Product Description

Finally the eagerly-awaited next edition of Luke Ahearn's cornerstone game art book: 3D Game Textures is on its way. The book will be refreshed per the latest rev of Photoshop and the latest game industry trends and developments.

3D Game Textures allows next-gen game artists to learn to create everything from bricks to books in Photoshop with this step-by-step instructional guide. Because texture is 99% of what a gamer sees when playing, this topic deserves considerable coverage but has gotten little attention. Unlike anything on the market, this book concentrates soley on texturing, and provides an in-depth guide to game texturing with hundreds of high-quality examples. Game artists learn all they need to know on the topic, including basic artistic principles, tools and techniques, and specific step-by-step tutorials that explain how to create textures for myriad environments.

NEW COVERAGE OF: the latest version of Photoshop; Adding multiple edge tiling; Adding Photoshop Bridge coverage; Updating metal tutorial; Adding coverage of Urban exteriors. PLUS ADDITIONAL CHAPTER: Advanced project: Large outdoor urban area - war torn city. Great amount of work on detailed textures (overlays and advanced blending in PS) that utilize many shaders. This environment will look roughly like Battlefield 2 or more recently Call of Duty 4. The scene will include effects as well - smoke and bullet holes. Grass, trees, curtains, signs, and more.

The DVD includes: demo versions of relevant software; resource images; all images from the book.

* Learn everything you need to create stunning, professional textures from one easy to follow guide which features tutorials and over 500 high-quality images
* Follow the step-by-step tutorials to learn how to create suitable images which you can add to your portfolio and WOW prospective employers
* Companion CD includes sample textures, Photoshop actions and brushes, and electronic versions of images you saw in the book - all the tools you need in one place!
* Hit the ground running or get a leg up on the competition with the tips, tricks, and real world examples featured in this comprehensive guide

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #35668 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 424 pages

Review

"As well as the design angle of creating artwork for games, this book also tackles the business side of creating artwork for commercial purposes, making it a wonderful insight into the world of the professional games artist. After reading this you'll have a far better understanding of what it takes to become successful in the games world, and it will give you the opportunity to begin building a stunning profolio." - Advanced Photoshop

"This book can help anyone become a better texture professional...Ahearn's book can and help you become a much better artist, even if you never did much texturing before...The details are simple, but they give anyone who has no Photoshop experience a better idea of what to do. A more experienced reader can gain an in-depth look at how to add improved texture to his projects. 3D Game Textures is a great book for beginners who would like to learn about textures for 3D art. No one should have a problem understanding and using this easy-to-comprehend information." - Apogee Photo Magazine

About the Author
Luke Ahearn has over fifteen years of professional game development experience and has served in lead positions such as designer, producer, and art director on seven published game titles including Dead Reckoning and Americas' Army and worked as a background artist at EA. He has authored six books on game development and ran his own computer game company for ten years. Currently, he is the Art Director and partner of ICPU.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic Resource...
This is a quality book. Half of the book is dedicated to discussion on texture methods inside realtime engines, how different maps are used, and the different approaches required. There is a lot of emphasis of learning by eye, and the importance of visual awareness.

The second half is probably going to be the part that grabs you. Luke goes into the texture asset creation for three different staple scenarios (sci-fi, fantasy and urban, with clearly written details as to the workflow. My only quibble would be that during some of the tutorials sections, you are told what to do, but not why you are actually doing it, though when you read his creation method for the base metal texture, you can begin to appreciate how hard it would be to actually justify the steps with an explanation.

In all, this is an excellent resource for people who are a little daunted by the prospect of texturing, BUY IT! ;D

NOTE: There was a typo in the first edition that causes a texture to come up VERY different to Luke's. If you have an earlier edition, and encounter problems, Luke himself posted this on Amazon.com:

First edited by: Luke Ahearn "Luke Ahearn" (CA) on Feb 11, 2006
Last edited by: Luke Ahearn "Luke Ahearn" (CA) on Nov 28, 2006

Here are corrections for this edition:

- In chapter 5 (page 152 ) Creating Base Metal step 5 should read 70 instead of -70.

- When applying the spotlight at the end of step nine of this exercise
the spotlight should be round and go just beyond the image edges. Do
this by dragging out the handles.

- Also, in an early example of tiling there is a source image on the DVD
and it is the wrong one. This is the one you need.[...]

Taught me to create my own great textures with no prior experience
I have been interested in game development for a while now, mainly within the level design, creating new maps etc. I am learning and using the Unreal engine at present. I spent many months learning how to create levels and getting the hang of the level editor, UnrealEd. However, I wanted to start creating new content, never before seen, so somebody playing on the level will not recognise any already used assets such as models and textures. So I then started learning how to create models to include in my levels.

This being all very well, but I desperately needed new textures to use on my models and within the level its self. Im not very good artistically and thought I would never be able to create good textures even using Photoshop, which I used to open, try to use, fail and quit again!

I could do a bit of everything else, so thought I may as well get a book and see if that can help.....even if it helps me create the most basic looking textures!

This book had good reviews and looked like what I wanted to learn to be able to texture my levels my self.

So once this book came I worked through all the tutorials right to the end. They were easy to follow, informative and quite fun. I even then imported them into UnrealEd to use them in mess about levels and they worked a treat.

I found the start of the book a little dull as it went though all the things to look at when creating art such as things being 3D and not just 2D etc, though I understand it was the theory so to speak, I literally just wanted to get into Photoshop and start "doing".....it took a little longer then I wanted to get to the "creating your first texture" part! However, this was just me and im sure many may disagree as learning all the fundamentals about how art is and why it is etc is needed for a base line?

Once you do start creating textures its great fun, as I thought I would never be able to do it well. I was surprised just how easy it can be to get fantastic results. Also the more effort and tweaking you put into a texture the better it looks.

Needless to say after reading this book, I am now creating good quality textures and know how to navigate Photoshop. Though no expert, its certainly made a huge difference in my work and now everything looks even more unique and original which was the overall goal.

However, just a few notes, I was hoping the book would cover UV laying out, but it doesn't, also best tools and methods used to import in and out of game engines and possible some examples of best methods? None of this is covered.

This book literally is just about creating textures in Photoshop and nothing more, though a fantastic book and I would not be were I am now without it, I think it could have done with just a little bit more info about other areas.....again just my opinion.

I would recommend this book for anyone starting of with texture creation. I would say maybe just a little bit of knowledge of Photoshop before hand may help as some parts in the earlier chapters presume you know what to do when asked.

I will certainly be keeping this book near by.

Very good for beginners
Hay all

I purchased this book and I can safely say that it is a very helpful and sourceful book for beginners and intermediate texture artist. When I say intermediate, I don't mean people with acceptable texturing skills but for people who passed the beginning stage and are now into texturing stage.

I would advice you to have a fairly okay unwrapping knowledge because this book does not cover how to unwrap.
Also, as the book title says, its a texturing book.

Another thing you should be aware of, is that half, if not 3/4 of the entire book is focussed on environment texturing, I don't actually recall seeing any character texturing in the book. I personally am into environmental stuff.

So why did I give it 4 stars? That's because if you textured before, or know your way around Photoshop, then you probably won't gain any new skills from it. Another reason is that there's little knowledge on shaders, such as Normal mapping, it won't tell you how to set it up but more or less how it works.

Overall, it's a good, handy book to have if you are willing to break in the Game industry.