A complete guide to creating usable, realistic game characters with two powerful tools Creating viable game characters requires a combination of skills. This book teaches game creators how to create usable, realistic game assets using the power of an open-source 3D application and a free game engine. It presents a step-by-step approach to modeling, texturing, and animating a character using the popular Blender software, with emphasis on low polygon modeling and an eye for using sculpting and textures, and demonstrates how to bring the character into the Unity game engine. Game creation is a popular and productive pursuit for both hobbyists and serious developers; this guide brings together two effective tools to simplify and enhance the process Artists who are familiar with Blender or other 3D software but who lack experience with game development workflow will find this book fills important gaps in their knowledge Provides a complete tutorial on developing a game character, including modeling, UV unwrapping, sculpting, baking displacements, texturing, rigging, animation, and export Emphasizes low polygon modeling for game engines and shows how to bring the finished character into the Unity game engine Whether you're interested in a new hobby or eager to enter the field of professional game development, this book offers valuable guidance to increase your skills.

Learn to use Blender to create your own 3D characters for animation and video games. About This Video Build a 3D character model in Blender Bake a normal map in Blender In Detail Ever wanted to create your own 3D characters for games and animations, from the first polygon through to the final rigged character? This is the opportunity to build your skills by learning through an interactive and engaging course. In this course, you'll explore all about 3D modeling in Blender. You'll begin by creating a base mesh of the character in Blender, understanding how to create the head, body, hands, and feet. Next, from this base mesh, you will create the character's clothes, using Blender's sculpt tools to form creases and folds. You will also UV-map the character in Blender and get to grips with creating a unified UV map that can be used to develop texture maps in external paint programs such as Krita. You'll even discover the technique of painting textures for hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes. The course will then guide you on how to bake a normal map in Blender to capture high-resolution sculpt details and apply them to a lower poly model. In later sections, you will rig the character in Blender and adjust the weights so that it deforms credibly during the animation. The course will only focus on open source software, such as Blender and Krita to help you create a character that is ready for animation in Blender and ready to be imported into any 3D game engine such as Unity and Unreal. By the end of this course, you will have learned how to effectively create exciting characters in Blender for games and animations. Downloading the example code for this course: You can download the example code files for this course on GitHub at the following link: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Blender-Character-Creation-for-Games-and-Animation . If you require support please email: [email protected].

Learn to create game characters with Blender 2.8 and Unity About This Video Animate a 2D face with Grease Pencil Create animation cycles for a video game Export characters and animations from Blender 2.8 to Unity Develop C# script in Unity to control a game character In Detail Creating game characters and bringing them to life is made easier with Blender 2.8. Explore the full spectrum of features, along with useful tips and techniques through this interactive course. You'll learn to create a game character, export it to Unity, and configure it so you can control it in the game engine. Beginning with modeling, you'll use Blender 2.8 to build all the individual pieces of a Lego character. Next, you'll understand how to UV-map each of the parts, and then create an efficient, unified UV map of the entire character. You will use Blender's texture painting tools to create the character's clothes and the Sculpt tools to create high-resolution details of the hair. You'll then explore how to bake a normal map in Blender and apply textures to the character model. As you progress, you'll work on rigging the character. You'll begin with a single bone, and create the rig manually, building the character rig from the ground up. You'll then create a Foot Roll Rig and discover how to use Blender 2.8's new process for creating custom shapes to control the character. Once the rig is complete, the course will introduce you to an exciting technique - using Blender 2.8's new Grease Pencil tools to animate both a 2D drawn face and a 3D body at the same time. With this technique, you'll be able to develop the character's Idle, Run, and Jump animations, ready for use in a game engine. From exporting the character, animations, and textures out of Blender through to bringing them into the Unity game engine, you'll be able to learn systematically. In addition to this, you will get to grips with setting up the character in the game and retargeting third-party animations on to your character, using Unity's Humanoid Rig system. Finally, you will write C# script to incorporate your 2D and 3D animations, and get the character running around the level. By the end of this course, you will have developed the skills you need to create interesting game characters with Blender 2.8. Downloading the example code for this course: You can download the example code files for this course on GitHub at the following link: https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Blender-2.8-Game-Character-Creat...

Reserved, for a long time, to a small circle of enthusiast developers, 3D is not yet commonly used by independent video games development studios (the Indies). It's for a good reason: the entrance ticket is relatively high. With Blender 2.76 (free and Open Source), you can model, animate, create a 3D rendering and have a game engine. It is a perfect tool for the beginner and for the one that wants to create a commercial game. Blender is also a complement to tools like Unity, CryEngine, Unreal Engine and other commercial engines. Thanks to the resources freely available to everybody on the Internet, you don't have to be graphic designer or programmer to create a game. You don't want to read 400 pages of theory about modeling, animating and programming in python? This book was written for you. You are invited to create directly several game projects: a platform game (like Super mario), a First-person Shooter (like Doom, Far Cry or Half-Life), a Third-person RPG (like Tomb Raider, GTA or Watch Dogs), a voxel sandbox game (like Minecraft), a car race and a flight simulator. With these projects, about a hundred recipes will help you to create any type of game. If you aren't an addict, it'll come to you sooner than you realize. It's more fun to create a game than to play with the last blockbuster. You'll be the architect of a new world, with its own rules. The only limits are the one of your imagination... High technology enthusiast, games addict and 3D geek, the author wants to honor these games that have revolutionized this domain.

This is the eBook of the printed book and may not include any media, website access codes, or print supplements that may come packaged with the bound book. Master the Newest Blender Techniques for Creating Amazing 3D Characters: From Design and Modeling to Video Compositing Now fully updated for Blender 2.78b and beyond, Learning Blender, Second Edition, walks you through every step of creating an outstanding 3D animated character with Blender, and then compositing it in a real video using a professional workflow. This edition covers the powerful new selection and modeling tools, as well as high-efficiency improvements related to other parts of the project such as texture painting, shading, rigging, rendering, and compositing. Still the only Blender tutorial to take you from preproduction to final result, this guide is perfect for both novices and those moving from other software to Blender (open source and free software). Author Oliver Villar provides full-color, hands-on chapters that cover every aspect of character creation: design, modeling, unwrapping, texturing, shading, rigging, animation, and rendering. He also walks you through integrating your animated character into a real-world video, using professional camera tracking, lighting, and compositing techniques. The rich companion website (blendtuts.com/learning-blender-files) will help you quickly master even the most complex techniques with bonus contents like video tutorials. By the time you’re done, you’ll be ready to create outstanding characters for all media–and you’ll have up-to-date skills for any 3D project, whether it involves characters or not. Learn Blender’s updated user interface, navigation, and selection techniques Create your first scene with Blender and the Blender Render and Cycles render engines Organize an efficient, step-by-step pipeline to streamline workflow in any project Master modeling, unwrapping, and texturing Bring your character to life with materials and shading Create your character’s skeleton and make it walk Use Camera Tracking to mix 3D objects into a real-world video Transform a raw rendered scene into the final result using Blender’s compositing nodes Register your product at informit.com/register for convenient access to downloads, updates, and corrections as they become available.

This book is a comprehensive guide to using Blender to create character rigs for games, breaking down the technicalities of rigging tools and techniques into easily digestible chunks. It provides all the tools needed to go from a static character model to an animation-ready, high quality, and fast performing game rig. Written to be accessible and easy to follow, the book covers character rigging theory that is supported by industry standard examples of how to apply that theory to character rigs for video games. It demonstrates the reasoning behind rigging decisions followed by instructions and examples on how to apply that knowledge to rig creation. It includes chapters that focus on the character deformation techniques that raise the visual quality of the model and subsequently of the animation and game it will be used in. This book will be vital reading to those studying games animation as well as early-career rigging artists, character animators, modeling artists, technical animators, and technical artists.

Learn how to build a complete 3D game using the industry-leading Unity game development engine and Blender, the graphics software that gives life to your ideas About This Book Learn the fundamentals of two powerful tools and put the concepts into practice Find out how to designand buildall the core elements required for a great game - from characters to environments, to props— Learn how to integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into your game for sophisticated and engaging gameplay Who This Book Is For This book has been created for anyone who wants to learn how to develop their own game using Blender and Unity, both of which are freely available, yet very popular and powerful, tools. Not only will you be able to master the tools, but you will also learn the entire process of creating a game from the ground up. What You Will Learn Design and create a game concept that will determine how your game will look and how it will be played Construct 3D models of your game characters and create animations for them before importing them into the game Build the game environment from scratch by constructing the terrain and props, and eventually put it all together to form a scene Import and integrate game assets created in Blender into Unity—for example, setting up textures, materials, animation states, and prefabs Develop game structures including a game flow, user interface diagram, game logic, and a state machine Make the game characters move around and perform certain actions either through player inputs or fully controlled by artificial intelligence Create particles and visual effects to enhance the overall visual aesthetic Deploy the game for various types of platforms In Detail In the wake of the indie game development scene, game development tools are no longer luxury items costing up to millions of dollars but are now affordable by smaller teams or even individual developers. Among these cutting-edge applications, Blender and Unity stand out from the crowd as a powerful combination that allows small-to-no budget indie developers or hobbyists alike to develop games that they have always dreamt of creating. Starting from the beginning, this book will cover designing the game concept, constructing the gameplay, creating the characters and environment, implementing game logic and basic artificial intelligence, and finally deploying the game for others to play. By sequentially working through the steps in each chapter, you will quickly master the skills required to develop your dream game from scratch. Style and approach A step-by-step approach with tons of screenshots and sample code for readers to follow and learn from. Each topic is explained sequentially and placed in context so that readers can get a better understanding of every step in the process of creating a fully functional game.

Blender has a lot of complex menus, nodes, and processes. But when you combine these with a little imagination, you can create realistic game characters straight out of another world. This course shows how to build a character with Blender's free 3D toolset, while you develop your modeling, sculpting, and texturing skills. Christian Bradley shows how to create a base mesh, sculpt the character, and bake it down into a low-poly version suitable for game play. He also shows how to UV unwrap the figure, apply normal maps, and paint in base colors and other details with Blender's Texture Paint mode.

Gain the insights and techniques you need to give life to your own custom characters, machines, and scenes in Blender 3D About This Book Learn how to establish the basic shape of a character on the basis of templates, and take it to completion using the tools available in Blender Develop realistic and awesome machines for your 3D projects and animation films Discover advanced techniques by adding fur to a character, creating a grass field, and fine-tuning a shot with post-processing effects to enhance your creations Who This Book Is For This learning path is for those who know the basics of Blender and have hands-on experience with the software. We will directly dive into creating characters first. If you wish to use Blender to create games, animated films, and architecture simulations, this learning path will benefit you. What You Will Learn Use your sculpting skills to carve the character features from the mesh Find the best possible flow for your edge-loops to enhance the character features and to get the best possible range of deformation Mix both the Blender Internal and Cycles rendering engines in order to render materials as quickly as possible Know when and where to use various types of geometry—something that saves time in one instance will pose significant problems in another Create a 3D robot toy model from start to finish using the basic modeling tools of Blender Make a full alien character using the skin mesh modifier and the sculpting tools with an artistic approach Use re-topology techniques to create a clean 3D version of the previously sculpted alien Model a full haunted house and its environment using more advanced modeling tools and techniques such as the Array Modifier, Instance duplication, and Curves In Detail Blender 3D is one of the top 3D animation software available. As the Blender software grows more powerful and popular, there is a demand to take your modeling skills to the next level. This learning path is divided into three modules that will take you on this incredible journey of creating games. The first module will take you on a journey to understand the workflow normally used to create characters, from the modeling to the rendering stages, using the tools of the last official release of Blender exclusively. You will be making production-quality 3D models and characters quickly and efficiently, which will be ready to be added to your very own animated feature or game. The second module will help you develop a comprehensive skill set that covers the key aspects of mechanical modeling. You will create many types of projects, including a pistol, spacecraft, robot, and a racer. By the end of this module, you will have mastered a workflow that you will be able to apply to your own creations. The final module will help you to create many types of projects using a step-by-step approach. Each project in this module will give you more practice and increase your knowledge of the Blender tools and game engine. This learning path combines some of the best that Packt has to offer in one complete, curated package. It includes content from the following Packt products: Blender 3D Cookbook, Second Edition by Enrico Valenza Blender 3D Incredible Machines, Second Edition by Christopher Kuhn Blender 3D By Example by Romain Caudron and Pierre-Armand Nicq Style and approach This easy-to-follow course will teach you how to create complex 3D characters, create incredible machines, and put them together to create a 3D scene. Each topic is explained sequentially in the process of creating various models, and includes detailed explanations of the basic and advanced features.

This book covers the process of creating digital characters for video games as well as for 3D printing and collectibles. It looks at character asset creation for high-end AAA console games as well as asset creation for legacy devices and the ever-growing mobile gaming industry. Lastly, it covers creation of figurines for 3D printing and collectibles. Digital Character Creation for Video Games and Collectibles provides a step-by-step walkthrough of creating these assets at an industry level standard. It includes the necessary theory that you need to understand how to be an effective character artist, but primarily focuses on the practical skills needed for creating character assets in the modern games and collectibles industries. This book will be of great interest to all beginners and junior character artists currently working in the gaming or collectible industry and for those looking to enter these industries. There is also relevant content in the highly detailed examples for people currently working in the industry and looking to pick up a few new tips, tricks and knowledge.