Book excerpt: Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume II: Advanced Level Design Concepts with Unreal Engine 3 is your start-to-finish guide to state-of-the-art Unreal Tournament 3 modding and level design. Here’s everything you need to know to take your game design skills to the next level, creating content with breakthrough depth and interactivity! Your authors aren’t just the world’s #1 Unreal game development trainers: They’ve built the training mods that shipped with Unreal Tournament. Now, working with the full cooperation of Unreal Engine 3’s creators, Epic Games, they introduce innovative, pro-quality techniques you’ll find nowhere else: outstanding solutions for everything from particle effects to physics, materials to cinematics. Packed with tips, hands-on tutorials, and expert insight, Mastering Unreal Technology, Volume II will help you take Unreal Tournament 3 and Unreal Engine 3 to the limit...and then blow right by it! You’ll find expert tips on Creating advanced materials that leverage the full power of UnrealEd’s Material Editor Bringing levels to life with objects affected by gravity, collisions, and player influence Creating fire, smoke, sparks, and more with Unreal Engine 3’s particle effects system Building custom user interfaces, including Heads-Up Displays (HUDs) that update constantly Using SoundCues to mix, modulate, crossfade, and attenuate sounds Generating real-time camera-based effects, including depth of field, motion blur, and color adjustment Using post process effects to quickly transform a scene’s look and feel without changing existing materials or textures Animating characters and vehicles that move with unprecedented realism Creating in-game cinematics that develop your characters and move your story forward