Mastering Unreal Technology : The Art of Level Design

Rating:
Summary: Incredibly detailed and helpful - 2 books in one!
Review: I was a little skeptical before purchasing this book because I already own and watched the Unreal Tournament 2004 Special Edition training videos produced by the same authors as this book. I was afraid that the 60+ hours of content in those videos would cover all the same material as the book. Boy was I wrong.

Not only does the Mastering Unreal Technology: The Art of Level Design go into detail far surpassing the training videos, including a surprisingly enlightening (and helpful) section on the theory behind how the Unreal Technology works, but Mr. Busby, Parrish, and Van Eenwyk guide you step-by-step through designing a level. As they begin introducing new, more advanced, features they'll explain - option by option - how the feature works and provide numerous examples of where it would be useful. For a level designer, having a single clear guide of what each of thousands of settings do is an invaluable resource.

This book serves as an excellent introduction to Maya reference as well. As I said earlier, having watched through the video tutorials, I was already somewhat familiar with the Maya package. But even for complete novices, the book will quickly bring you upto speed with the basics of the package, and help you learn how to use it to import your own creations (such as static meshes) into your Unreal levels. The Maya content in the book alone, is worth the price of admission.

The previous reviewer mentioned that he uses 3DS Max instead of Maya. While I have no doubt that Max is an awesome package, it should not be overlooked that Maya has a free personal learning edition - that ships with Unreal Tournament 2003/4. Consequently, I am very pleased that this package was used instead of Max, because in doing so no initial investment beyond a copy of this book is needed. Heck, they even ship a copy of the Unreal Engine Runtime with the book! This means that people who don't own Unreal Tournament 2004, but wish to learn about level editing, can do so. Overall, I was extremely impressed. :) Way to go.