Game Character Development


Book Description

"Game Character Development" takes you through all the steps needed to create compelling, highly-detailed characters for games. This book is suitable for both beginner game artists and experienced designers who want to brush up their skills, and covers the latest character creation tools and technologies. Throughout this book you will work step-by-step to create a finished character that incorporates all of the methods presented. First you'll examine the available modeling techniques and then create a base mesh. You'll then incorporate UV mapping and virtual sculpting. With the basic model created, you'll explore advanced techniques to add texture and detail, and finish up by optimizing and refining your character. The techniques presented can be applied with virtually any 3D software program, so you're free to work within the application with which you're most familiar. If a specific tool is introduced, a brief introduction will cover the basic information you need to utilize it. There's even a chapter with suggestions on what you'll need to add to your finished character before it gets introduced into the game production pipeline, including adding facial expression, rigging, and even animation. And a helpful reference section provides additional resources to help you with those next steps.




Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity


Book Description

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.




Better Game Characters by Design


Book Description

Games are poised for a major evolution, driven by growth in technical sophistication and audience reach. Characters that create powerful social and emotional connections with players throughout the game-play itself (not just in cut scenes) will be essential to next-generation games. However, the principles of sophisticated character design and interaction are not widely understood within the game development community. Further complicating the situation are powerful gender and cultural issues that can influence perception of characters. Katherine Isbister has spent the last 10 years examining what makes interactions with computer characters useful and engaging to different audiences. This work has revealed that the key to good design is leveraging player psychology: understanding what's memorable, exciting, and useful to a person about real-life social interactions, and applying those insights to character design. Game designers who create great characters often make use of these psychological principles without realizing it. Better Game Characters by Design gives game design professionals and other interactive media designers a framework for understanding how social roles and perceptions affect players' reactions to characters, helping produce stronger designs and better results.




Game Character Development with Maya


Book Description

Great games have great characters: This comprehensive guide shows users how to create them using Maya 3D modelling software!




Digital Character Development


Book Description

Every animated film and video game production spends a large percentage of its resources and time on advancing the quality of the digital characters inhabiting the world being created. This book presents the theory and practice behind the creation of digital characters for film and games using software-agnostic descriptions that apply to any animation application. It provides insight from a real production environment and the requirements that such an environment imposes. With rich illustrations and visual code examples throughout, this book provides a comprehensive roadmap to character development for both professionals and students.




Virtual Character Design for Games and Interactive Media


Book Description

While the earliest character representations in video games were rudimentary in terms of their presentation and performance, the virtual characters that appear in games today can be extremely complex and lifelike. These are characters that have the potential to make a powerful and emotional connection with gamers. As virtual characters become more




A Whole New Ballgame


Book Description

A school, sports, and friendship story perfect for fans of Mike Lupica's Comeback Kids.




Invitation to the Game


Book Description

Unemployed after high school in the highly robotic society of 2154, Lisse and seven friends resign themselves to a boring existence in their "Designated Area" until the government invites them to play The Game.




3D Character Development Workshop


Book Description

3D Character Development Workshop is designed to fast-track comprehension of the concepts, tools, and methods of character rigging so that you can get past the technical hurdles and on to animating. This comprehensive guide is simple enough for non-technical artists to follow, yet presented in a holistic, comprehensive, best-practices approach so professional and student animators and artists can begin designing and animating their own fully-functioning characters. Features: • Uses a holistic, end-to-end process that empowers the reader with an understanding of the entirety of the character development pipeline--from concept to completion • Includes a fast-tracked learning by example method. Short, iterative lessons create familiarity of best practices through rote exercise • Contains full color photos (throughout) and downloadable examples/starter files that allow out-of-sequence or selective learning




The Westing Game


Book Description

BE CLASSIC with The Westing Game, introduced by New York Times bestselling author Mac Barnett. A highly inventive mystery begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of the very stranger will of the very read Samuel W. Westing. They could become millionaires, depending on how they play a game. All they have to do is find the answer - but the answer to what? The Westing game is tricky and dangerous, but the heirs play on - through blizzards, burglaries, and bombings, Sam Westing may be dead ... but that won't stop him from playing one last game! Winner of the Newbery Medal Winner of the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award An ALA Notable Book A School Library Journal One Hundred Books That Shaped the Century "A supersharp mystery...confoundingly clever, and very funny." —Booklist, starred review "Great fun for those who enjoy illusion, word play, or sleight of hand." —The New York Times Book Review "A fascinating medley of word games, disguises, multiple aliases, and subterfuges—a demanding but rewarding book." —The Horn Book