Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity 1st Edition

by Chris Totten (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-1118172728

ISBN-10: 1118172728

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A complete guide to creating usable, realistic game characters with two powerful tools

Creating viable game characters requires a combination of skills. This book teaches game creators how to create usable, realistic game assets using the power of an open-source 3D application and a free game engine. It presents a step-by-step approach to modeling, texturing, and animating a character using the popular Blender software, with emphasis on low polygon modeling and an eye for using sculpting and textures, and demonstrates how to bring the character into the Unity game engine.

Game creation is a popular and productive pursuit for both hobbyists and serious developers; this guide brings together two effective tools to simplify and enhance the process
Artists who are familiar with Blender or other 3D software but who lack experience with game development workflow will find this book fills important gaps in their knowledge
Provides a complete tutorial on developing a game character, including modeling, UV unwrapping, sculpting, baking displacements, texturing, rigging, animation, and export
Emphasizes low polygon modeling for game engines and shows how to bring the finished character into the Unity game engine

Whether you're interested in a new hobby or eager to enter the field of professional game development, this book offers valuable guidance to increase your skills.

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From the Inside Flap

Create realistic game characters powered by your imagination

If you're a do-it-yourself game designer, you'll want to take advantage of Blender and Unity to build professional-quality game characters. With this guide, you first learn how to create realistic game assets using the power of Blender and then test how your characters work in Unity. Game design expert Chris Totten walks you through each step, from modeling and sculpting to rigging and animating a character. Use the tutorial files accompanying the book to design a zombie game character, and then put it in action in a real-world game environment.

Build a basic block character and then dive into more sophisticated modeling
Pump up the appearance of your character using sculpting and textures
Follow digital painting best practices and add colorful details to your model
Create realistic movement by rigging your character for animation with an armature
Explore how to make Unity and Blender work together by creating and importing finished game objects
Bring your character into Unity and create your own video game
Learn how to use Unity scripts to make your character animate properly

Learn to model, texture, sculpt, rig, and animate a low-polygon video game character in Blender

Import your low-poly Blender character into the Unity game engine and use JavaScript to create a zombie arcade shooter

From the Back Cover

Create realistic game characters powered by your imagination

Build a basic block character and then dive into more sophisticated modeling
Pump up the appearance of your character using sculpting and textures
Follow digital painting best practices and add colorful details to your model
Create realistic movement by rigging your character for animation with an armature
Explore how to make Unity and Blender work together by creating and importing finished game objects
Bring your character into Unity and create your own video game
Learn how to use Unity scripts to make your character animate properly

Learn to model, texture, sculpt, rig, and animate a low-polygon video game character in Blender

Import your low-poly Blender character into the Unity game engine and use JavaScript to create a zombie arcade shooter

Start reading Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity on your Kindle in under a minute.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sybex; 1st edition (July 10, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1118172728
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1118172728
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.35 x 0.7 x 9.2 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,929,221 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #399 in 3D Graphic Design
- #869 in Computer & Video Game Design
- #1,125 in Digital Video Production (Books)

Customer Reviews:
20 ratings

About the author

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Chris Totten

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Christopher Totten is an Assistant Professor in the Modeling, Animation, and Game Creation program at Kent State University. He is the founder of Pie For Breakfast Studios, an award-winning Northeast Ohio independent game company, and has done work as an artist, animator, level designer, and project manager in the game industry. He holds a Masters Degree in Architecture with a concentration in Digital Media from the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Chris is an executive organizer for the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) Arcade and lifetime member of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Chris has written articles featured on Gamasutra, Game Career Guide, and other publications and is a frequent speaker at game industry conferences such as GDC, GDC China, East Coast Game Conference, GDEX, and others. He is the author of An Architectural Approach to Level Design, published with CRC Press/AK Peters in 2014 and Game Character Creation in Blender and Unity, released by Wiley Publishing in 2012. He is also the editor of the collected volume, Level Design: Processes and Experiences.

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3 star		15%
2 star		9%
1 star		11%

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by Dustin

Doesn't even tell you which version of Blender it's working with

Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2016

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Because it doesn't tell you which version of Blender it's using, certain things don't work right and other things you can't tell if it's your error or theirs when something doesn't work right.

The pictures are blurry messes. They're far too low res and the contrast makes them unreadable when text is involved.

The normal map baking tutorial simply didn't work and the book provides no troubleshooting. I followed the instructions perfectly, repeating it several times to make sure the error wasn't mine.

It's a shame, because the idea is a great one; a book that takes you from creating a character, learning how to create all of the important details, and then bringing it into a game engine and doing stuff with it. The execution is just very lackluster.

Helpful

From a cube to a charecter

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2018

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I loved this book, our class used it for our 3D modeling course. It takes you from a box figure all the way to a full charecter. (It even includes things like modeling a jaw - uv unwrapping and animation (briefly ))

It teaches you the process and gives you helpful key shortcuts that are a real time saver.

A note though, this was my first book and intro to 3D - 3D takes practice and time; it's ok if the figures you end up with don't exactly match, you will get there with time and practice!

I recommend getting a colored copy to see references, lines and polygons clearly. Hope this helps!

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Amazon Customer

HIGHLY recommend!

Reviewed in the United States on June 1, 2015

Verified Purchase

This is one of the best books on modeling a 3D character, especially using Blender, out there. First of all, ignore the terrible picture on the front. Your first thought is likely that this is the end product. In fact, this is the reference drawing used to get the proportions of the model correct while working. The end product looks much more like what you would expect a game model to look like. And really, the author takes you through the steps necessary to go way beyond what the artist himself is capable of doing. The end product of your art is going to be highly dependent on your abilities as an artist. That should be a given.

But the artist shows you how to start with a basic form to sculpt and shape. He walks you through all of the steps necessary to create the basic form of the model. Then he takes you to the next step where you sculpt even further to a normal map, which is essential technique for any model found in a modern game, and one I have not seen touched upon elsewhere. He also goes through the crucial steps of skinning and rigging the model so that it can be animated. He really takes you from nothing to finished/game-ready content.

Now, I do have some previous experience which mostly consists of working through the "Modeling a Character in 3DS Max" by Paul Steed, which was also a good book but not written for Blender. I believe the Paul Steed book got a little bit more mathematically precise with the instructions as I recall. I also spent some time kind of developing my eye for proportion and color and such, which is no small task and one that you should maybe have before attempting this book.

That's because the author leaves you "free" to your own artistic interpretations in places. I mean, honestly, to tell you precisely what to do he would have to tell you vertex by vertex "place the first one at 24.234,108.246,-0.234 and the second one at 24.234,122.875, -0.254 and..." about 1,000 times or so until you've placed every vertex in "exactly" the right spot. But then when you get into the normal map creation and free form sculpting, I don't think there IS any way to precisely tell you what to do. The author gives some good guidance, but at some point you're going to have to flap those wings and fly little bird. Once you're out of the nest, mama bird can't do the flying for you. You're going to have to take a chance and learn to be an artist. That means no certainty. That means making mistakes. That means trying things knowing you're going to get it wrong and then asking how you can make it better next time (or since it's digital you can go back and fix a lot without starting over much of the time).

In short, there are some gaps where the author does not hold your hand and tell you EXACTLY how to do it. I'm no professional artist. My modeling is still on the 3D graphics level of "creating stick figures" although this book allowed me to make a model FAR above what I would have told you my skill level was. In short, the book did its job. But at times I had to kind of "wing it". I had to maybe place a vertex where I thought it should be since there was no specific instruction about where it should be. Or maybe I added one or two too many or had a couple too few vertices. It's art. By nature it's not precise. If you're a computer programmer like me, you probably like precision and being told the exact right way to do things. Such is not the way of the artist.

I think the author does a good job of telling you "enough" of how to get it done although I had to make one or two slightly uncomfortable leaps of faith that turned out pretty well in the end. If you get stuck, try something. Look at what came before and what comes after and ask, "How can I get there?" Look at the example drawings and compare to your own work.

I'm saying this as a highly technical programmer type person and not as an artistic type person. And yes, my "eye" is developed better than the average person walking down the street. And yes, I've spent maybe 50 hours in 3D Studio Max and Blender working through examples in books and tutorials mostly. But I am a LONG ways from being what you would call a sculptor or 3D modeler by any means. I'm pretty much a semi-experienced beginner.

Also, feel free to jump around in this book. I needed to learn about skinning and rigging for a model I already had and jumped straight to that section of the book. You can download complete code and complete models for that stage of the book. So, I just jumped in straight to that point. Then I went back and started over from the beginning.

Maybe this should not be your very first book to learn 3D modeling. There are quite a few good 3D Max books out there, but 3D Max is overly expensive. There are a couple other Blender books you can work through to get more practice working in Blender. But when it comes to doing 3D huminoids, this is really the best book I've seen for Blender or anything else. And the techniques you learn also will eventually apply to animals and monsters and other creatures you might create for video games.

If you find it to difficult. Put it aside. Work on other models to get more experience. And come back to it later. I assure you it has what you need to make game characters in it. But it may require getting used to Blender and a feel for 3D modeling first.

Of course you expect an artistic type to just tell you to "wing it" and "feel it". But I'm a tech type telling you that. You're in the world of art now; you have to start thinking like an artist and this book encourages that in its teaching style which can be a bit uncomfortable when you have to start flapping those fledgling wings on your own a bit.

And here's my advice: Don't be afraid to hit the ground. You'll live. If you mess up this model beyond belief, A) no one is going to die from it, B) that's why you save every hour or so that you can go back to the version from 3 hours ago when you made the big mistake, C) you're not going to get it right until you spend a LOT of time getting it wrong, and D) worse case scenario you start again from the beginning and take another go at it with new found knowledge of what NOT to do. I think that when you get stuck with this book, if you'll just try and do what you "think" you should do you'll be very pleased with the results as long as you understand your results are not going to perfectly match another artist's results. And if you don't like it, ERASE by going back to a previous save. Nothing's set in stone here. This isn't stone carving 101 where you have to go buy a new stone when you mess up. Often you can correct the problem without going back to a previous save, but even if you have to go back to a previous save you can lock in your "successes" by saving them so that you are always moving forward and getting closer to what you want.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Christopher Firman

This book serves as a really decent overview of the ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2016

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This book serves as a really decent overview of the character creation and modeling process. Though I am not exceptionally skilled at modeling myself, I have been able to follow along with the material in the book with only limited struggling involved.

Helpful

Fred

Did anyone really read this before it was published?

Reviewed in the United States on August 25, 2012

Verified Purchase

I rarely write reviews about books, but this time is an exception.

If you are a new blender artist looking to create a game character, DO NOT expect to learn ANYTHING from this book. It does not give you a nice introduction to modeling, and in many cases I found that my topology was completely messed up, along with the entire portion on "face modeling" yielding undesirable results. "Some" facial smoothing, as stated in the book, resulted into rebuilding the face by going off of a tutorial on youtube to build it quicker and more efficiently.

It would be an insult to call this a beginner book, although it's written in the format of a beginner book. You are introduced to concepts such as texture baking, sculpting, and basic clothes mesh creation, but as I said, very basic, and very very vague.

After each main section, I would have to spend an hour or two on google trying to find out the right way on how to do it because there was simply not enough information about anything.

After the first half of the book the unity scripting started; I saw most of it in Java, and I saw some errors that should've been fixed if this book was really intended as an introduction.

In no way would I call this book good for anything other than a very rigid introduction into game character creation; I spent a good 20 hours trying to follow along only to resort to google searching the results. Even if you need a basic workflow pattern, I do not recommend this book.

18 people found this helpful

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Renee

no way this could earn more than a star or two.

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2013

Verified Purchase

Hard to follow, and requiring a lot of outside research to complete the tutorials.. hidden steps between steps, disheartening "this-is-what-it-should-look-like" images that can't be recreated through matching the steps. No matter how close you follow, or how much time you spend, this book doesn't get you there.. though it DOES give you some very basic usage tips.

5 people found this helpful

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Emeric Pratt

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United States on June 10, 2015

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Beginner to mid level book

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Edu

I recommend

Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2012

Verified Purchase

I'm learning a lot. It contains everything I need to produce my characters for games and animates them in Unity 3d.

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Top reviews from other countries

Dave Leckie

Great book very informative

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

A lot of detail in this book and its very good, my only comolaint is all the pictures are black and white, if the book has colour on the cover the inside should have too.

Harrier

Informative - yet lacking that something

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 6, 2013

Verified Purchase

I found the book to be quite good and its format to be easy to follow, Does exactly what the description says for basic game character setup and modelling however do not expect it to go beyond amateur level.

2 people found this helpful

xyqi384ib

Good book

Reviewed in Spain on March 10, 2016

Verified Purchase

It takes you to every step to create a simple first person shooter where you shot zombies like the one on the cover that walks towards you in an environment made of rectangular prisms with some of them on the floor so the zombies avoid them. It starts from modelling the character in blender where it makes the main steps so you learn and let you do the rest, for example it does half the face and let you continue the task in the same way so the final zombie isn't 100% accurate and has something of you. Then it theaches you to paint it, put some bones in it, animate it and pass the result to blender. It ticks all the boxes yet it is quite short. So don't expect to become an expert in everything only by reading it. It is just a good step in the right direction.

ruttabumst

Great way to learn Blender!

Reviewed in Canada on July 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

I'm very new to 3d modeling and this book has been great! I'm about 1/3 through it and thus far I am very pleased. It has shown me a lot of useful tricks with blender!

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Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity 1st Edition

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About the Author

Product details

About the author

Chris Totten

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