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

Watkins, Adam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0240818814 ISBN 13: 9780240818818

Publisher: Routledge, 2011

Synopsis

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.

--Unity is HOT! It's the #1 game engine out there, and it's taken the game world by storm. Documentation is hard to find. Focal to the rescue. Learn Unity from the ground up. Build a game with no previous scripting knowledge, and make a game that's fun.

--Authoritative - Author, Adam Watkins, is a 12 year veteran and 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. With this experience comes great insight into the best ways to learn 3D art and gaming concepts.

--Accessible to All Unity users (artists and programmers) - the author comes from an art background. He animated for many years before working in games. This provides a "non-programmer" entry point to the world of game creation.

--Complete - this volume provides instruction from game inception to completion and delivery. The 3D creation and export begins, but applied functionality and delivery complete the book.  In the course of the book, the reader will create effective and efficient 3D assets from scratch using Maya (including characters). Then, use these assets to create a functioning game complete with scripts, GUI interfaces, and first and third person interactions.

--Companion website includes: original versions of the images, all completed files from the tutorials, important links, and all code from the book.

About this title

About the Author

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.

Review

"Creating Games with Unity and Maya attempts to address the entire art pipeline based on Autodesk's Maya, including basic coverage of the game engine and editor. 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 animations. The remainder of the book provides an artist-friendly introduction to game scripting that should be enough to get beginners started on developing games of 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. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Students of all levels in digital arts or game art programs, researchers/faculty, and professionals/practitioners."--Choice

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0240818814
• ISBN 13: 9780240818818
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528