Justin Plowman (Packt Publishing - 3D Game Design with Unreal Engine 4 and Blender

Justin Plowman is a game designer and educator, who resides in the United States. At a young age, he discovered his love for video games and the joy they bring to others. He began teaching high school students about game development in 2005 and enjoys supporting the dreams of the next generation developers. He currently teaches at risk youth about game design and development through the West Michigan Center for Arts and Technology (www.wmcat.org); and also teaches Unreal Engine development as part of the Digital Animation and Game Design program at Ferris State University (www.ferris.edu). Justin has worked with Unreal Technology in the education arena for more than 10 years. When not teaching, he writes learning tutorials on different topics related to Unreal Technology, and continues to further his education by keeping up on recent industry news and learning about best practices related to both teaching and game development. He can be found on the Web at https://gamingbootcamp.wordpress.com/.

Writing this book has been quite a journey for me, as it firmly falls in the realm of the things that I never expected to do. However, it has truly been a rewarding experience, and I can't thank the folks at Packt Publishing enough for this opportunity. I want to thank my wife, Jennifer, for helping me focus through the long nights of writing and development, as well as my good friend, Jacob Pollak, for providing me with the amazing piece of cover art. Most of all, I would like to thank the great Unreal Engine online community that has been instrumental in growing and nurturing my skills over the years. This book represents my desire to give back, and I hope that it encourages more designers and developers within the community to do the same. Thank you!

Scott Hafner is a professional game designer with over 10 years of experience in the video game industry. Over the course of his career, Scott has worked as a producer, a game designer, and a level designer on a range of platforms and genres including MMOs, third-person shooters, and RPGs.

I would like to thank my wife for her continued encouragement and support in all that I do!

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.