I want to talk to you from the outset about passion and commitment. If you commit to this book, it will commit to you. If you passionately apply what it tells you, in both the tutorials and principles discussed, you will find yourself on the road to stardom. It may be stardom in a small gaming company in your own neighborhood. It may be superstardom both in game and big screen. Still, passion and commitment are required for both these outcomes. The methods shown in this book are not hard to apply. Best of all, they do not require talent. The entry level for this profession is reachable, and you can make it. I would liken it to a brand new Olympic event running for the first year. There aren't many pros out there because the event is so new. Given that you train for the next four years you are almost guaranteed a place in your national team. Do you remember the film Cool Runnings? It's like that! Once you're in the team you will make what you can of it.
Creating assets for game and film is simply a matter of documenting the world around you. SketchUp gives you the tools to do that. You could spend ten or twenty times more than the price of SketchUp Pro and you wouldn't be any better off. In fact, you'd be worse off in the long run. Why? Because SketchUp users will create assets ten times faster than you can and, before you know it, you will have to start using SketchUp anyway. Here's a quote from a professional game designer who uses SketchUp. This is Ken Nguyen, a concept artist in the game and movie industries:
"I can build low and high detailed models (architecture and props) much faster than someone using for example Maya or Max. Moreover, if the game engine allows you to upload the models, one can see in a few minutes or hours if the models work or not, if the sizes are right instead of waiting a day or more for the models to be finished by a Maya/Max modeler."
There it is from the horse's mouth. What are you waiting for?