PluralSight - A Programmer's Guide to Game Art for Unity

edited in General
http://pluralsight.com/training/Courses/TableOfContents/programmers-guide-game-art-unity

I'm a big fan of PluralSight and for $29 (a month's subscription, about R320) it's well worth investing to get well made training videos on a variety of technologies; and I've just discovered this course.

Topics include:
  • Environment Construction with Blender
  • Environment Texturing
  • Environment Texturing Part 2
  • Tree Modeling and Texturing
  • Finalizing the Environment
They also have some videos for Photoshop and Unity3D Web Fundamentals with C#

Comments

  • IMHO programmer art usually looks ugly because of exactly two reasons: bad colours, and inconsistency in style and detail, two thinggs that is easy to fix bad rarely adressed. (Bad colours is one of my pet peeves; it's sad that my profession has brought so much extra ugliness into the world [Although of course some artists my say the same about my own choices ;)]). It does look quite interesting through; if you do it, I would be interested to know if it is any worth.
  • @hermantulleken didn't you write an article on some colour theory at some point?
  • @hermantulleken, but HIGH contrast colours are so pretty! :P
  • Yeah, some procedural methods for choosing colors that are not totally horrible (as random colours usually are): http://devmag.org.za/2012/07/29/how-to-choose-colours-procedurally-algorithms/

    These techniques work best when you consult an artist (or use your own art insight) - what you really should do is query the artist until you understand their "algorithm", and code that up. It's difficult though; experts cannot always verbalize what they do. But some can - Paul at Luma has helped me in many instances with procedural artsy methods; he just has a way of breaking things up in a programmer-friendly way, and is a bit crazy (with respect) enough not to dismiss what computers can do on the art front.
  • edited
    @Rigormortis Of course they are, I use them all the time :). Just not (0, 1, 0), (0, 0, 1), (1, 0, 0) and grey on the same screen!
  • Also, a free 2D version of that kind of content: http://2dgameartforprogrammers.blogspot.co.uk/ :P
  • @hermantulleken - funny enough @Nandrew actually mentions the importance of knowing colours in his NAG magazine collumn this month. Think he was referring more to it in relation to marketing material, but still. Article was about what to know if you are a 1 person team. Was quite a good read.
  • I'm sorry to say that this course is quite disappointing. It's useful if you have no idea where to start with 3D modeling, texturing and getting it into Unity3D
  • @FanieG I really enjoyed writing that one.
  • edited
    I got a newsletter last night saying that PluralSight has bough digital-tutors who focus on creative subjects. I had a quick look and there are 2D, 3D, CAD, Game Development (using cryENGINE, Unity & UDK), Video and VFX and other videos.

    Might be worth checking out

    Edit: I just looked at Game Art and they cover: Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, ZBrush, TopoGun, Marmoset Toolbag, Photoshop, MODO and Mudbox
  • Wow I just posted about this, then saw this :P
    I've been using Digital Tutors for a few months now, by far the best beginner to Pro content available.

    Companies like EA and Blizzard use them.
  • edited
    My experience with Digital Tutors has been quite bad. I felt that the vast majority of their press announcements focused on how many hours of training they had just added to their library. But if you watched some of their videos, you'd find that the instructor was would give you several different ways of doing the same thing. (They'd say something like... "To open the animation editor, click View, Animation, Animation Editor. You can also click in your viewport, and change the viewport view to Animation Editor. You can also access it from the side tab, with Animation, Animation Editor. Or, finally, you can press 0.") So while some might think that they're just being exhaustive, I felt that they were just padding time so that they could brag about how many more hours they'd added to their library and, as a result, they were wasting my time.

    I felt that other competing libraries (e.g. The Gnomon Workshop, Eat3D, 3dmotive) had much better (even if generally much less) content, taught by people with much more experience, who knew my time was valuable, and who would work really quickly. After all, it's a video: if I need to see something again, I can just watch it again. If I need more information, all I need to know is what to Google. And, most importantly, by far the most useful lectures were ones that taught you a way of thinking, a design philosophy, and not about learning the interface to a program (which should be in the program's documentation anyway).

    That said, the last time I watched any of the Digital Tutors videos was some 4 years or so ago, so it's possible the quality of their material might have improved since then. Also, I realise that not everyone is learning art software to be artists, and that there might be value to knowing merely what buttons to press.
  • I prefer , eat 3d , gnomon workshop, 3d buzz, I consider digital tutors to be kind of bad ,thats based on art and 3d tutorials , I cant comment on anything about programming or unity
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