Book Image

Google SketchUp for Game Design: Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Google SketchUp for Game Design: Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Creating video game environments similar to the best 3D games on the market is now within the capability of hobbyists for the first time, with the free availability of game development software such as Unity 3D, and the ease with which groups of enthusiasts can get together to pool their skills for a game project. The sheer number of these independent game projects springing up means there is a constant need for game art, the physical 3D environment and objects that inhabit these game worlds. Now thanks to Google there is an easy, fun way to create professional game art, levels and props.Google SketchUp is the natural choice for beginners to game design. This book provides you with the workflow to quickly build realistic 3D environments, levels, and props to fill your game world. In simple steps you will model terrain, buildings, vehicles, and much more.Google SketchUp is the ideal entry level modeling tool for game design, allowing you to take digital photographs and turn them into 3D objects for quick, fun, game creation. SketchUp for Game Design takes you through the modeling of a game level with SketchUp and Unity 3D, complete with all game art, textures and props. You will learn how to create cars, buildings, terrain, tools and standard level props such as barrels, fencing and wooden pallets. You will set up your game level in Unity 3D to create a fully functional first person walk-around level to email to your friends or future employers.When you have completed the projects in this book, you will be comfortable creating 3D worlds, whether for games, visualization, or films.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Google SketchUp for Game Design
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Get your game engine here: Unity 3D


Unity 3D has won the Wall Street Journal 2010 Technology Innovation Award in the software category, and Unity Technologies was named one of Gamasutra's "Top 5 Game Companies of 2009." Why? Because it's good.

What's Unity, and why's it free? Moreover, what do I need it for?

Unity 3D is a Game development environment and Game Engine, technical term Middleware. Middleware is the software that game developers use to build their games on. It might surprise you to know that they rarely code a game from the ground up. They use Middleware, which is a combination of 3D rendering, Physics, sound, animation, artificial intelligence engines, and more. The game developers use this software and then pay the Middleware developers to allow them to ship their game with it. It runs in the background making all the bits and pieces work.

The reason you need Middleware is obvious, and the reason you need Unity 3D is that it provides arguably the best and most well-supported free...