3D Game Environments: Create Professional 3D Game Worlds

The ultimate resource to help you create triple-A quality art for a variety of game worlds; 3D Game Environments offers detailed tutorials on creating 3D models, applying 2D art to 3D models, and clear concise advice on issues of efficiency and optimization for a 3D game engine. Using Photoshop and 3ds Max as his primary tools, Luke Ahearn explains how to create realistic textures from photo source and uses a variety of techniques to portray dynamic and believable game worlds. The book is a good overview on how to create game levels using a typical 3D application. It covers planning a level, creating meshes, some texture creation, and how normal maps, specular maps and other highlights work with existing technology. However, the book isn’t an even effort. The mesh creation concepts are the most informative, since they walk you through concept to final product. The same is done with textures, but if you own Luke’s other book this is just a repeat and waste of space. If you want to create terrain, trees, and brush, the book points you to … software to create them.