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

Summary


In this chapter, you have applied all your skills learned so far. You've stretched yourself a little more too. To sum up, you learned:

  • How to save time and create variation in the scene by reusing multiple versions of the same asset repeatedly

  • How to mess up the scene for added realism by scaling, moving, flipping, leaning, and otherwise vandalising your assets

  • How to import, clean up, and modify existing assets for re-use

  • Some specific asset modeling tricks to make common props

  • Some quick modular-building creation methods

By now you should be experimenting by yourself and creating lots of other assets using the techniques you've learned so far. In the next two chapters, you will be taking these skills further to create progressively more complex assets. From now on, the pace will get a little faster, and you may need to flick back a few chapters every so often just to review something you learned earlier. You can now choose to go on and model the main building and some trees, or you can...