Google SketchUp for Game Design: Beginner's Guide

Works well with the other Robin de Jong book

Okay

Remark: This is a summary of the review I made on my blog (which targets students and architects). You can read it at[...]The book is, like most books I read from Packt, reasonably priced and paper and print quality is good. It is well structured, with clear goals and promises of what will be delivered in each chapter. But be warned that this is primarily a Beginner's Guide (which is marked on the cover), so I sometimes felt that it focused quite a bit on a step-by-step approach.The first few chapters present a general outlook on developing (modeling and texturing) "props" or "assets" for a Game. This is not a book about creating walking animated characters or to develop the scripts for a First Person Shooter or a Massive Multi-player Online Environment. There are other books that explore these topics.I think the writer has chosen the right content for the book, but maybe not the right title... Only at page 55, you will open SketchUp for the first time, to model a wooden pallet. The first three chapters are looking at "other tools" and "other resources" mostly: stock model and texture websites, some utility software and a full chapter on preparing a texture for the wooden pallet we will develop.Contrary to the habits of architectural modelers to create complex models with simple colors, game modeling is quite the reverse: creating simple geometry, but heavily relying on textures. This is an important distinction to make when you come from an architectural background.While Adobe Photoshop is widely used by artists worldwide, this book explains all texturing work using the GIMP, the Open Source photo manipulation software. The end result is quite the same, but architects typically are not used to this software. But my advice is to just follow along in whatever software you prefer. There are quite some interesting workflow tips and techniques explained in this book. One particular example makes a simple colored model that is translated into GIMP, where it serves as flat colors to easy the selection process and the creation of masks.It is shown how easy it is to load the model, position it, add colliders, so you don't fall through and than how to add a First Person Controller, which is included with Unity3D, that you can use to walk around freely. If you do this for the very first time, this is very rewarding moment and might be all you need to do when you are mainly interested in game modeling to present your design to others.Almost at the end, and this is very interesting for other use cases too, there is a chapter on how to model a full car, starting from a few blueprints and some pictures. The model is not perfect, but very usable and not too heavy.ConclusionOverall, this is an interesting book, primarily for a beginner audience, but only half of it is actually working inside SketchUp. But the results you obtain are relevant and are reachable for everybody, which is not always the case in more advanced modeling or visualization books.

I'm a SketchUp author myself, and it's always fun to see what others are writing about.This book actually targets two industries: game design and film / stage. Both use storyboarding to lay out scenarios, and Robin de Jongh explains how to do this in SketchUp, helped by other applications. I'm not an expert (to put it generously) in either field, so the fact that this is a self-stated "Beginner's Guide" is great for me.To be clear, this isn't a book that teaches SketchUp modeling, though there's nothing presented that requires advanced SketchUp skills. But you'll be ill-served if you pick up this book with no SketchUp experience at all. This book is really about integration - combining SketchUp skills with skills in other applications.Like Robin's previous book on rendering, this one is quite fun to read. Robin is very funny, and while this one isn't as laugh-out-loud as his first one (maybe his editors wanted this one to be more serious), the intro to each chapter is something to look forward to. And his casual, informal, writing style makes this book a lot more fun than your typical, dry "how-to" book.And like in his first book, Robin's passion for free stuff comes through loud and clear. He uses free software for graphic editing (GIMP), and finds places to download free models and textures (CGTextures). He demonstrates using Unity 3D for setting up the environment after importing SketchUp assets (terrain and buildings and props). He also focuses on doing things as easily as possible - such as making model changes in SketchUp, rather than in more complex app's like Unity.There's a lot in here about textures and materials. Not just how to use them in SketchUp, but the most efficient way to use them. Game design is all about speed, and Robin goes into detail about how to reduce the size and number of graphics to keep things running well. This is an important concept for any modeler, but particularly for the target audience of this book.He devotes a chapter to terrain modeling, which makes sense - game environments (like the real world) aren't always flat planes. By combining plan view graphics and textures with the Sandbox, Stamp, and Drape tools you can build game-worthy spaces.The second-to-last chapter is my favorite - I've been meaning to write something like this myself for a while - how to design a realistic-looking car in SketchUp. It's a fun project that requires some patience, done with a set of easily-downloadable car plans and some car photos. The resulting model is quite rewarding.By the end of the book, you're walking around in your own game environment, complete with assets (buildings, cars, tools) and backgrounds and lights.The appendix demonstrates an app I hadn't heard of - MakeHuman, used for, well, making humans. This is another tough task to accomplish in SketchUp alone, and every game (or stage or movie set) needs a bunch of those pesky humans in it.My one complaint (if that's the right word) about Robin's first book was that its black and white graphics didn't always convey very well. This new book is also printed in grayscale (I didn't see the e-book but I assume it's in color). But the pictures look much better in this new book - even in grayscale everything is crisp and easy to identify.If you're thinking of trying your hand designing games or film sets, this book is a great place to start. I know a lot of teenagers who would go nuts trying out the book's projects. I imagine that someone who becomes really proficient in the applications shown in Robin's book would be well on their way to a cool career.

I bought this book for my partner as he enjoys learning 3D animations and game designing so I am writing his view of the book.Its an excellent quality book and paper with detailed well drawn diagrams throughout, easy to follow and understand. It has some great projects for you to complete step by step and then allows you to upload into unity 3D a free software game programming environment. Everything Robin Dejongh advocates using in the book is available for free download so you can complete every project easily.In a few places the author assumes you know a little bit about sketchup first as he makes the odd assumption as to what to do next; and it could mean one option or another; but you can easily follow it through and is not a real problem. The step by step stages make picking up and learning this software nice and easy.This book is perfect for those wanting to learn 3D game design and if he lost the book he said he would without doubt buy it again. You can also go to the website for extra help if needed which is a great touch.