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PC gamer, WorthPlaying EIC, globe-trotting couch potato, patriot, '80s headbanger, movie watcher, music lover, foodie and man in black -- squirrel!

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Unreal Development Kit - October Beta Available NOW

by Rainier on Oct. 27, 2010 @ 2:14 p.m. PDT

Epic Games launched the Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free edition of Unreal Engine 3, providing the community access to the toolset like never before, and has now released an updated version.

Get the Unreal Development Kit October 2010 Beta off WP (820mb)

UDK is available to anyone interested in using 3D game engine technology, from game developers to students, hobbyists to researchers, and creators of architectural walkthroughs to digital filmmakers. Use of UDK is free for all schools and students, and anyone can release free UDK-powered games.

Extensive UDK technical documentation is available at the Unreal Developer Network, and community members can share ideas, show off projects and learn from UDK developers like Psyonix and The Prometheus Team.

3D Buzz will soon release dozens of free video tutorials specific to UDK to complement the company’s existing Unreal Engine 3 video training modules. Over 100 Unreal Technology videos are viewable at the 3D Buzz web site free of charge.

Individuals and companies wishing to develop software for commercial purposes should refer to licensing terms. Commercial terms have been structured to make it easy for independent developers, start-up firms and seasoned professionals to use UDK with minimal financial barrier from concept to deployment.

Are you working on something you want the world to see? Display your work in the Project Show-Off forums.

Don’t forget, you can now purchase a commercial UDK license over the web. It’s easy and secure.

Upgrade Notes

This month there were numerous improvements to the Editor to make workflows easier. Enhancements were made to the various rendering systems as well.

OTE: The old UI system has been completely removed.

Rendering

  • Foliage volumes and terrain foliage were removed.
  • There is a new adjustable tonemapper with a more linear curve.
  • ImageGrain and Color LUT (ColorGrading) in Post-Processing can now be used even without a tonemapper.
Motion Blur
  • MotionBlurSkinning has been improved both in terms of memory footprint and performance.
  • Skeletal meshes now support per-bone motion blur.  This motion blur is dependent on bone movement, on a per-bone basis.

More information: http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/MotionBlur.html

Editor
  • Tool tips for shortcut keys are now displayed for the main toolbar buttons.
  • Support for creating new subtractive levels was removed.
  • It’s now possible to cancel the autosave process in-editor by hitting Esc.
  • Perspective viewports now default to real time. Disable this via preferences.
  • WASD keys controlling movement can now be used without holding right mouse.
  • There are new hotkeys for hiding actors:
    • H: Hides the selected actors.
    • Shift+H: Hides the unselected actors.
    • Ctrl+H: Unhides all the actors.
  • Unlock and show mouse cursor while in PIE or PIV using Shift+F1.
  • The PIE and PIV icons are now more distinct.
  • A separate 'Play' menu has been created; the 'Play Level' button has been moved to this new menu.
  • The ability to visualize static mesh edges has been added to the static mesh editor.
  • The ability to accidentally right-click or middle-click on transform gizmos has been removed.
  • Mesh painting has been improved:
    • The mesh paint tool now supports flood fill.
    • The mesh paint tool can now push vertex color from an instance to the mesh.
    • The mesh paint tool now supports multi-select.
  • This build includes code to fix up static mesh objects with zero triangle elements.
    • Map check warnings indicating StaticMeshes with zero triangle element can be fixed in the static mesh editor using the 'Mesh --> Remove elements with zero triangles' option.
    • Map check warnings indicating StaticMesh instances that contain mismatches between their materials override array and the source mesh elements.

Multithreaded cooking is now supported. This yields approximately 4x faster cooks.

New build and submit support lets users rebuild map, save and check it into P4 all at once.

It’s now possible to search the Actor Browser and easily comb the actor list.

Scaleform GFx

·         There is now support for GFx AMP, which is available in Binaries/GFx/Amp/GFxAmpClient.exe.

UDN Pages

New 

Updated

UDK includes:

  • The Unreal Editor toolset, complete with fully integrated game editing environment.
  • Unreal Gemini multithreaded rendering system with support for all modern rendering and shading techniques, advanced lighting and shadowing, ambient occlusion and a powerful material system for creating complex shaders on the fly.
  • Unreal Lightmass global illumination solver for high-quality static lighting.
  • Unreal PhAT visual physics modeling tool with state-of-the-art physics system powered by NVIDIA PhysX.
  • Unreal Kismet, an advanced visual scripting solution that facilitates rapid prototyping of ideas and gameplay mechanics.
  • AnimSet Viewer and AnimTree Editor, which give animators precise control over every muscle and bone movement.
  • Unreal Matinee, which includes movie director-class tools for creating in-game cut scenes and gorgeous cinematics.
  • UnrealScript, a fully integrated, high-level object-oriented programming language.
  • Unreal Cascade particle effects system for implementing explosions, fog, fire and smoke. Module-based system gives real-time previews of visual effects.
  • Terrain building tool for placing and customizing vegetation, structures and countless in-game points of interest.
  • Audio control through UnrealEd's visual Sound Cue Editor, plus support for major audio compression schemes; 3D sound positioning, spatialization and attenuation; multi-channel playback, and much more. Built-in Internet and LAN networking support for up to 64 players.
  • Integrations with leading game development middleware including NVIDIA PhysX, SpeedTree, FaceFX and Bink Video.
Included Content:

UDK ships with "UT Demo," which is demo content from "Unreal Tournament 3" consisting of four maps: Deck, Necropolis, Sanctuary, and Sandstorm; with deathmatch, team deathmatch, and vehicle capture the flag gametypes. Assets include one robot character, three weapons and four vehicles.

In "UT Demo," blood, gore and human opponents have been removed. Levels have been enhanced to showcase recent upgrades to UE3 technology. See udk.com/showcase-ut-game.html for comparison screenshots.

The "Unreal Tournament 3" Unreal Editor is widely used for learning UE3, and now UDK provides all of its game creation tools in addition to high-level engine features developed since the game?s release. "UT Demo" is an excellent starting point to explore UDK?s capabilities, especially for those looking to develop their own first-person shooter experience.

System requirements

Minimum:
  • Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
  • 2.0+ GHz processor
  • 2 GB system RAM
  • SM3-compatible video card
  • 3 GB Free hard drive space
Recommended for Content Development:
  • Windows Vista 64 SP2
  • 2.0+ GHz multi-core processor
  • 8 GB System RAM
  • NVIDIA 8000 series or higher graphics card
  • Plenty of HDD space
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