3D Game Art f/x & Design [Paperback]

Luke Ahearn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2001

3D Game Art f/x and Design covers the technology of game elements including 2D and 3D effects. This book discusses each part of computer games from an artist's view: interfaces, menus, characters, game textures, 3D models, and games levels or worlds. It teaches all the pieces used to design a computer game. The reader will learn the specialized skills, tricks, and techniques used to create professional quality game art and be able to use those design segments when building individual games. Upon completing this book, you will have created all of the 2D and 3D art assets for a 3D game and assembled them into a running game. CD-ROM is included containing a large assemblage of game development software and art elements.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Luke Ahearn has authored and co-authored several books and articles for the computer game industry including Awesome Game Creation: No Programming Required! (Charles River Media) and Designing 3D Games That Sell! (Charles River Media). Luke started Goldtree, a computer game development company, where he designed and developed several game titles including Dead Reckoning and Sorcerer. Currently, Luke is serving as Art Director/Development Consultant on The Army Game Project; as well as, employed as a professor of computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: Coriolis Group Books; 1st edition (September 12, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1588801004
• ISBN-13: 978-1588801005
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,905,586 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I think it's a really good book, January 11, 2002

By 

Kim Oravecz "kimo" (Eastlake, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: 3D Game Art f/x & Design (Paperback)

Personally, I like the book a lot. I've completed through chapter 4 and have gone through all of the tutorials so far. I find it to be an excellent intro into what it takes to create textures for games.

I also like the fact that with the tutorials you can go on to explore each one and add your own touches and creativity so that, by the end, you have really created a piece of your own artwork and just aren't following a step-by-step tutorial where your image looks just like the one in the book. The author encourages you to add your own creative touches to each project and you end up with your own piece of art instead of just a copy of someone elses.

This is one of the very few tutorial books where I am actually going through each and every tutorial. They are very fun projects to do. And I've learned so many cool little tips and tricks to add to my list of texturing tricks that I feel the tutorials are worth those alone.

And for someone like me that wants to be a game artist and has no other exposure to learn how to actually apply textures in a game level, I think the second half of the book will be very valuable to learn that. Even if it is not a "popular" game engine, I would imagine the principles would apply to any game engine out there.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good starting point for the aspiring mod maker or mapper, November 13, 2002

By 

R. Stein - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 3D Game Art f/x and Design (Paperback)

I picked this book up without much research. After a quick flip through the pages I decided it was better to have around than no reference material at all.

Strong points: Luke Ahearn goes through a step-by-step process regarding building texture libraries, and efficient ways to structure your directory trees for referencing. These are all valid lessons that apply directly to working in a professional environment, so pay attention! Also, his feedback on tiling and cleaning up of digital images is relevant, although not comprehensive.

As far as the other game art tips included, I haven't tried them yet. I use a different mapping engine (Quake 3 / GTK Radiant) but the tips and interfaces between many engines are similar, so if you don't have a commercially supported editor, I assume Wild Tangent's Genesis 3D one is adequate (it's really designed for web-based 3D gaming, and doesn't require 3D cards for all applications). At any rate, this book is not the end-all-be-all of game art and level design books, but rather a very good place to start.

Weak points: The author puts a lot of information into the book without focusing on any one particular area. Perhaps that is due to the nature of the work. Be a good 2D artist and make textures. Be a good 3D artist and make models. Be a good level designer and put everything together. It's a lot to handle, and a lot of it is crammed into the book but no one area is really focused on entirely. Also, if you're not using Photoshop for texturing, have fun adapting these lessons to another application.

Given Mr. Ahearn's professional experience (he did the level work and artwork for America's Army: Operations - the free 1st person shooter released by the US Army powered by the Unreal engine) it's safe to say he knows what he's doing. Don't purchase this book thinking it'll be the only tome you need to read to become a fantastic 3D artist or level artist, but consider it if you want to have a handy reference manual on how to make effective textures and intriguing levels for your games. Since modern day games can get very complex very quickly (bot pathfinding and logic, creating shaders and sky boxes, etc.) it's good to start with the essentials and build up from there.

There aren't a lot of books out there that cover this type of work, so my suggestion is pick it up, work through it, and hit some message boards to learn how to do the tricky stuff.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A good start, though a way to go, August 26, 2002

By 

Grayson Lang (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: 3D Game Art f/x & Design (Paperback)

The learning curve to produce good 3D content is pretty steep. As human beings, we are very familiar with what 3D spaces should look like, and therefore it can be very irksome to us when something looks bad, unreal, or out of place. This book attempts to act as a primer on how to create art for compelling worlds.

I work professionally as a developer on a 3D authoring application and so I'm pretty familiar with many of the skills required to create 3D content. There are many steps from concept to final, and some of them require at least a rudiment of artistic or design background.

The author at least does a good job of taking the reader through most of the important steps, and certainly focuses on the design related ones. The author gives some good source material and basic techniques for dirtying up and making textures tileable, though some of the tasks require at least a moderate knowledge of Photoshop. He also offers a few key tidbits of advice in modeling and lighting environments, though nothing groundbreaking.

A large portion of the book goes to explaining how to use Genesis3D, an open source 3D application that comes on the CD with the book. I applaud the author in at least packaging a pertinent program so the reader can be given a chance to use their skills. Unfortunately it is typical of 3D-game world editors and isn't very easy to use. I would recommend at least looking around and trying other editors before investing much time in learning one. Though this is certainly a necessary evil to learn at least one if you plan on doing any level editing.

I'd say the main weakness of the book is that it is geared primarily towards the creation of typical first-person shooter worlds. Fortunately these are very popular, and surrealistic enviroments tend not to require as much finesse because limited or extreme lighting and environments can be used to hide limitations in modeling experience. It tends to be much more difficult to create 3D enviroments of the familiar (i.e. offices, house interiors, etc.) though who wants to make those anyway, that's what everyone is trying to escape from in the first place, right? ;)

In closing, this book is a good start, however, even though the author may be a really great level designer he definitely hasn't imparted all of his tricks in this book. I don't mean to offend, though it possibly might be from lack of experience. The fact that he talks about how to get rid of "flash burn" from a camera instead of teaching techniques on how to avoid it in the first place, such as buying an [inexpensive]off-camera flash (or if you can't afford that, at least putting tissue paper in front of the flash to act as a diffuser)

For more information of how to create good textures, I'd recommend reading anything Hayden Duvall has written in Game Developer Magazine or on game development Web sites.

For more information of fundamental lighting techniques, I'd recommend [digital] Lighting and Rendering by Jeremy Birn. Or, if you can afford it, take a technical theater course on lighting design at a community college.

Unfortunately, for 3D game level design there aren't very many good resources, they're all broken up by what editor is used to create the levels, so first pick your game/editor and then just look for forums dedicated to that one.