Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
doesn't work quite as well as you had hoped when laying it out on paper.
Once you walk a space, or try playing the mechanics, you may find that
the space you had planned may not be the best. If you've just got quick
mock-ups, you can quickly adjust before investing all the time into the
scenography asset creation.
However, in a topic setting we need to work largely in a linear progression.
So for these tutorials we want to imagine that the prototypes have yielded
results that have cemented the level and character design. And so, with the
approval of the game designer, we are moving forward with our art asset
creations.
Why Maya Tutorials?
Unity is the last step in the chain of technologies that creates the game.
Without it, an effective game can't be made. But the success of the game will
also rely heavily on the effectiveness of the assets that go into it. No matter
how well the chef knows the tools and the oven when baking, if he or she
uses poor quality ingredients, the cake is not edible.
I've had many students who, when working in Unity, are unable to create
the game they envisioned because of poor choices or techniques in their
3D application of choice. General 3D techniques are not necessarily the
same as 3D game techniques. Creating economic and correctly structured
3D assets and textures is an absolutely critical part of creating games
in Unity.
Why Maya? Well, Maya isn't even my favorite 3D package. However, it does
have an amazing market penetration and without a doubt is one of the
most powerful 3D tools out there. Ironically, modeling is not one of its
strongest points, but for our purposes its polygonal modeling tools will
do just fine. Among other parallels, the default camera manipulation and
object manipulation tools in Unity have identical keyboard shortcuts to
Maya. Additionally, Maya has some very powerful character animation
tools, which we will use, that import via FBX very easily into Unity.
Ultimately, I chose to create our assets in Maya because the large base
means there are lots of people who know how to use the software and you
will have lots of options to further your skill set beyond this topic once you
are done reading it.
Even if you are not a Maya user and are capable in some other 3D app, take
a quick look at these chapters to make sure you make note of topology and
texture creation and how to extrapolate those techniques into your own
application. It will make your game assets stronger, tighter, and better to work
within Unity.
So here we go. In the following few chapters the art assets will come
together, and these assets will be imported into Unity to allow for
exploration and refinement. Although these are largely Maya-based
