Unreal Development Kit Beginner's Guide

 (2 customer reviews)

At a quick look at the contents the book seemed a great start. Tutorials in the internet were too advanced and the book promised to deliver a smooth learning curve.
Some chapters after the tutorials were like the "trolling" drawing tutorial a. draw a circle; b. draw the rest of the owl. I am at chapter 5 now and skipped most of chapter 3/4 due stuff like this. Things in the book are not the way they are in the engine. Caution when you purchase this book!

Having no previous experience with UDK or 3D graphics in general, I thought I'd give Unreal Development Kit 3 Beginner's Guide a try. The book attempts to teach the basics, from installing UDK to constructing 3D maps complete with realistic lighting, event scripting, and AI pathing. If you've never worked with Epic Games' Unreal Engine before then there's certain plenty to get your teeth into here.

Given the target audience, the book does a very good job of keeping the amount of text to a minimum. Instead, brief step-by-step instructions are provided, along with a generous supply of screenshots. Over the course of the nine chapters you'll work with each of the major tools that UDK's editor provides in order to construct a series of increasingly more complex maps. While you certainly won't become an export, you should feel fairly comfortable using many of the tools come the end of the book.

However, while the content covered is appropriate for the book's intended...Read more