Creating Game Art for 3D Engines

 

Creating Game Art for 3D Engines was published in 2007, and focuses primarily on 3ds Max as a tool to create art assets for any game engine. Click on the book image below to go to the book page at Amazon.com.

If the Torque engine is your game engine of choice, this book has tips and settings for the TGE, TGEA, and Torque 3D. To learn more about the different Torque game engines, go to www.GarageGames.com. To learn more about other recommended game engines, check out our How to Make a Video Game page under Game Engines.

 

Information on Creating Game Art for 3D Engines

  • Focuses on creating game art using 3ds Max,
  • Also covers the Torque Game Engine, and Photoshop.
  • Introductory chapter on 3ds Max for beginners.
  • 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]

 

 

Image 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.

 

 

 

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. Can I use this book to create game art for one of the other game engines?

A. About 80% of the book is 3ds Max specific, so if you are going to use 3ds Max for any game engine, or just want to learn about how to create game art in general, Creating Game Art for 3D Engines is a solid value. Only about 15% of the book deals with issues that are specific to exporting and scripting for the Torque game engines (TGE, TGEA, and Torque 3D). So the answer is yes.

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.