Geometry Mode Button

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_01 NULL.png)

Diagram 2: Polygon Components

If you are in geometry mode all corners of your builder brush will have turned into large red squares. When manipulating your brush you should keep the different components of a brush in mind (diagram 2). Using these components often and effectively will save you time. Lets change the position of our “Builder Brush” components using the transform tools. Start by making sure the geometry mode has been turned on.

Tools

Unreal Development Kit Geometry Tool Options

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_03 NULL.png)

Diagram 3: Geometry Tool Options

Edit
While in edit mode you can select and manipulate single or grouped vertices, edges and faces. Try selecting one of the vertices and then hold down CTRL and select a few more. There are no options in the “Properties” section (diagram 3) of the Geometry Tool for edit mode.

Extrude
This mode is available exclusively for manipulating the faces of your geometry. To access this mode you will first have to select a face that belongs to your brush. Only after doing this will the radio button become available.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/bsp01_04 NULL.gif)To extrude a face simply select the face you want to extrude and pull outwards on the coordinate handles. For a more precise extrusion you can enter the “Length” and “Segments” of your desired extrusion into the “Properties” section. A properly extruded face can be seen in diagram 4.

Don’t forget you can also affect the translate handles without pulling on them. Try using these commands:

translate X = LMB + CTRL
translate Y = RMB + CTRL
translate Z = LMB + RMB + CTRL

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_04 NULL.png)

Diagram 4: BSP Extrude Example

Brush Clip
Have you ever wanted to split a brush in two, or perhaps make two brushes from a single brush. If so the “Brush Clip” tool is just what you need. In the orthographic view port hold down the CTRL key and click with the RMB. You need two points that clearly cut across your brush to make the clip work (diagram5). Click “Apply” and you will notice that your brush has been split. You should also notice a line perpendicular to your clip line. This line is the “normal”.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_05 NULL.png)

Diagram 5: BSP Clipping Example

The normal direction is changeable in the “Properties” section. Reversing the normal will reverse the cut. The normal has to be flipped before the cut is made to have any affect on the brush. Underneath “Flip Normal?” is the option “Split?”. This option will take the part of the brush that is usually clipped off and create a separate brush out of it .

Pen
The pen tool can create new brushes from points you lay down in a orthographic view. To create a brush connect three or more points ending at the first while holding down CTRL and clicking the RMB. The shape is set to auto extrude to a depth of 256.

Try connecting a punch of points together in a random shape. You will notice that the shape extrudes in the coordinate that matches its view. For an example of this create a shape in the top orthographic view and notice that it has been extruded along the Z axis. This extrusion will follow the world coordinate associated with the orthographic view you created it in.

In the “Settings” section you will notice several different options available to you. If “Auto extrude?” is turned off you will not get a default coordinate extrusion when you complete your pen path. The “Create Brush Shape?” option is used in conjunction with several features including the “Lathe” tool. When creating a shape you will notice that the editor always triangulates your shape. If this is something that you don’t want you can tick off the “Create Convex Polygons?” option and your new shapes will consist of quads and n-gons (diagram 6). Our last option is “Extrude Depth”. This is the default extrusion depth your pen tool will create when completed.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_07 NULL.png)

Diagram 6: BSP Clipping Example

Lathe
The “Lathe” tool tries to take your shape and revolve it 360% around the dominant coordinate of your current orthographic window. The “Lathe” option can only be selected if you create a polygon with the “Pen” tool while the option “Create Brush Shape?” is turned on. Your shape will be green in colour.

The last two options will help to control how much of a 360% sweep your shape will occupy. The “Total Segments” option will set how many segments will make up the whole 360% turn. The “Segments” section will determine how many of those segments to actually produce.

Let’s make a simple square with the “Pen” tool and the “Auto Extrude?” option turned off. Start in the top orthographic view and make your four point selection (diagram 7). Now highlight the Y coordinate view (top right by default) and re-select your pen shape. In your options box set your “Total Segments” option to 16 and your “Segments” to 8. Now go ahead and lathe your selected shape.

You will notice that the inner radius of the lathe makes a semi circle. This is because our “Segments” option was set to half of our “Total Segments”.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_08 NULL.png)

Diagram 7: BSP Lathe Example

Modifiers

Delete
Faces and verticies may be deleted using the “Delete” tool. Be careful when deleting. Look at your geometry closely and make sure you won’t get any unwanted shape changes from the deletion. Any faces you delete can always be repaired by using the “Create” modifier.

Create
Great for filling holes or bridging BSP the “Create” modifier works using verticies. Add a simple cube brush to the world and delete one of it’s faces.Now select the four verticies around the open face in a clockwise fashion and then hit ENTER. The face will have been created with its normal direction facing outwards (diagram 8). If you were to make the same selection counter-clockwise the face will have been created pointing inwards.

Unreal Development Kit Create Face Example

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_09 NULL.png)

Diagram 8: BSP Create Face

Flip
That thing we just talked about called the normal; it’s what the “Flip” modifier is all about. Working on faces, the Flip modifier reverses normals. Reversing a face’s normals flips the side of the polygon that is rendered. This is why you can’t see the insides of meshes when you pass through them in spectator mode. The normal for all of those faces is pointing outwards.

Triangulate
Fairly self explanatory, “Triangulate” breaks mesh faces up into triangles (diagram 9). If you notice a surface of your BSP is rendering funny triangulate the faces giving your the trouble. Chances are they’re n-gons of some sort. Try creating a cube brush and selecting it’s top face. Now triangulate that face and notice how that quad (four edged polygon) was broken up into two tris (three edged polygon).

Unreal Development Kit Geometry Mode Triangulation

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_10 NULL.png)

Diagram 9: BSP Triangulation

Turn
If you have two triangles on a brush that share a common edge you can “Turn” that edge .This rotates the the common edge of the triangles. Doing this causes the line that connects the two triangles to snap the the other 2 verticies that make up their 4 verticie border (diagram 10). If you still are unclear on this try using the pen tool to make a non extruded shape. Now “Triangulate” this shape and practice turning some border edges of triangles around.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_11 NULL.png)

Diagram 10: BSP Turn Edge

Split
The “Split” tool adds “edge loops” or a series of verticies that run around your mesh connected by edges. Create a cube and select one of its edges and then use the Split modifier. Notice that a line was run around your shape that is perpendicular to the original edge you selected (diagram 11). This will always be the case when Splitting. In conjunction with the “Extrude” tool, splitting can work well to help you achieve whatever BSP shape you need. Diagram 13 illustrates the idea behind this.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_12 NULL.png)

Diagram 11: Edge Split BSP With Extrusion

Optimize
Using “Optimize” on a group of faces with adjacent edges will create a new polygon in their place that has no edges running though it. Any verticies that are no longer required to keep the shape of the brush will be deleted. Depending how you merge your faces you can end up with some really “interesting” polygons. Try to make sure all your optimizations create quads or tris.

Weld
Verticies can be merged using the “Weld” tool. The position of the resultant merge will be the location of the first verticie you selected (diagram12). Create a cube and select two of the top verticies and Weld them togeather. Now do the same to the other two and then once more so you’re left with one verticie. Move the single remaining top verticie to the middle of the cube in the top orthographic view. You know have a pyramid. Wasn’t that fun?

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/BSP01_13 NULL.png)

Diagram 12: Vertex Welding Steps

Conclusion

To exit geometry mode click the “camera mode” button (it looks like a TV camera) located beside the “geometry mode” button. It’s also of note that to “Undo” picked points with any of the tools you can hit the “ESC” key.

UDK Interface Diagram

Pretty self explanitory. This diagram labels all the components in the Unreal Development Kit user interface. This version isn’t taken from the newest release of the UDK, but I will be updating this to the June beta release soon.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/udk_interface NULL.jpg)

Unreal Development Kit User Interface Diagram

UDK Intro: Getting Started

Introduction

This lesson will cover the very basics of the interface while manipulating the “builder brush” with transform tools. For those of you who don’t have it yet the UDK can be downloaded here from Epic Games.

To enhance your transition into the Unreal Developer Kit please accept this assistance: Interface Diagram (http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/udk_interface NULL.jpg)

Startup

After you get UDK installed and running you will notice several different options in your windows start menu. For this lesson we are going to open the one labeled “Editor” (diagram 1) . A “Tip of The Day” window will greet you upon entry. Whether you choose to leave this notice on is up to you. Right now simply click the “OK” button.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/intro01_01 NULL.png)

Diagram 1: Unreal Development Kit Icon

Diagram 2: Unreal Development Kit SectionProgram Tabs

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/intro01_02 NULL.png)

Diagram 2: Unreal Development Program Tabs

The first window to gain focus after clearing the Tip of The Day button is the “start page”(diagram2). This page is a way for Epic Games to get news and updates to you through the UDK. Close this windows and you should see the main program window behind it (diagram3).

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/intro01_03 NULL.png)

Diagram 3: Unreal Development Kit Main Window

The main program window is where we will be spending the remainder of this lesson. We’ll get to the other window, referred to as the “generic content browser” in the next lesson. Our first objective is to create a new file. There are two types of files we can create. Click on the File menu in the top left corner of the editor and select “New”.

We are given a choice between “additive” and “subtractive”. Generally you are going to want to use the additive level type. Select the additive radio button and click “OK”.

Navigation

Each view port can be maximized so that you can see its contents more clearly by pressing the “maximize view port button”. This button is the last button on the right of your view ports pictograph menu represented by a square with a black top border (see diagram 4). If you are running a dual monitor setup you might be interested in increasing your UDK screen space. To do this click the “tear of a floating copy” button located to the left of the maximize view port button. This button can be seen in diagram 4.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/intro01_04 NULL.png)

Diagram 4: Tear Off / Maximize World View Panel

Perspective View Port
Translate back and forth by holding down the left mouse button (LMB) and moving your mouse forwards and backwards.

Pan the camera in any direction by holding the LMB and RMB down while moving the mouse.

Free look by holding down the RMB and moving the mouse around.

WASD Cluster
You can hold down the right mouse button and use the classic W,A,S,D key cluster to move around as well. The Q key and R keys can be used to change your camera’s elevation level.

Orthographic View Ports
You’ll have noticed by now that you have three other view ports available to you. These are your orthographic view ports. They are fixed camera views of your level from the top, front, and side. In these views you obviously can’t free look, but you can pan around and zoom.

Take note: if at anytime you feel the camera is moving to slow you can adjust the speed in each view port independently by pressing the “toggle camera speed button” seen here in diagram 5.

(http://www NULL.terrymatthes NULL.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/intro01_05 NULL.png)

Diagram 5: Unreal Development Kit Camera Speed

Basic Geometry Manipulation

On the left hand side of your screen you will notice two vertical rows of basic geometric shapes grouped together. This is your “brush pallet” (see diagram 6). Right click on the cube icon in your brush palette. A window with the primitive’s properties will have popped up and in those properties we can clearly see the X, Y, and Z values for the cube’s dimensions. Click on each field and change the values to the following X:1024 Y:1024 Z:256. Now hit the “build” button and close the window. This red cube wire frame you have created is called a “builder brush” and it represents a shape that you could potentially add to your level. To get a better look at our new red “builder brush” lets navigate closer in the perspective view port.

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Diagram 6: Unreal Development Kit Brush/Primitives Palette

This wire frame cube we have added can be manipulated just like geometry in a 3D suite such as Maya or Cinema 4D. You can manipulate geometry in three basic ways: translate, rotate, and scale. All of the tools to do this can be found along with the “undo” and “redo” buttons in the pictograph menu just below the main program menu (see diagram 7).

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Diagram 7: Unreal Development Kit Undo / Redo Buttons

The first button that looks like a mouse is your “selection” tool. If at anytime you lose focus of an object your manipulating you can simply select this tool and click on your object. You can’t manipulate geometry in this mode.

Translate
This button is located to the right of “selection”. You can use this tool to move your object around in your level by clicking one, or combination of two axis arrows. The arrows are colour coded to match their coordinate direction. There is also a coordinate indicator in the bottom left of the perspective window (see diagram 8).

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Diagram 8: Unreal Development Kit 3D Coordinate Orientation

Rotate
To rotate your object you highlight one of the coordinate axis orbiting your object and drag. Unlike the translation tool you can’t move in more than one axis at a time.

Scale
Scaling your object can be done in two ways. You can scale your object up and down uniformly, or each coordinate direction can be scaled on it’s own.

To scale uniformly select the large gray square with the little square inside it. This is the bigger of the two gray squares seen side by side. Notice that all coordinate axis handles are red. No matter which one you choose to pull on they will all scale your builder brush in the same fashion.

Non uniform scaling lets you increase the scale of one or two coordinates independent of the remaining coordinate(s) by dragging the handles you want to change. To select multiple handles move your mouse closer to the center of the two handles you want to manipulate.

Take note: You can use any of the manipulation tools as a selection tool. This way you don’t have to go back and forth between manipulation tools and the selection tool.

Conclusion

The remaining intro lessons will be spent setting up very basic map. The goal will be to get you familiarized with the major aspects of the UDK. The topics you’ll be introduced to will include: adding geometry, materials, lighting, static meshes, particles, sound/music, and visually scripted events.

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