With an explosive growth in independent game development in the last few years, many developers are looking for robust and low-cost tools that would enable them to bring their dream games to market.
Blender is a powerful open source 3D software package used by developers across the globe; it is renowned for its ease of use and active community. Unreal Engine 4 is the amazing AAA game engine built by Epic Games that has become the go to choice for many game developers, large and small.
During the course of this book, we will look at how to utilize Blender to create both animated and static game art for Unreal Engine 4 and how to bring these assets into our own projects.
Chapter 1, Unreal, My Friend, I'd Like You to Meet Blender, will guide you through installing and setting up the Blender 3D software package. We will discuss Blender's interface and tools as well as get started on our first project.
Chapter 2, Starting Our First Project, takes us into Unreal Engine 4 to begin designing the first level of our project. We will review some level design basics and put together a game level for our future game art to exist in.
Chapter 3, It's Time to Customize!, will have us started on creating the first game asset in Blender—a space age crate for our cargo ship level. We will cover basic modeling techniques and discuss the process for UV unwrapping and texturing our game asset.
Chapter 4, Getting the Assets to the Level, will discuss the process of exporting our crate from Blender and importing it into Unreal so that we can utilize it within our cargo ship level.
Chapter 5, Taking This Level Up a Notch, will see us move on from the cargo ship to building a space station level, with complete scripted events to add emotions for the player's experience. We will take a look at more advanced scripting techniques in Blueprint and prepare our level to receive a more advanced game asset.
Chapter 6, Monster Assets – The Level Totally Needs One of These, takes us through the design process to create a more advanced game asset—the Artifact. We will take a look at several more 3D modeling tools, and you will understand how to build your game asset from multiple components.
Chapter 7, Let's Dress to Impress, takes us through the process of UV unwrapping all the different pieces that make up the Artifact. We will look at some advanced UV tools in Blender. You will also learn how to utilize Substance Painter to create some amazing textures and materials.
Chapter 8, Lights, Camera, Animation!, brings us back to Blender to create animations for the Artifact. We will discuss the requirements for bringing animations into Unreal Engine 4, as well as using bones and rigging in Blender.
Chapter 9, Bang Bang – Let's Make It Explode, ends the book with a look at creating video game explosions using sound, particle effects, and flying parts. We will celebrate the completion of our game asset by importing it to Unreal Engine 4 and setting it to explode!
The following hardware and software are needed for this book:
Desktop PC or Mac
Windows 7 64-bit or Mac OS X 10.10 or later
Quad-core Intel or AMD processor, 2.5 GHz, or faster
NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX or AMD Radeon 6870 HD series card or a higher version
8 GB RAM
A three-button mouse
Unreal Engine 4.9 or a later version
Blender 2.76 Release Candidate 3 or a later version
Substance Painter 1.7 30 day free trial or a later version
All software mentioned in this book is free of charge and can be downloaded from the Internet.
This book is ideal for 3D artists and game designers who want to create amazing 3D game environments and leverage the power of Blender with Unreal Engine 4. 3D design basics would be necessary to get the most out of this book. Some previous experience with Blender would be helpful but not essential.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "This can be found by typing Input
E
into the Find a Node search box."
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Click on the Add Modifier dropdown and select Mirror."
Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or disliked. Reader feedback is important for us as it helps us develop titles that you will really get the most out of.
To send us general feedback, simply e-mail <[email protected]>
, and mention the book's title in the subject of your message.
If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide at www.packtpub.com/authors.
Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.
We also provide you with a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/3DGameDesignwithUnrealEngine4andBlender_coloredImages.pdf.
Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you could report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website or added to any list of existing errata under the Errata section of that title.
To view the previously submitted errata, go to https://www.packtpub.com/books/content/support and enter the name of the book in the search field. The required information will appear under the Errata section.
Piracy of copyrighted material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works in any form on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.
Please contact us at <[email protected]>
with a link to the suspected pirated material.
We appreciate your help in protecting our authors and our ability to bring you valuable content.
If you have a problem with any aspect of this book, you can contact us at <[email protected]>
, and we will do our best to address the problem.