Building a simple room.

Today I have started building my first level, following the tutorials available at: http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/categories/cat_udk.php they are simple and very well explained. In class today we covered the first three videos of UDK SIMPLE ENVIRONMENT STEP-BY-STEP.

The step by step process was:

• Build the ground

By shaping the builder's block as a cube, increasing the X and Y value and decreasing the Z value we can create a surface to place our meshes and buildings on

Plane created with builder brush

• Create a building and add doors and windows

Once again using the builder's brush in a cube shape, but to create the building I used a hollow cube, so I don't have to carve the inside later. To create the windows I reduced the size of the brush and used the subtract tool to carve out the wall. In this section I used the geometry tool to resize the subtracted shapes.
Pro tip: Ctrl + click on vertices = allows you to re-scale the selected vertices in the same proportion, highly recommended!
Pro tip II: Alt + click + drag = copies the mesh/frame, allowing faster creation

Subtracting brush creatign a window

• Add a skylight 

Another simple task, just build a block on top of the building and carve the inside and the windows.

Top windows

• Add level inside the building and a staircase
  
  Simply adding a big cube to give level inside the house and then using the staircase brush to add the stairs

Door and stairs

• Add lighting
  
  The building is pretty much ready, but if you presse the play button, the whole level will be dark. Tha is because no light was added to it.
  Pro tip: to quickly add a point light hold L and press the left mouse button.

Level with lighting

• Lightmass and volume
  
  To add an even more realistic light effect, you can create a volume around the level. To do that create a builder brush shape that is larger than your level, right click on the add volume tool and select "Lightmass importance volume". Then you have to build the light system and voila, you have your first building created in UDK.

Lightmass applied