Initial Library Research Summary

I grabbed a few books from the Massey library about game design and creation to give me a starting point for my research -

Game Character Creation - with Blender and Unity
Chris Totten

Blender -

• Full-featured and powerful program that has been used on many movie and mobile game projects
• World's foremost free and open source 3D graphics application
• Flexible in terms of fitting into the game designer's workflow
• All 3D creation, that would be otherwise used in various different programs (e.g. ZBrush and Maya), can be accomplished all in Blender

Model Requirements for Games - 

• Amount of polygons depends on three thing - importance, distance and interactivity
• Also depends on the power of the engine and console
• High profile character clocks in at around 15,000 polygons with over half in the face alone
• Topology should be created with consideration to animation
• Make sure all polys are quads to begin with
• Joints on extremities should have at least three edge loops
• Layout out facial loops around openings and muscle placement

Baking Normal Maps -

• Takes texture information, lighting sculpting etc. then renders it to the models unwrapped UV
• In Blender, this is accomplished by baking a high-poly geometry onto a low-polygon copy

Rigging for Games -

• Many games run between 30 fps to 60 fps
• Complicated rigs drastically reduce frame rate
• Armatures/rigs should be built according to real body parts
• How much detailed articulation (facial features, fingers, feet etc.) is dependent on the same three things as the polygon count is

Unity - 

• Is a Y-up program, Y is the axis that points upwards
• Building a whiteblock level
• A prototype level out of simple geometry
• How level designers test whether game play mechanics in their levels work together
• First person controller
• Appears as a giant capsual
• Attached to the Main Camera object is a mouse look script which allows the camera to follow the motion of the player's mouse
• Importing models
• Imports assets by having them in the user's directory, but need a copy of the program on the computer for this to work
• Exporting your model as a FBX makes Unity's job importing models easier

Unity Scripting - 

• Uses variables: containers for storing information
• Utilized to assign characters speed, a gun's fire rate etc.
• Can change variable settings in the Inspector view
• Float values: store number information with the ability to use decimals points
• Boolean values: true or false statements used to switch object functions on and off
• String values: one or more words that can be stored in a variables
• GameObject: allows you to store an entire in-game object in a variable to be used later
• Transform: similar to GameObject but also give you access to transform the data 
• Collision: to tell the game what to do when certain objects collide
• Using functions: messages to tell the compute what to do with the data provided

Japanese Game Graphics - Behind the scenes of your favourite games
Works Corporation