Maya in the Video Game industry book. - Page 4

# 46 20-07-2004 , 06:57 PM

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once again, this board is inspirational.
which is kind of a strange adjective to apply to a message board...

make sure you don't rush annoying clean-up details like fonts, text layouts, etc- nit-picky graphic design stuff. a lot of times the design of the book will make or break it in terms of sales, whatever the content may be.
no doubt I'm preaching to the choir here, but hey.

aaaanyways, many congrats, can't wait to see the book!
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-katie

"a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - rwe

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# 47 20-07-2004 , 07:20 PM

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Thanks.

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of control over the style of the book or the cover or whatnot, although I have made suggestions. We'll see what happends!

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 48 21-07-2004 , 07:08 PM

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Originally posted by mtmckinley
Nirsul,

Chp 1 - How the Game Industry Works (Getting a job, studio positions and descriptions, what's a publisher?, etc.)
Chp 2 - Modeling
Chp 3 - Texturing (as described above)
Chp 4 - Rigging
Chp 5 - Animation
Chp 6 - Particle FX

Originally Posted by

(a bit about me, I have worked on 3 game projects in the past 5 years, 2 never made it to the market but 1 title will be release this fall that I worked on in the early stages. I am now studing Computers Art - Visual Effects for my BFA. )

Unfortantly I did not get to the forum in time to submit my comments. Most games consist of an engine that takes inputs from the model (as most know). The AI and other things like Dynamics and Particals are controled in the game engine. This gets extreamly complecated for the programmers and is most likly never touched by the modelers.

I disagree on a chapter covering Particles unless you are going to ad something like a Cinimatic chapter using the particals. By Cinimatic I mean the intro animatics for the in game play that are in higher res than the game. This I believe would be a benifit.

After all, by next year you should start to see the game industry merge with the movie industry. Maybe in 5 years or so they might be working side by side like Lucus Art's.

As for the Animimation chapter, that too is usally controled by the engine. The model setup and keys in the OBJ file contain specific setups for the specific game engine. Unless you have worked in every game company, its near impossible to lecture what the write way and wrong way is to setup your animation. (of course there are standards that the bigger game companies use)

With that said, I propose that the writter uses a common middleware software to develope games. The middleware would be a standard game engine used in most of the less popular games today. That way the user of the book can test there models in a real live game engine.

Also, another thing about creating stuff for games. I believe strongly that you must have an art background as do most of my friends who the game industry tell me all the time. They always tell me they are looking for both artists and skilled modelers / level designers / and texture artists.

Most important for games & maya:
1) Good solid Polygon Geometry.
2) Good textures.
3) animation walk cycles, run cycles, jump cycles in the guidlines given for the game engine.

I believe that 1 chapter on textures is never enough. More than 3 different examples for Textures and 3 different types of game models would be alot better than one focused chapter one spacific model.

I was most disapointed with one book I bought that covered how to create a charator model and all they covered was one model through the whole book.

I believe people need to see several exaples in several environments. I would recommend a section in the book that contains the tutorial resource you find on the web.

For example, I did not know about this wonderful site till I started looking for a cloth turorial for Maya. I search the search engines all the time and the first 10 are usally the only links I touch because one of them usally has what I want.

Good luck on the book. And I hope this helps.

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# 49 21-07-2004 , 11:26 PM

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unfortunately, the page-count I'm given to write this doesn't afford me the luxery to write about how to do more than 1 character.

Also, as it is a Maya-Press book, Maya is the application used throughout.

The point of this book is to show how to create game art. There are so many different ways of implementing that art into a game that I do not talk about it other than saying just that "you're art director will inform you of the specifics of your project."

The particles in the book, for example, will talk about sprites and using geometry as a means of creating fx. In an actual game, some sort of fx editor is generally used and not Maya and this will be said.

All in all, this is not an advanced learning book. This is a book for the artist who has finished his "Maya Beginners" book and wants to know use this new knowledge to make game art.

Hope that answered some questions. Thanks a lot for the comments!

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 50 22-07-2004 , 07:56 PM

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now thats a book I want for christmas.

Dae

"I THINK, THEREFORE I AM"
René Descartes

www.mvorster.co.uk

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# 51 05-08-2004 , 08:18 PM

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Hey Mike!

You can now pre order the book @
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/item.a...ate%7C1&zxac=1

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 52 05-08-2004 , 08:46 PM

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Wow! I didn't realize it was ready for pre-order (especially since I've still got 2 chapters to write).

That's cool!

Thanks, Peltra. user added image

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 53 05-08-2004 , 09:42 PM

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cool!

-katie

"a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - rwe

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# 54 07-08-2004 , 09:19 PM

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Update: Chapter 6 has begun user added image

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 55 08-08-2004 , 12:49 AM

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How many pages will the book have?

Yeah, but no but yeah but no....

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# 56 08-08-2004 , 12:49 AM

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approx. 300 and it will have a CD with it

EDIT:

Wow, I answered quick. You must've just posted as I did a "new posts" search. user added image

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 57 29-09-2004 , 01:24 AM

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Hey, cool news! You can see the final cover at the Amazon link in my sig. user added image

Everybody go pre-order! lol user added image

-Mike
The Maya Toolbelt

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# 58 29-09-2004 , 02:37 AM

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Your book is also available through the largest wholeselller in the country: Ingram

Anyone who would like to get a copy through their local bookstore can do so (unless its a total stone age outfit)

I manage a bookstore here in California. I looked it up on our source list and there it was with full returnable status (which is good if you're a bookstore)

Me? Yeah I'll order myself a copy so I can take advantage of my booksellers discount user added image

Just thought I'd throw that out there

Dave

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