1st Edition

Creating Games with Unity and Maya How to Develop Fun and Marketable 3D Games

By Adam Watkins Copyright 2011
    548 Pages 700 Color Illustrations
    by Routledge

    548 Pages
    by Routledge

    Unity brings you ever closer to the "author once, deploy anywhere" dream. With its multiplatform capabilities, you can target desktop, web, mobile devices, and consoles using a single development engine. Little wonder that Unity has quickly become the #1 game engine out there.

    Mastering Unity is absolutely essential in an increasingly competitive games market where agility is expected, yet until now practical tutorials were nearly impossible to find.

    Creating Games with Unity and Maya gives you with an end-to-end solution for Unity game development with Maya. Written by a twelve-year veteran of the 3D animation and games industry and professor of 3D animation, this book takes you step-by-step through the process of developing an entire game from scratch-including coding, art, production, and deployment.

    This accessible guide provides a "non-programmer" entry point to the world of game creation. Aspiring developers with little or no coding experience will learn character development in Maya, scripts, GUI interface, and first- and third-person interactions.

    • Preface

    • Introduction
      • Why this book?
      • Who's it for, and how to use it?
        • Hobbyist strategies
        • Game Developer usage
        • Teacher
        • Student

      • Structure
        • Maya, then Unity
          • Reasoning

      • Book Paradigm
        • Assumptions
        • What we won't be covering

      • Artist Approach vs Programmer/Engineer Approach
        • This book is based upon artist approach

    • Chapter 1 - Game Production Process
      • Game Production Team Members (or roles)
        • All roles can be done by one person

      • Game Production Pipeline in Unity
        • Conceptualization
          • Audience
          • Theme
          • Conceptualization Artwork

        • Art Assets Creation
          • Models
          • Textures
          • Animation
          • Lighting

        • Game Mechanics
          • Scripting Team
            • Game Play
            • Physics
            • Varia

        • What needs to be done when
        • Flexibility of Unity's approach
          • What parts aren't so flexible.

      • How this book mimics the Game Production Process
      • Introduction to The Game we will be producing in the book.

    • Chapter 2 - Asset Creation: Maya Scenography Modeling
      • Scenography Mdeling within the Game Desing Pipeling
      • So Why Maya Tutorials?
      • A Bit of 3D Theory
        • Rendering
        • Video Cards
        • Limitation and Optimization for Games

      • Rules of 3D Game Modeling
        • Polycount Matters
        • Topology is Critical

      • On to the Tools
      • Tutorial 2.1 Game Level Modeling : The Entryway
      • Homework and Challenges

    • Chapter 3 - Asset Creation: Maya Scenography UV Mapping
      • Scenography UV Mapping within the Game Design Pipeline
      • UVs
        • Exploring the UV Texture Editor

      • Tutorial 3.1 Game Level UV Layout: Tools and Techniques
      • Homework and Challenges

    • Chapter 4 - Asset Creation: Maya Sceongraphy Texturing
      • Scenography Texturing within the Game Design Pipleline
      • Textures, Materials & Shaders
      • Nature of Effective Textures
        • Be Square
        • Power of Two

      • Seamless Textures
      • Maya and Unity
      • Tutorials
        • Tutorial 4.1 Seamless Tiled Textures
        • Tutorial 4.2 Non-Tiled Textures and Their Dirt

    • Chapter 5 - Asset Creation: Unity Scenography Importing
      • Introduction to Unity Space
        • Tutorial 5.1 Creating a Unity Project
        • Tutorial 5.2 Exporting from Maya
        • Tutorial 5.3 Importing, Tweaking and Placing Scenography Assets into Unity

    • Chapter 6 - Asset Creation: Unity Scenography Creation Tools
      • Introduction to Non-Imported Assets in Unity
        • Tutorial 6.1 Adding, Manipulating and Understanding Water
        • Tutorial 6.2 Terrain Creation
        • Tutorial 6.3 Tree Building
        • Tutorial 6.4 Particle Creation

    • Chapter 7 - Lighting & Baking
      • What's the big deal with lighting?
      • To light in Maya or Unity?
        • Tutorial 7.1 Lighting Game Level in Unity

      • Baking, textures and AO
        • Tutorial 7.2 Baking in Unity

      • Light maps in Unity
        • Tutorial 7.3 Using Light maps in Unity

    • Chapter 8 - Asset Creation: Maya Character Creations
      • Low Poly character techniques
      • Topology mastery
        • Tutorial 3.1 Game Character Modeling

      • Character UV
        • Tutorial 3.2 Game Character UV Mapping

      • Character Textures
        • Tutorial 3.3 Game Character Texturing

    • Chapter 9 - Asset Creation: Character Rigging and Animation and Import
      • Brief discussion of rigging, skinning, and animation in Maya
        • Tutorial 4.1 Rigging Game Character
        • Tutorial 4.2 Skinning Game Character

      • Game Animation Methodology
        • Tutorial 4.3 Character Idle

      • Unity & Animation
        • Tutorial 4.4 Importing Animated Character and Testing

    • Chapter 10 - Unity Physics
      • Physics engines. PhysX
        • Newtonian physics
        • Unity's use
        • "Frame miss"
        • Elements needed for physics calculations
        • Limitations and overhead

      • Tutorial 7.1 Booby Traps and Physics in Unity
      • Ragdoll
        • Tutorial 7.2 Ragdoll Implementation

    • Chapter 11 - Unity Script: Syntax
      • Power and frustration of scripting
      • Scripting Overview
      • Syntax Discussion
        • MonoBehaviour
        • Commands
        • Functions
        • Variables
        • Inputs
        • Time
        • Components
        • Vectors
        • Coroutines
        • Yields

      • Scripting Cheat Sheets
      • Tutorial 8.1 Constructing Basic Scripts from Scratch

    • Chapter 12 - Unity Script: Triggers
      • What are triggers? Why are they useful?
      • Relationship to Physics
        • What a trigger needs to work

      • How to script a trigger and why
      • Tutorial 9.1 Opening Doors and Tripping Traps

    • Chapter 13 - Unity Script: Inputs, Raycasting and Manipulating
      • Communicating with the game
      • Types of Inputs
        • GUI (for discussion later)
        • Triggers (discussed earlier)
        • Mouse Input
        • Keyboard Input
        • Raycasting

      • When to use which type of input
      • How to call up or "listen for" inputs
      • Tutorial 10.1 Keyboard Driven Mini-Game
      • Tutorial 10.2 Mouse Driven Mini-Game
      • Tutorial 10.3 Raycasting

    • Chapter 14 - Unity Script: Prefabs and Instantiation
      • Power of prefabs
        • Tutorial 11.1 Creating Custom Prefabs

      • Instantiation
        • What are they?
        • What are they for?
        • Why mess with them?

      • Tutorial 11.2 Projectile Instantiation

    • Chapter 15 - Unity Sound
      • Listener/Source Paradigm
      • Attaching sounds
      • Triggering Sounds
      • Listening and tweaking sound qualities

    • Chapter 16 - Unity GUI: OnGUI, GUITextures, GUIText
      • Graphical User Interfaces
        • Theory of design
        • Unity types
          • GUIText
          • GUITextures
          • OnGUI

      • Tutorial 12.1 GUIText and GUITextures for instant feedback
      • Tutorial 12.2 Constructing OnGUI GUI Structure for Game Setup

    • Chapter 17 - Unity GUI and Scripting: Inter-script communication
      • Power of linking scripts
      • Logic engines
      • Health, damage, inventory, death
        • Tutorial 13.1 Creating and Manipulating Health Bar

    • Chapter 18 - Unity Distribution: Builds
      • Getting the game out the door
      • Optimization strategies
        • Profiler
        • Debugger

      • Optimizing game
      • Making Builds
        • PC
        • Mac
        • Web
        • Mobile Devices (overview)
          • iOS
          • Android

      • Tutorial 14.1 Building the Game

    • Appendix A: Setting Projects with Maya
    • Appendix C: Unity Asset Server

    Biography

    Adam Watkins is Associate Professor, 3D Animation, School of Interactive Media & Design at the University of the Incarnate Word. He is currently on a research sabbatical at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where he is part of the VISIBLE effort creating virtual simulation games for use in non-proliferation exercises. Watkins has headed the 3D Animation program for over ten years and is the author of several books and over 100 articles on 3D Animation. His students are the winners of multiple national and international animation awards and festivals.

    "Watkins (Univ. of the Incarnate Word) devotes most of the first half of the book to 3-D digital asset creation in Maya with a very light overview of animation.  The remainder of the book provides an artist-friendly introduction to game scripting that should be enough to get beginners started on developing games on their own using the game engine.  Therefore, those who are new to 3-D modeling, texturing, and character rigging will likely benefit most from this book.  3-D artists who have a working proficiency in Maya or those who are more interested in game design or programming may be b  etter served elsewhere.  Summing Up: Highly recommended.  Students of all levels in digital arts or game art programs, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners."

    --A. Chen, Cogswell Polytechnical College