Home Unreal Engine

Jumping Ships From Unity to UDK. Need some guidance.

polycounter lvl 5
Offline / Send Message
dproeder polycounter lvl 5
So as the subject suggests, I am going to start up UDK for the time first time. I have been using Unity 3d for about 2 years, and I have never been satisfied as an artist coming from a fine arts background.

I was wondering A few things:

- All of my UDK tutorials about 2 or 3 years old. Where can I find the best, most current introduction tuts (and of course I'm asking for the community to share their personal experience). Eat 3d, 3d motive, Digital Tutors, UDK Forums?

- Any tips to give a Unity guy?

-edit: Also is it ok to download a Beta to use as your main version?


I'm excited to get into an engine with a more artist friendly approach.

Replies

  • praetus
    Offline / Send Message
    praetus interpolator
    First of all check out the UDN at http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/WebHome.html. There is a plethora of knowledge on importing and basic engine settings that can be found for free. Along those lines, 3D Buzz created some tutorials when UDK was first released that can be found at http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VideoTutorials.html. While most these videos are pretty old, the basics behind them are still true. They are still worth a look over as they will familiarize yourself with the UI and basic features.

    Most sites like Eat3D and 3D Motive are awesome and I highly recommend either of them. The things I have learned from these sites are numerous but in most cases they are very specific although in depth tutorials. If you're just getting started I would suggest the 3D Buzz videos I linked to before as well as the UDN. Once you are comfortable with the basics, move to Eat3D and 3D motive for more specific features.
  • Neox
    Offline / Send Message
    Neox veteran polycounter
    dproeder wrote: »
    I'm excited to get into an engine with a more artist friendly approach.

    artist friendly unless you want to do something really different, then you'll miss the time when a coder could literally change the engine as you need it :)

    but out of the box, definitely unreal3 is the nicest package i ever worked with, from an artist point of view.
  • dproeder
    Offline / Send Message
    dproeder polycounter lvl 5
    praetus wrote: »
    First of all check out the UDN at http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/WebHome.html. There is a plethora of knowledge on importing and basic engine settings that can be found for free. Along those lines, 3D Buzz created some tutorials when UDK was first released that can be found at http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/VideoTutorials.html. While most these videos are pretty old, the basics behind them are still true. They are still worth a look over as they will familiarize yourself with the UI and basic features.

    Most sites like Eat3D and 3D Motive are awesome and I highly recommend either of them. The things I have learned from these sites are numerous but in most cases they are very specific although in depth tutorials. If you're just getting started I would suggest the 3D Buzz videos I linked to before as well as the UDN. Once you are comfortable with the basics, move to Eat3D and 3D motive for more specific features.


    Those 3d Buzz Tuts have been insanely helpful. Thanks a million!
  • tristamus
    Offline / Send Message
    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    You really should check out Eat3D's products as well. Very very good stuff.

    http://www.eat3d.com/training_videos
  • ultramedia
    Offline / Send Message
    ultramedia polycounter lvl 11
    Brace yourself. Thats my advice.

    Don't get me wrong, I do love UDK. It creates beautiful graphics, let's me put test levels on an iPad directly from PC without needing a mac.

    But be warned, using UDK is like digging a hole to the centre of the earth. At first while you're digging through the top soil (i.e. importing static assets, making shaders) you think "wow, this is going great". Then at some point you hit solid rock (i.e. what do you mean I can't make a skyrim clone with kismet?)

    I'm not saying don't use UDK though, I think it's a great choice. Just be aware that there's rock down there.
  • dproeder
    Offline / Send Message
    dproeder polycounter lvl 5
    tristamus wrote: »
    You really should check out Eat3D's products as well. Very very good stuff.

    http://www.eat3d.com/training_videos


    I have already bought Hourence's first tutorial. Its on!
  • dproeder
    Offline / Send Message
    dproeder polycounter lvl 5
    ultramedia wrote: »
    Brace yourself. Thats my advice.

    Don't get me wrong, I do love UDK. It creates beautiful graphics, let's me put test levels on an iPad directly from PC without needing a mac.

    But be warned, using UDK is like digging a hole to the centre of the earth. At first while you're digging through the top soil (i.e. importing static assets, making shaders) you think "wow, this is going great". Then at some point you hit solid rock (i.e. what do you mean I can't make a skyrim clone with kismet?)

    I'm not saying don't use UDK though, I think it's a great choice. Just be aware that there's rock down there.


    Yeah well its better than Unity. There you have to go to the farmer's nursery to buy the top soil to even get started.
  • tristamus
    Offline / Send Message
    tristamus polycounter lvl 9
    dproeder wrote: »
    Yeah well its better than Unity. There you have to go to the farmer's nursery to buy the top soil to even get started.

    What? Are you compltely unaware of the enormous user community and enormous amounts of tutorials out there?

    Unity was designed in mind for the artist, as well as the programmer. I love UDK too, and in fact I always use it to present my work. However, if it comes down to the decision of whther or not I'd like a game to get done / made, it's Unity all the way.

    Please take your fanboy comments somewhere else, or at least provide some info as to why you have such opinions.
  • ultramedia
    Offline / Send Message
    ultramedia polycounter lvl 11
    well, I suppose shadows would be a good place to start if we were going to play that game...
  • David Wakelin
    Unity is terrible, ive been forced to use it for 2 years at university. We are all informed by lecturers and industry experts that UDK is alot more reliable and in proper terms BETTER. Name a few AAA games powered by Unity please in comparison to UDK?
  • dproeder
    Offline / Send Message
    dproeder polycounter lvl 5
    tristamus wrote: »
    well, I suppose shadows would be a good place to start if we were going to play that game....


    I would say take the aggressive demeanor somewhere else. My comment was flippant sure, but obviously a joke. I was only saying that before you can achieve the things UDK can do in Unity, you have to go to said community and implement the scripts yourself. So in this respect I think UDK is more promising. I've used Unity for 2 years as well, and when you have to hunt down a script just to get a spec map working, that is where I am turned off. Not saying I am incapable of doing so, I just don't want to be bothered with it. And you could also argue that all game engines are designed with the artist in mind, but how they support the artist is the issue we are talking about here.
  • dproeder
    Offline / Send Message
    dproeder polycounter lvl 5
    [quote= ultramedia; 1579338] well, I suppose shadows would be a good place to start if we were going to play that game... .[/quote]


    Don't forget the sterile UI, or the lack of standard shaders included, or the huge hits it takes when using transparency, or the bad gameplay UI implementation tools. (These are issues I have personally experienced when working with the programmers in my small studio.)

    That being said, Unity was awesome maybe 2 or 3 years ago in that it was free, coummunity driven, and could challenge other engines such as UDK or Crytek. Right now though, I just ask myself why the studio is still using it. We are having issues about licensing the Pro edition for our programmers due to money concerns. Do other engines lock content in their free editions like Unity? (not a rhetorical question. Unity is the only engine I've dealt with recently in a development environment.)
  • ultramedia
    Offline / Send Message
    ultramedia polycounter lvl 11
    lol, when I said shadows I was talking about how UDK does have them but the free version of Unity doesn't. If you want shadows in Unity you have to fork out 1500 bucks for the pro version...

    It's the number reason why I choose chipping through rock in UDK over sifting through sand in Unity every time. (So it would be nice if they got them going properly for iOS but I guess you can't have everything you want in life).
  • dproeder
    Offline / Send Message
    dproeder polycounter lvl 5
    Sooo....Do I need to go ultra in depth with the BSP system in UDK if I already know how to use an external package such as Maya? I have a feeling it will be nice to know these tools exist, but frankly the modeling tools in UDK are...not good. I have a feeling I will be doing all my blocking in Maya then using 100% static meshes in UDK. Is this a popular workflow?
  • Simmo
    Offline / Send Message
    Simmo polycounter lvl 12
    BSP are almost exclusively used for large floors or surfaces with tiling textures, if at all. Main benefit is the seamlessness and the fact the UVs and shadow maps are scaled properly (and easily adjusted). Only thing I really use brushes for is making volumes such as collision or post process etc.

    It's good for blocking out quickly within UDK for very very basic scale visualisation, but after that, 3D applications all the way.

    Static meshes are what are used for basically everything now. You can look at the demo maps in UDK and turn off visibility for static meshes and see how BSP is used, although they're probably more than you'd usually see now days also.
  • |*BILLY$CLINT*|
    Offline / Send Message
    |*BILLY$CLINT*| polycounter lvl 11
    I do not allow the artist at work to use BSP because it causes all kinds of problems with performance and Lightmass. Any BSP that the level designers do create ends up getting turned into Static Mesh at some point during the construction of the level.
Sign In or Register to comment.