TEAMFLY

for
Game
Artists
David Franson
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
© 2003 by Premier Press, a division of Course Technology. All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written permission
from Premier Press, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
The Premier Press logo and related trade dress are trademarks of Premier Press, and may not
be used without written permission.
Publisher: Stacy L. Hiquet
Marketing Manager: Heather Hurley
Acquisitions Editor: Emi Smith
Series Editor: André LaMothe
Project Editor: Estelle Manticas
Technical Reviewer: Lorenzo Phillips
Copy Editor: Kate Welsh
Interior Layout: Marian Hartsough
Cover Designer: Mike Tanamachi
Indexer: Sharon Shock
Proofreader: Sandy Doell
Acrobat, Reader, and Photoshop are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated. Discreet is a division
of Autodesk, Inc., 3d studio max, 3D Studio VIZ, character studio, fire, flame, flint, frost, inferno,
Lightscape, smoke, stream, and wire are registered trademarks, and Discreet, 3ds max, backdraft,
combustion, jobnet, and sparks are trademarks of Autodesk Inc./Discreet Logic Inc. in the USA
and/or other countries. mental ray is a registered trademark of mental images GmbH & Co. KG.
Vecta3D-MAX is a trademark of IdeaWorks3D, Ltd. All other brand names, product names, or trade-
marks belong to their respective holders. (c) Copyright 2002 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.
All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus, but in seeking him out I instead found the
editors at Premier Press, who enticed me to become an author. André is the Series
Editor for Premier, a leader in the game industry, and a true genius. Thanks, André.
Thanks to Emi Smith, my acquisitions editor, who is one of the driving forces at
Premier and is a friend at the same time. To Kate Welsh, my copy editor and the
English master who made my text beautiful. Next goes to Estelle Manticas, my
Project Editor: thank you for your patience, for being a friend, and for being the
sister I’ve never had. Without you I’d be lazy and deadlines wouldn’t have been
met! To Marian Hartsough, the layout designer—how exactly did you do it, putting
up with me while laying out over a thousand of my images? To Lorenzo Phillips, my
technical editor, a knowledgeable and kind person, thank you so much.
To Lars Ricaldi, for doing the sketches in my book—you truly have an artistic tal-
ent. Now let’s meet at the next GDC for cryin’ out loud! Oh yeah—does this also
mean I have to send you a signed copy of my book??
Thanks to the Caligari Corporation; these people influenced me to get deep into
the 3D modeling industry. Particular thanks got to Roman Ormandy for develop-
ing such a lovely product, to Bibiana Gasparik, and to Norm Fortier, for tech-sup-
porting me to the end.
On the other side of the globe in New Zealand, thank you Right Hemisphere, and
Mary Alice Krayecki (hey, cup of coffee at the GDC ‘03, remember?). Your software
is totally unreal; job so well done!
Next, thanks go out to Adobe—to Gwyn Weisberg, and to all of the people there
for your unbelievable software. I think the whole world agrees!
Finally to Discreet, specifically Liz Tan and Peter Nguyen: thank you so much for
your help in allowing me to incorporate 3D Studio Max into my book. I can’t
believe how prompt and courteous you were!
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
About the Author
D
AVID

Chapter 8 Inorganic Texture Tutorials
with Photoshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Chapter 9 Advanced Texturing Examples . . . . . . . 353
Chapter 10 Organic Texture Tutorials
with Photoshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
Chapter 11 Skinning the RF-9 Plasma Gun
with Deep Paint 3D and Photoshop . . . . 429
Chapter 12 Skinning the Slogre with
Deep Paint 3D and Photoshop . . . . . . . 475
Part Four
Preparing Assets for Games
with 3D Studio Max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
Chapter 13 Making the RF-9 Plasma Gun
Game-Ready with 3D Studio Max . . . . . . 511
Chapter 14 Making the Slogre Game-Ready with
3D Studio Max and Character Studio . . 535
Part Five
Bringing It All Together. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
Chapter 15 Bringing Your Work into the
Torque Game Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . 585
Postscript Finding Work as a Game Artist . . . . . . 593
Part Six
Appendices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Appendix A A 3D Modeling Primer . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
Appendix B A 2D Graphics Primer . . . . . . . . . . . . 617
Appendix C Photoshop 6 Keyboard Shortcuts . . . . 631
Appendix D Glossary of 2D- and 3D-Related
Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 639
Appendix E Related Web Sites and Links . . . . . . . . 657

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
Chapter 3
Modeling the RF-9 Plasma
Gun with trueSpace 6 . . . . . . . . . 25
An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Setting Up the trueSpace 6 Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Changing the World and Object Units. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Setting the Dynamic Rendering Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Texture Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Keeping the Point Edit Tools Handy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Modeling Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Modeling the RF-9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Step 1: Planning the Model’s Dimensions and Poly Count,
and Creating a Reference Plane. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
Step 2: Build the Muzzle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Step 3: Build the Barrel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Step 4: Build the Grip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Step 5: Build the Hoops and Hose. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Step 6: Optimize and Triangulate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Export the Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Chapter 4
Modeling the Slogre
Character with trueSpace 6 . . . . 65
Modeling Pre-Considerations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Modeling the Slogre. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Step 1: Build the Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Step 2: Build the Leg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Step 3: Build the Arm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Completing the Slogre Model in 3D Studio Max 5. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Optimize the Mesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Edit the Mesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Clone and Attach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Add Some Tusks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Smooth Out the Bumps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Export to DeepUV! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
x
Contents
TEAMFLY
Team-Fly
®

Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
Unwrap the Slogre’s U-Vs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Step 1: Unwrap the Legs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
Step 2: Unwrap the Arms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Step 3: Unwrap the Head and Body. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Pack the Map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Update and View the Results in Max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Part Three
Unwrapping the UVs with DeepUV . . . 183
Chapter 7
Game Texturing. . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Introduction to Game Texturing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Types of Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Hand-Drawn Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Photo-Based Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Compositing Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Seamless Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
Animated Textures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Chapter 8
Inorganic Texture Tutorials
with Photoshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Texture Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
Glass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
Decals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 334
Chapter 9
Advanced Texturing Examples . . . 353
Wood Crate with Explosives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
A Quick Note on the Crate’s U-V Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
Medieval Castle/Haunted House Gate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
High Tech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Time Counts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 394
xii
Contents
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
Chapter 10
Organic Texture Tutorials
with Photoshop . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
Skin and Bones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
Lizard/Dinosaur Skin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
Rhinoceros Skin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
Bone (Using Displacement Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 402
Torn Flesh . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 406
Clothing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
Camouflage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
Wrinkles (Using Displacement Maps) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 417
Planetary Textures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Earth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Dry Lake Bed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 427

Clean Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
Preparing the Map for 3D Studio Max . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 508
Part Four
Preparing Assets for Games
with 3D Studio Max . . . . . . . . . . . . . 509
Chapter 13
Making the RF-9 Plasma Gun
Game-Ready with 3D Studio Max . . 511
Applying the Skin to the RF-9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
Aligning the Pivot Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 515
Creating the Bounding Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
Adding and Manipulating Nodes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
Embedding the Shape (for Torque Users). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 524
Adding the Dummies. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
xiv
Contents
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
Exporting the RF-9 for the Torque Game Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 527
Viewing the Model in Torque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
Adding Levels of Detail (LODs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 529
Viewing the New Level of Detail in Torque . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
Tips for Exporting to Other Game Engines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 533
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
Chapter 14
Making the Slogre
Game-Ready with 3D Studio
Max and Character Studio . . . . . 535
Applying the Skin to the Slogre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
Scaling and Aligning the Pivot Point . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540

Te r rain Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 588
Adding Other Objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
Texturing Buildings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 590
Saving Your Modifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
The Last Word. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592
Postscript Finding Work as a Game Artist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
Getting a Job with a Game Company. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
Job Positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
Working on a Game-Development Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599
Tools of the Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
Working with Programmers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
Postscript
Finding Work
as a Game Artist . . . . . . . . . . . 593
Getting a Job with a Game Company. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 594
Job Positions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 596
Working on a Game Development Team . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 599
Tools of the Trade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
Working with Programmers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 600
xvi
Contents
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
Part Six
Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 603
Appendix A
A 3D Modeling Primer . . . . . . . 605
Appendix B
A 2D Graphics Primer . . . . . . . . 617
Appendix C
Photoshop 6 Keyboard

that, it begins to show you how to storyboard an idea, something simple:
a plasma gun. Then, step-by-step, every single detail of the design, art,
and modeling of this weapon is detailed. When you’re done with that,
David takes you deeper and deeper into every single aspect of 2D art
and 3D modeling for games. The book is simply insane! Look at the
Table of Contents right now—it’s just too good to be true: advanced
texturing, skinning, bones, character animation, advanced texture
preparation, putting everything together to create complete game ready
assets with 3D Studio Max, and then dropping them into the Torque
Engine to see them run.
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.
xix
Letter from the Series Editor
I am primarily a technical person, but I’m also an artist; I can draw, 3D
model, do sound, design, and write. But when you see someone with
David’s talent then you realize who the real artist is! This book really
rocks, and it can only improve your skill set. Nowhere but in 2D Artwork
and 3D Modeling for Game Artists will you find such a complete treatise on
2D artwork and 3D modeling for games or interactive media.
Sincerely,
André LaMothe
Series Editor,
Premier Game Development Series
Please purchase PDF Split-Merge on www.verypdf.com to remove this watermark.