[...]... introduce rigging and animation using 3ds Max s Biped feature in Chapters 7 and 8: ■ ■ Chapter 7: “Rigging a Character with Biped in 3ds Max Chapter 8: Character Animation in 3ds Max This book also has two appendixes Appendix A, 3ds Max 8 and Photoshop CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts,” is a perfect reference for making your modeling and texturing work go quickly, and Appendix B, “Related Web Sites and Links,”... my world of game character design complete My intentions with this book are to demonstrate all steps and aspects of modeling, texturing, and animating a heroic game character What I will show you will be how to model in Autodesk 3ds Max 8 from sketch references, texture in Adobe Photoshop CS2 (version 9), and then rig bones and animate a character in 3ds Max 8 This is both a technical and a creative... from Max to a proprietary game file format using special Max plug-ins that are designed for that game Game Engine Exporting When you’re finished creating characters and animations, the final step is to port them to a game Whether you’re working in-house for a game company or creating a character for a published game, you need to encode your work and pack it into one or several files designed for the game. .. reference for modeling a character 7 Modeling Modeling is the most complex task when creating a game character and is the heart of this book I’ll show you how to model (and animate) a character from scratch using 3ds Max 8, but the techniques are similar with other popular 3D modeling programs 3ds Max is an extremely versatile and widely used graphics tool for games, television, and film, but because... 171 3ds Max 8 Keyboard Shortcuts 171 Remapping Commonly Used Max Shortcuts 171 Photoshop CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts 173 Appendix B Related Web Sites and Links 175 Index 181 Introduction DOOM 3 Half-Life 2 Movies like Resident Evil and Alien Take characters from those games and movies, merge them, and you’ll get a totally cool game. .. character in Photoshop CS2 ■ Creating textures and relief maps in Photoshop ■ Applying a biped skeletal rig to your character mesh to prepare it for animation ■ Creating animation sequences in Max that will be called by a game engine during gameplay 1 2 Chapter 1 ■ 3D Game Character Design Basics Creating a video game character is a somewhat complicated process but is fairly straightforward and linear... 2D and 3D digital art programs for both video games and film There are several differences between a character that is built for a video game and a character that is built for film, but as game consoles become more and more powerful, these differences are fading Currently, a big difference is that film characters have a much higher polygon count, and the game characters need to be specially rigged and. .. through the general character creation process, which includes 2D and 3D computer art concepts, file and image formatting, and some art history Then in Chapter 2, “Preparing to Model: Configuring 3ds Max and Referencing Sketch Art,” we’ll start off with character sketches and setting up the 3ds Max 8 environment in preparation for modeling the book’s character Just about every 3D design is referenced... develop a 3D character model The meat of the book will be Chapters 3 through 6, using the primary software tools to create the character s foundation—that is, the 3D mesh and skin textures These chapters are as follows: ■ ■ ■ ■ Chapter 3: “Box Modeling in 3ds Max 8 Chapter 4: “Mesh Optimization in 3ds Max Chapter 5: “UV Mapping the Character in 3ds Max Chapter 6: “Skin Texturing with Photoshop CS2 Then... a UV map in Photoshop modern video game and using a program like 3ds Max to apply the texture to a model With Shaders increased game quality, characters A shader is a predefined set of lighting and other objects now have multiple and rendering parameters, created by texture attributes and layers aside programmers or by you, that tells both from just a texture map Such attribmodeling and game software . 7 and 8: ■ Chapter 7: “Rigging a Charac- ter with Biped in 3ds Max ■ Chapter 8: Character Anima- tion in 3ds Max This book also has two appendixes. Appendix A, 3ds Max 8 and Photo- shop CS2. sequences in Max that will be called by a game engine during gameplay 3D Game Character Design Basics Chapter 1 Chapter 1 ■ 3D Game Character Design Basics2 Creating a video game character is. Optimiza- tion in 3ds Max ■ Chapter 5: “UV Mapping the Character in 3ds Max ■ Chapter 6: “Skin Texturing with Photoshop CS2 Then I introduce rigging and anima- tion using 3ds Max s Biped feature