Creating Game Art for 3D Engines

 

(Click either book image to order)

 

Information on Creating Game Art for 3D Engines

  • Covers 3ds Max, the Torque Game Engine, and Photoshop.
  • Introductory chapter on 3ds Max.
  • 332 pages, written with step-by-step instructions and 241 full-color figures.
  • The first half of the book covers modeling, unwrapping, texturing, animating, and exporting game art assets such as simple shapes and pickups.
  • The second half of the book covers modeling, unwrapping, texturing, rigging, animating, and exporting game characters.
  • In-depth sections on rigging a character with helper bones and proxy objects to minimize vertex collapse.
  • Walks the reader through Level Of Detail setup for pickups as well as characters.
  • Explains how to export game art to the engine, how to set up scripts, and how to import the art into the engine.

 

Included on the companion CD-ROM

  • 12 instructional videos (over 90 total minutes) covering the more challenging modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, and setup tasks. Click the images below to see samples.
  • All game art files described in the book, including two rigged and animated 3d characters, each with their own weapons and scripts so that you can set up your own simple game prototype. Max files are created and saved in release 8. Photoshop psd files are saved in Photoshop CS.
  • Trial copy of the Torque Game Engine 1.50 and the Torque Show Tool Pro.
  • Link to a trial copy of 3ds Max.
  • 241 high-quality Tiff images from the book for your convenience.
  • Other assorted tools for exporting and texture map generation.

 

 

   
   

The above images are screenshots from video tutorials included on the Book CD - you can preview these videos by clicking Here for Book CD Excerpts Part 1 or clicking Here for Book CD Excerpts Part 2. These two examples together last about 14 minutes and represent only about 15% of the actual content on the book CD.

 

 

The videos on the book CD include:

1. ModelingAChair.wmv demonstrates how to model the chair from Chapter 1, "Introduction to 3ds Max." [15:45]

2. SemiOpaqueMaterials.wmv demonstrates how to create a transparent material, as described in Chapter 4, "Texturing Game Art." [7:41]

3. CharacterModeling.wmv demonstrates how to set up templates in 3ds Max for a character, and how to start the modeling process, as described in Chapter 7 "Character Modeling." [8:50]

4. FittingTheBiped.wmv demonstrates the process of creating and fitting a biped to your character mesh, as described in Chapter 10 "Character Rigging.". [5:31]

5. FittingBipedAndHelperBones.wmv demonstrates how to fit the biped to the character mesh, as well as how to place and constrain helper bones to the biped object, as described in Chapter 10 "Character Rigging." [9:05]

6. ProxiesAndLinking.wmv demonstrates how to place and link proxy objects to the biped hip area so that helper bones will operate properly, as described in Chapter 10 "Character Rigging." [12:32]

7. SkinModifier.wmv demonstrates how to add a Skin modifier to a character mesh, how to add bones, and how to adjust bone envelopes to assign vertices, as described in Chapter 10 "Character Rigging." [7:04]

8. SkinningAbs.wmv demonstrates how to use the AbsEffect box to assign vertices to bones, as described in Chapter 10 "Character Rigging." [6:02]

9. SkinningWeightTool.wmv demonstrates how to use the Weight tool to assign multiple vertices to different bones, as described in Chapter 10 "Character Rigging." [6:37]

10. RunCycle.wmv demonstrates how to create a basic run cycle, as described in Chapter 11 "Character Animation." [7:46]

11. MultiresLOD.wmv demonstrates how to create multiple Levels of Detail for your character mesh using the Multires technique, as described in Chapter 12 "Character Exporting.". [7:23]

12. SettingUpGameFiles.wmv demonstrates how to move the files on the companion CD-ROM to your installation of Torque so that the characters and weapons function properly. [5:38]

 

 

Text, Image, and Video Corrections

Character Texture Drop Shadow error

The Astronaut character texture Drop Shadow setting is too high; to correct this, open up Astronaut1.psd , and on the fourth layer from the top, double-click the Drop Shadow Layer Style - change the Spread value from 18% to 16%. Save as Astronaut1.jpg and put in the Torque folder your astronaut shape files reside in (under SDK\example\starter.fps\data\shapes\astronaut). For a walkthrough of this process, go to the tutorials page and view the video on Character Texturing.

 

 

Comments, Q & A:

 

Comments

Watchout for the Blue Man!

On page 23, you mention that the scale in the Torque engine is 1 unit to 1 meter. This is typically correct, however - some of the assets that come with Torque (such as the Blue Man or the Orc) are actually a 2:1 scale, which really only becomes an issue if you are using these freebies for early prototyping. This bit us in one of our projects because we used the Blue Man and built our DIFs to his scale, and later when trying to make our DTSs we discovered this issue. Not a huge deal, but certainly one of those hidden gotchas that can get a person. Really enjoying your book so far, looking forward to more from you. Cheers! - Clifford A.

 

s and answers that could be useful to others will be posted here

Q & A

Q. On the book CD, the link to the trial copy of 3ds Max seems to be dead.

A. As the book CD was being manufactured, Autodesk released 3ds Max 2008, and changed their trial copy URL. The new URL is on the links page under 3ds Max.

Q. Why was the Torque engine used for this book instead of one of the other engines?

A. We spent a lot of time looking at the engines on the market; the issues for us were affordability, power, proven ability to make compelling games, a healthy user community, and documentation. We did not want to start developing with a toy and find out too late that the tools were not there to finish the job. At $150 for an independent license, Torque is certainly affordable. In regards to power, Torque supports mac/pc/linux, multi-player (2-256+ players), a master server, physics, scripting, rendering, particles, GUI, terrain, interiors, meshes, multi-track animation, LOD, skies, water, fog, lens flares, sound, and has exporters for professional-level modeling and animation solutions such as 3ds Max and Maya. Much if not all of the coding you need to do can be done in c-script, meaning you don't even have to compile (scripts are compiled for you at launch). Take a test drive of the demo games at www.garagegames.com to see the breadth and depth of what is possible. Finally, check out the user forums; compare the size and experience of the garagegame user community against that of any comparable engine. All of these things separate Torque from the pack. Though there is good documentation on that comes with Torque, this book makes the process of creating game art and importing it into the engine as clear as possible.

Q. I noticed that when I import the powercharger shape into the game, I cannot stand on the angled platform. How can I set it up so that my player can walk on the angled platform?

A. The key to collision meshes is that they need to be convex, never concave. This means you have to solve this collision problem with at least two collision meshes. Also, collision meshes should be as simple as possible to avoid bogging down the processor. Figure 1 shows a before-and-after solution to the problem. The powercharger with a basic collision mesh is on the left, and the powercharger with two more refined collision meshes is on the right. In this case, the first collision box (col-1) was adjusted to have a more taped shape, fitting the powercharger walls better, and a prism shaped collision box (col-2) was placed where the angled platform resides.

Figure 1 From one simple collision mesh to two more fitted collision meshes.

 

Figure 2 indicates what the hierarchy should look like with mulitiple collision meshes. For each collision mesh, you need a collision marker - so when you create the mesh "col-2", you need to create a marker called "collision-2".

Figure 2 Hierarchical relationships between components.

 

Q. How do I sign up for Garage Games? Thanks for the info - to join Garage games do I have to purchase the torque Game engine software?

A. No, you don't have to purchase anything to join the GarageGames community - and you have access to a 30 day trial copy of the Torque Game Engine once you have done so.