[Book Review] 3D Game Textures: Create Profession Game Art Using Photoshop

3D Game Textures: Create Profession Game Art Using Photoshop
by Luke Ahearn

I'm sure there are many people that started 3D modeling to create game assets, especially recently with Sony's Player Studio allowing anyone to become an asset vendor for their three main MMO games, Planetside 2, Everquest, and Everquest 2. While it is pretty easy to get into the modeling, the texturing can be pretty rough, especially if you know nothing about CG development. Even if you are fairly seasoned creating your own textures, but wanting to create game assets, this book is a "must have".







I ran across this book by complete accident. I had spent the week trying to find websites that covered the creation of textures, and how to get the most out of them. I had asked people on forums, twitter, and various other places, and was given various sites that told me about how to setup textures in Blender, but nothing that could teach me how to actually use my artistic talent to create them from scratch, and the theory behind creating them for games.

After hours of frustration reading through several texture sites, I Googled "3D game textures", and my first result was a book. This book was in fact called 3D Game Textures, the exact one I'm telling you about today. After reading the first chapter, I knew this was what I was looking for all along. It talks about creating game textures from the artist's point of view, not the modelers, or programmers. While it does cover some basic 3D terminology to prepare you for creating textures for 3D models, it's purely based on making the best textures, where colors should or shouldn't be, how to optimize your maps, and so much more.

The best part is that it teaches you how to put the ideas from your head or concept, onto the texture, without ending up with bland, or lifeless textures, before it's used in any game engine. If you haven't worked with game assets before, remember that the game engine is what handles your lights, and shadows, so your textures must not have either in them. Aside from talking about how to make your textures, it covers the various artistic practices you need to know when creating textures, to make sure you have plenty of emphasis in areas you want it, as well as balance, correct coloring (hue/saturation), and so much more. Maybe you have yet to understand the reason behind the different maps (diffuse/color, normal, fresnel, specular, displacement, etc), which this book has an entire chapter on that, as well as practices to obtain the best maps possible. While it is completely covered in Photoshop, all of the creation methods, and practices could be applied in any design software.

Overall, if you want to learn how to create textures for game assets where you cannot depend on lights, or just want to learn how to make your own materials for other models, this is certainly a book I highly recommend. This is absolutely a book to have on your shelf one way or another, as almost all the content could be used over and over for various references when working with CG. The book alone exceeded my expectations after the first few chapters, and was an interesting read.