Although this marks the first post in what will hopefully be an interesting, compelling, mysterious, exciting, breathtaking, daring and life-threatening series, my first day in the office as a game developer is by no means the real beginning.
I have roughly noted that I’ve been working for the studio for 1 year and 3 months without making an income (ouch), and I am by no means the longest serving or highest contributing member. As the weather and my melanin-deprived skin type will attest to though, I am the most sunburnt.
The first day in the office represents a massive step in development terms for my colleagues and me; it allows us to be taken much more seriously by the industry. We’re no longer just a bunch of students trying to work together from home with the University labs as an essential crutch to stand up on, but instead a unified work force in a smart office, complete with spinning chairs and a freakin’ sweet banner.
To begin with though, there’s a hitch.
Through Teesside University, all the artists (including myself) are competent with Autodesk 3DS Max – a piece of software used to create, texture and animate almost anything you’ll see in a game, from street alleyways with exploding barrels to ample-breasted heroines. Retailing at about £3000 per license, we needed a cheaper alternative, and that approximately £500 alternative was Luxology Modo.
On the left is a selection of buttons taken from Modo’s interface, and on the right are Max’s equivalent buttons for the same functions: creating simple primitive shapes, cubes, cones and so on. Primitives are very useful objects to begin creating from and layout basic geometry, but already one piece of software is looking more compact, visual and friendly.
And perhaps most strikingly, when it comes to selecting, manipulating and editing those precious polygons, these are the toolbars used to access these options from Modo…
…and here is Max’s giant sliding menu…
Although it’s a struggle grasping a new and different interface, I’m finding Modo more intuitive. The first time I used Max I felt overwhelmed by walls of text. While Modo is offering most of the same functionality to meet the same ends, it’s broken down into smaller, separated menus; it’s a simple and probably pedantic difference, but something I feel would make a noticeable positive learning experience to a first-time user.
So that’s my introduction, from now on through Game Development for Gamers, I want to show you simple methods game artists use to create what you see on a screen without falling into ‘tutorial’ territory. Maybe you’ll learn something you didn’t know before, and maybe what you’ll learn will be interesting. Fingers crossed, eh?
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