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

Have a go hero – selecting and texturing


Now it's your turn. Open up a texture in GIMP. Work out roughly how large this texture would be in real life. Take 20 pixels per meter and resize the image to the correct number of pixels. Use the quick tile filter as you've learned, use some color or contrast adjustments if you want, and create a selection mask. Easy as that!

Tip

Multiple selections

You can make multiple selections with the Fuzzy Select Tool by holding the Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac) key.

You can use the final image shown earlier in the chapter to check what goes where. Remember, this doesn't have to be perfect at this stage. It's about learning. In addition, any of your textures can easily be replaced later if you wish to by pasting into the layer you created. Working this way gives you a template in GIMP that you can keep coming back to whenever you wish to make a visual change in your game level.

Tip

Naming layers

Naming your layers as you create them saves a lot of frustration later. You will...