1st Edition
Creating 3D Game Art for the iPhone with Unity Featuring modo and Blender pipelines
Revolutionize your iPhone and iPad game development with Unity iOS, a fully integrated professional application and powerful game engine, which is quickly becoming the best solution for creating visually stunning games for Apple's iDevices easier, and more fun for artists. From concept to completion you'll learn to create and animate using modo and Blender as well as creating a full level utilizing the powerful toolset in Unity iOS as it specifically relates to iPhone and iPad game development.
Follow the creation of "Tater," a character from the author's personal game project "Dead Bang," as he's used to explain vital aspects of game development and content creation for the iOS platform. Creating 3D Game Art for the iPhone focuses on the key principles of game design and development by covering in-depth, the iDevice hardware in conjunction with Unity iOS and how it relates to creating optimized game assets for the iDevices.
Featuring Luxology's artist-friendly modo, and Blender, the free open-source 3D app, along side Unity iOS, optimize your game assets for the latest iDevices including iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad and the iPod Touch. Learn to model characters and environment assets, texture, animate skinned characters and apply advanced lightmapping techniques using Beast in Unity iOS.
In a clear, motivating, and entertaining style, Wes McDermott offers captivating 3D imagery, real-world observation, and valuable tips and tricks all in one place - this book is an invaluable resource for any digital artist working to create games for the iPhone and iPad using Unity iOS.
Creating 3D Game Art for the iPhone with Unity: Featuring modo and Blender Pipelines
Chapter 1
Getting to know the iDevice Hardware and Unity Working as a 3D artist
iDevice Hardware
ARM CPU
Draw Calls
Batching
Dynamic Batching
Static Batching
GPU
Screen Resolutions
Fillrate Limited
Tile-Based Rendering
RAM
OpenGL ES
Fixed-Function Pipeline
Fully Programmable Pipeline
Texturing
Texture Units
Alpha Operations
Determining Your Game Budget
Frame Rate Budget
Rendering Budget
Vertex Budget
Texture Budget
It All Sums Up
Summary
Chapter 2
Planning the Vertex Budget
Testing Performance
Creating a Performance Test Scene
Targeting Devices
Sizing Things Up
What is a Game Unit
Setting Up modo
Importing into Unity
True Vertex Count
Degenerate Triangles
Smoothing Angles
UV Seams
Using Lights
Modeling Tater and Thumper
My Workflow
Creating Geometry
Reducing Geometry
Polygon Flow and Spin Quads
Merging Polygons and Removing Edge
Summary
Chapter 3
Understanding Textures and UV Maps
Creating UV Maps
Planning Your UV Maps
Creating UVs for Tater
Creating UVs for Thumper
Fundamentals of Game Textures
Texture Formats
Texture Size
Power of 2 (POT) and Non-Power of 2 (NPOT)
Texture Compression - PVRTC
Using Mip maps
Multiple Resolutions
Texture Budget
Creating the Diffuse Map
Faking Light and Shadow
Unity 3 OpenGL ES 2.0 Shaders
Texturing Tater
Reference Images
Skin Textures
Building Up Volume Through Shading
Creating Hair
Adding Some Wear and Tear
Summary
Chapter 4
Creating Game Objects using modo - Part Two: Training Trash Yard
Level Design
Creating a Style
What can reasonably be accomplished?
Breaking Down into Sections
Puzzle Building
Lazy Loading
Optimize Batching and Rendering
Batching Revisited
Creating the Level
Determining the Vertex Count
Further Testing
Using Texture Atlas
Building on the Grid
Does it make sense to use the grid?
Determining Working Texture Size
Creating the Ground
Creating the Walls
Creating the Props
Creating a Skybox
Creating the Trash Heap
Texturing the Level
Measuring the Scene
Creating the Textures
Creating UVs
Lightmap UVS
Summary
Chapter 5
Animation using Blender - Part One: Rigging Tater
Matching Object Size
Unity Blender Support and FBX Workflow
Using FBX
Understanding Skinned Meshes within Unity
VFP Optimized Skinning
Optimized Skinning Paths
Rigging Tater in Blender
iPhone and iPad Rigging Essentials
Creating the Basic Skeleton
Adjusting Bone Rotations
Fixing the Pelvis Bone for Hip Sway
Disabling Inherit Rotation
Weight Painting
Summary
Chapter 6
Animation using Blender - Part Two: IK and Basic Animation
Completing the Rig: Adding IK
Setting up IK for Legs
Setting up IK for Arms
Tiding Things Up
Fixing Rotations
Creating a Master Control
Using Bone Layers
Tweaking Weight Maps
Animating Tater
Using FBX
Multiple Clips per File VS One Clip per File
Option One: Multiple Clips
Option Two: One Clip
How Animation Data Works in Unity
Names Are Match to Relative Animation Component
Animating in Blender
Using Actions
Creating an Animation Cycle
Exporting the FBX
Make sure frame range is set correctly
Baking Keys
Disable Optimize Keyframes and Selected Objects
Summary
Chapter 7
Animation using Blender - Part Three: Advanced Animation
Unity's Animation System
Route One
Route Two
Creating Animations using Blender's NLA Editor
Animating Weapons
Using the NLA Editor
Blending Animations in Unity
Animation Layers
Additive Blending
Using Dynamics in Blender to Animate Objects
Setting Up Rigid Body Dynamics in Blender
Importing into Blender
Setting Up the Logic
Baking the Simulation
Editing the Animation with the NLA Editor
Summary
Chapter 8
Creating Lightmaps using Beast
Beast Lightmapping
Beast and HDR
Correct Lightmap UVs
Auto-Generate UVs
The Process
Using Dual Lightmaps
Beast Settings
Beast Custom Settings
Adjusting Lightmaps
Color Grading Maps
Adding Grime to Maps
Summary
Chapter 9
Working with Game Assets in Unity
Prefabs
Creating Prefab for Environment Props
Target Prefab
Camera Control Kit
Setting Up Colliders
Texture Compression
Mip maps
Optimized Shaders
Using Physics in Unity
Setting Up the Target Object
Adding Particles
Optimizing Physics using the Time Manager
Publishing your Game
Player Settings
Universal Builds
Optimizing your Game
Tuning Main Loop Performance
Tuning accelerometer processing frequency
Internal Profiler
Summary
Biography
By Wes McDermott, Wes has been a professional 3D artist for 10 years, working in video production and print design. For the past six years, Wes has been the Multi-Media Developer for UPS Airlines at the Flight Training Center. He creates various 3D elements for video and interactive online training. Published in HDRI 3D magazine and a featured artist at Luxology.com, Wes has participated in beta tests for both Luxology and Autodesk, leading 3D software companies.
