Book Image

jMonkeyEngine 3.0 : Beginner's Guide

Book Image

jMonkeyEngine 3.0 : Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

jMonkeyEngine 3.0 is a powerful set of free Java libraries that allows you to unlock your imagination, create 3D games and stunning graphics. Using jMonkeyEngine's library of time-tested methods, this book will allow you to unlock its potential and make the creation of beautiful interactive 3D environments a breeze."jMonkeyEngine 3.0 Beginner's Guide" teaches aspiring game developers how to build modern 3D games with Java. This primer on 3D programming is packed with best practices, tips and tricks and loads of example code. Progressing from elementary concepts to advanced effects, budding game developers will have their first game up and running by the end of this book.From basic concepts and project creation to building a complex 3D Game, you will learn to layout 3D scenes, make them interactive and add various multi-media effects.You will find answers to common questions including best practices and approaches, how game characters can act and interact, how to simulate solid walls and physical forces, how to take it online to play over a network and much more.From Zero to Hero, start your journey to make your game idea a reality.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
jMonkeyEngine 3.0 Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

The art pipeline


Additionally to code, a game needs 3D models, textures, icons, music, sounds, fonts, and much more. Considerable time of the game development process is spent managing these assets. The procedure of creating, converting, and loading multimedia files is called the art pipeline.

Since artwork may go through several iterations, your team will be looking for ways to make the art pipeline and hand-off process as painless as possible—for designers as well as developers.

  1. The team decides on a directory structure and creates asset subdirectories.

  2. Developers start writing code in the SDK. They create the overall frame of the game, including start and options screens, and the main game screen. Developers clean and build the application, and make test runs straight from the SDK.

  3. Graphic artists create textures and low-polygon models in the native format of their editors. They save their work in a supported format (Blender, Ogre3D, or Wavefront; PNG, or TGA) into assets/Textures subdirectories...