Basic Game Art Concepts - Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity - page 9

Understanding and Optimizing 3D Game Art
The logical progression from model sheets is to begin work on the 3D character model.
When it comes to 3D art, game artists have it comparatively rough compared to other 3D
artists. The next few sections of this chapter will discuss the differences between the two
fields and what game artists can do to optimize their work.

Figure 1.8
This point can be
said to be at point
(3,4) on the coordi-
nate plane because
it is at 3 units on the
x-axis and 4 on the
y-axis.

y-axis

3D Object Construction
You may be familiar with the xy coor-
dinate plane, a system of two axes, one
going horizontal (x-axis) and one going
vertical (y-axis.) If you imagine that these
axes each have some unit of measurement
along them that can be indicated numeri-
cally, you can describe where certain
points are within the space of the coordi-
nate plane as an expression of where they
are on x and y (Figure 1.8).
If you were to draw another point on
the plane and connect them, you would
create a line (Figure 1.9). When multiple
lines are created on the plane and arranged into closed shapes, the resulting two-dimen-
sional shapes are called “polygons.” The simplest of these is a triangle, consisting of three
lines (Figure 1.10).

(3,4)

x-axis

y-axis y-axis

(8,7) (8,7)

(3,4)

(3,4)

x-axis

x-axis

(6,-2)

Figure 1.10
Triangle on the coordinate plane

Figure 1.9
Line on the coordinate plane