Week 2: Beginning a "Simple Level"

I went over the first four videos of the "Simple Level" 3D Buzz tutorial set.  For anyone else interested in learning the program, I would definitely recommend these videos.  It's a bit slow, but that's still better than going too fast.  On the upside, there's a lot of hand holding in the earlier videos.  Practically anyone with even a little bit of computer knowledge could probably get through them ("Now we open the level.  That'll be in the 'File' menu, then click 'Open.'").  In spite of the easiness, the presenter is entertaining enough to keep it interesting.  Each video is only 5-10 minutes, so watching one or two videos each day is pretty feasible.

Here's what I got out of my one hour of work:

UDK's editor window

The level being "played."  Check out that next-gen Unreal lighting!

All I've really made so far is a rectangular platform capped with a trapezoid and enclosed by two walls.  Are you impressed yet?  In all seriousness though, it's pretty exciting to finally be making something concrete.

Week 1: An Introduction

Take a look at the About page first, if you haven't done so already.





To start it off, I'll be attempting to get a grasp of the Unreal Development Kit, a free development program for the widely used Unreal Engine.  I'm more or less starting at ground zero.  At this point, my only vaguely relevant experience is extremely rudimentary use of the free open source 3D modeling software Blender, and the user interface tutorial set.  By "rudimentary use", I mean all I really know how to do is move cubes around and make extremely basic shapes.  All of my knowledge on the subject could probably be learned in a few solid hours.

Typically these type of things require a concrete goal.  Unfortunately, I don't know enough about UDK to make a realistic goal.  So for now, I'll simply aim to complete the rest of the 3D Buzz tutorials I linked above.  After that, I'll consider what I can feasibly do with my new-found knowledge.  That's all for today, I'll post again once I've made some worthwhile progress toward the next tutorial set.