Going back from UDK to UE4 or...?

Hi guys, I’m a 3D artist and it’s quite a (long) while that I don’t use the UDK\Unreal Engine but I need to come back on it and I was wondering if I should take the UDK back to learn and then “upgrade” to the Unreal Engine 4 or if it’s a waste of time and I should directly jump on the UE4.
I’m asking this also considering the amount of documentation, tutorials out there about the UDK and I don’t really know how different the UE4 is, so how “transferable” that UDK knowledge is to the new engine.
Also, I don’t know how important is already to know PBR technology and being willing to know the engine for more than just rendering 3D models alone, I’m really not 100% confident on what might be the better option for me.
Can you please help me decide? :confused:

I would recommend you to directly start with the UE4, because when you have a little bit experience with UDK, it will be pretty easy for you to learn all the stuff in the engine. You also have access to official youtube tutorials, documentation, answerhub and there are also many templates.

So are you saying that having a basic knowledge of the UDK can help you with UE4 and it’s not “all lost knowledge”? Like, setting up materials, scripting or animating a scene. On UE4 would it be like starting from 0 even if you know UDK or would it be like starting from at least a good 40%?

In my opinion I started with 60% knowledge :smiley: Except of blueprints and C++ scripting everything is nearly the same as in UDK (just new features, improved stuff, more possibilities,…) So your UDK experience will help you a lot! (I also jumped over from UDK ^^)

That’s very very helpful! Thanks man! :smiley:
Can I ask you one more thing? What have you found that was particularly different and what very similar to udk? For example, how about the material editor and materials themselves?

Different:

-scripting (C++)
-“kismet” (blueprints)
-the whole appearance of the editor (but you get used to it very quickly)

similar:
-material editor
-cascade
-all the editors (static mesh, skeletal mesh,…)

But that’s just what comes to my mind right at the moment :slight_smile: I would just recommend you to take a look at the documentation, youtube videos and other sites where you can get information about the engine

That’s great, thanks! I sure will! :slight_smile:

PBR vs normal art workflow takes allot of getting use to imo, took a while till I understood the underlying principles of PBR (read allot on it), I would suggest reading up on it before you start to avoid allot of un-needed work.

I thought so too since it doesn’t seem intuitive at all… I’ve seen the marmoset toolbag website has some nice articles utorials about it. Do you have some links about PBR? :slight_smile: