Creating Games with Unity and Maya
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""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
Product Description
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 number 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. The following are the features of this title: Unity is hot: It's the number 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.
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13 reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Good Introductory Book
23 Aug 2011
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Over the past year and a half I've been learned how to model in Maya. I started with introducing maya 2011 and then branched over to Mastering Maya 2011; using the skills I learned in those books I started working on a game project with a group of about 5 people, as a part of a computer projects class at my high school. Our project was a simple third person game made using Unity 3d. A lot of the stuff that Watkins covers in this book would have made that project a lot easier. Understanding vertex normals and backface culling was a task I had to learn the hard way. This book isn't really designed to teach you how to make a professional game it's more about learning the basics of Unity and Maya so that you know how to put everything together properly. This is a great book for someone who has a lot of experience in Maya and maybe just a little bit in Unity. I would recommend you buy this book so that you can learn how to assemble a game and then branch out and learn more about scripting so that you can add more game play mechanics to your game. I like how the author provides the instructions in a step by step manor but also explains why after each step which helps things make sense, a lot of the time I skip past these little notes if I already understand what he's explaning but I think it will really benefit introductory users. One thing to take note of is the difference between maya 2011 and 2012. The book is covering Maya 2011, if you are using 2012 its important to note that you cannot change the draw style of bones to circles anymore. I would recommend instead that you use an Ik controller for arms and parent a nurbs circle to it as it saves a lot of time rotating joints and eliminates the draw style confusion. Now that I am attending Oregon State University majoring in computer science I am working on a game of my own and this book makes it really easy to get a solid foundation to do that.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Great: but not for the uninitiated or the untalented.
24 April 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Maya is a very sophisticated, very capable and very expensive 3D modeling program. (Students, however, don't have to pay several thousand dollars for Maya - they can get it free.) Unity is a game engine, with a free version, that makes it possible to script the art and assets you provide and make them come alive.
Neither program is simple. Both applications have very steep learning curves. And, finally, both programs expect that the user will have not only artistic talent, but an intellect that comprehends the mechanics of gaming in order to create something that is both interesting and playable.
The book is clearly intended to be a text, whether for classroom or self-learning, and it is a fine tool for the task.
Profusely illustrated and written in a clear style, this is first and foremost a book on Maya techniques. If you haven't mastered Maya, the Unity section may be of little use, though Unity can be used with the output of many other 3D programs.
Unity is essentially a scripting program and much easier to use than attempting the same tasks, for instance with C#.
The Unity section of the text is also well illustrated and clearly written.
Could someone learn how to use Maya and Unity from this book and its companion website? I think so. But if you lack artistic talent and training, it may not get you anywhere.
Jerry
Neither program is simple. Both applications have very steep learning curves. And, finally, both programs expect that the user will have not only artistic talent, but an intellect that comprehends the mechanics of gaming in order to create something that is both interesting and playable.
The book is clearly intended to be a text, whether for classroom or self-learning, and it is a fine tool for the task.
Profusely illustrated and written in a clear style, this is first and foremost a book on Maya techniques. If you haven't mastered Maya, the Unity section may be of little use, though Unity can be used with the output of many other 3D programs.
Unity is essentially a scripting program and much easier to use than attempting the same tasks, for instance with C#.
The Unity section of the text is also well illustrated and clearly written.
Could someone learn how to use Maya and Unity from this book and its companion website? I think so. But if you lack artistic talent and training, it may not get you anywhere.
Jerry
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Best Unity book so far
15 Mar 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
I've found this to be the most complete Unity book so far that I've read.
I specifically came to it not as a Maya user, and was interested to see how applicable the content would be to a different 3D package (modo in my case) and I'm happy to report that this book will be very useful to anyone wanting to learn Unity, not just the Maya crowd. The author actually states that Maya isn't his favorite package but that he chose it due to the wide availability of additional learning resources that exist for it, as well as the fact that students can get the package free for non-commercial use.
The Maya sections fall into a couple categories, general modeling tutorials that you should be able to easily translate into another 3D package that you're familiar with, and detailed Maya-specific sections which are still useful for the advice they provide thought they may take a little more work to replace with another package.
In any case, all of the assets developed as well as the final game itself are freely downloadable from the author's web site, so if you're mostly interested in the Unity side of things (or some specific aspect of the development) you can just download the bits whose creation tutorials you skipped.
The game developed throughout the book provides a good (and good looking) example for a first-person perspective game. If you're interested in seeing what the book is about you can download the finished game and take it for a spin first. Also the "Look inside this book" Amazon feature will give you a good idea of the writing and the information included.
The scripting language used is (mostly) JavaScript rather than C#.
There are numerous Tips and Tricks sections as well as practical "Why?" boxes that explain why something is done rather than simply telling you "do this and this" when there's some really specific reason why you should do it that way rather than some other way that might seem just as good.
G.
I specifically came to it not as a Maya user, and was interested to see how applicable the content would be to a different 3D package (modo in my case) and I'm happy to report that this book will be very useful to anyone wanting to learn Unity, not just the Maya crowd. The author actually states that Maya isn't his favorite package but that he chose it due to the wide availability of additional learning resources that exist for it, as well as the fact that students can get the package free for non-commercial use.
The Maya sections fall into a couple categories, general modeling tutorials that you should be able to easily translate into another 3D package that you're familiar with, and detailed Maya-specific sections which are still useful for the advice they provide thought they may take a little more work to replace with another package.
In any case, all of the assets developed as well as the final game itself are freely downloadable from the author's web site, so if you're mostly interested in the Unity side of things (or some specific aspect of the development) you can just download the bits whose creation tutorials you skipped.
The game developed throughout the book provides a good (and good looking) example for a first-person perspective game. If you're interested in seeing what the book is about you can download the finished game and take it for a spin first. Also the "Look inside this book" Amazon feature will give you a good idea of the writing and the information included.
The scripting language used is (mostly) JavaScript rather than C#.
There are numerous Tips and Tricks sections as well as practical "Why?" boxes that explain why something is done rather than simply telling you "do this and this" when there's some really specific reason why you should do it that way rather than some other way that might seem just as good.
G.
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