Finally the eagerly-awaited next edition of Luke Ahearn’s cornerstone game art book: 3D Game Textures is on its way. The book will be refreshed per the latest revision of Photoshop and the latest game industry trends and developments. 3D Game Textures allows next-gen game artists to learn to create everything from bricks to books in Photoshop with this step-by-step instructional guide. Because texture is 99% of what a gamer sees when playing, this topic deserves considerable coverage but has gotten little attention. Unlike anything on the market, this book concentrates soley on texturing, and provides an in-depth guide to game texturing with hundreds of high-quality examples. Game artists learn all they need to know on the topic, including basic artistic principles, tools and techniques, and specific step-by-step tutorials that explain how to create textures for myriad environments.
New Coverage of the latest version of Photoshop, including adding multiple edge tiling; adding Photoshop Bridge coverage; an updated metal tutorial and adding coverage of urban exteriors. Included in the second edition is a new chapter and an advanced project, featureing a large outdoor urban area – war torn city. Great amount of work on detailed textures (overlays and advanced blending in PS) that utilize many shaders. This environment will look roughly like Battlefield 2 or more recently Call of Duty 4. The scene will include effects as well – smoke and bullet holes. Grass, trees, curtains, signs, and more. The DVD includes: demo versions of relevant software as well as resource images.
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99 reviews for 3D Game Textures: Create Professional Game Art Using Photoshop
4.3out of 5
★★★★★
★★★★★
7
★★★★★
3
★★★★★
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★★★★★
SuperDave –
An ok book for an absolute clueless beginner, but limited real value to anyone whos been in the industry on the artistic side for a while, which is disappointing because it came highly recommended. Some of the techniques are outdated, and only suited to low-fi non-HD graphics, defiantly not suited for next gen development. Its decent at what it does though, so if your clueless about graphics for games, or want to learn some nifty photoshop techniques that you can probably find on youtube for free anyway, go ahead and grab it for the bookshelf!
Helpful(0)Unhelpful(0)You have already voted this
★★★★★
L. C. MacDonald –
There’s a lot to like about a book like this for the beginning texture artist, such as myself. It gives you the fundamentals of how to recreate a texture from the ground up without actually having to paint hardly anything! Just use what Photoshop has to offer and you can follow this book all the way through. That would be the downside though, must have Photoshop! If you don’t then I wouldn’t see you getting much out of this book except the techniques, which may or may not be done in another paint program. This is just a beginner’s book because it doesn’t cover anything about skin or human painting and texturing, which is what I’m now looking for in another book. This just covers inanimate objects, but it just blows my mind how easy it now is using his techniques. I’m no longer intimidated by a blank white screen with no textures, and am now cranking stuff out a lot better looking (not professional yet, but getting there). Deffinantly worth getting for beginners or people apprehensive towards texturing.
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★★★★★
A. –
Das Buch ist für Texturen, die in Photoshop gemacht werden. Lt. Dozent eines der wenigen Bücher, die wirklich gut und brauchbar sind. Buch in englischer Sprache. Versand erfolgte auch umgehend.
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★★★★★
Chuck Roddy –
This book turned me from a hack into someone who could actually make textures in a reasonable amount of time. The book does a great job of how to apply all those photoshop tricks to quickly create amazing results. It also gives you a methodology on how to make your textures easily modifiable.
The book mostly covers textures found in the environment. There is no organic character texture creation. There are also a couple technical flaws here and there with some of the steps. This isn’t too horrid, you’ll just get a slightly different looking texture here and there.
Even if you can’t draw a straight line to save your life, you’ll learn tools and tricks to make some really nice results. The time saved is well worth the purchase price.
Helpful(0)Unhelpful(0)You have already voted this
★★★★★
Todd S –
First the good.
The book does a good job of giving you a backround of the texture history and progression. It also gives you a lot of tips and tricks, explained plainly. It also provides step by step instructions on how to do many things that professionals rely on. Overall, it is a well thought out with lots of good information on a professional level.
The bad.
Since this is a third edition it makes use of the previous 2 editions and some of the material. Unfortunately it requires use of files that were on a disk from previous editions. There is no CD with this book so several of the exercises and files cannot be followed. There are worthwhile excercises you can do without the files, but it does diminish the value of the book significantly. Until the publisher puts these files online for the users, I can’t recommend this version of the book. Very disappointing.
Edit:
I contacted the publisher and they said that a CD does not come with it. Even though the book makes numerous mentions and has tutorials to follow. They also said I should send them all the page numbers with references to a CD so they can delete them. (I thought that is what an editor is supposed to do.)
Do yourself a favor and purchase a different edition so you can get the files or try and and an alternative means of getting the files.
Edit:
Author has since moved downloads to website so you can now access file. In this case it is certainly a worthwhile purchase.
Helpful(0)Unhelpful(0)You have already voted this
★★★★★
Matthias –
Das Buch ist ein echter Gewinn. Anfänger bekommen hier alles gezeigt und viele essententielle Grundlagen angelernt. Für Fortgeschrittene zeigt dieses Buch viele Techniken und Möglichkeiten seine Arbeiten weiter zu verfeinern. Ich beschäftige mich schon seit einigen Jahren mit der Materie und habe viel neues dazugelernt. Das Buch ist eine echte Empfehlung und jeden Cent wert.
Helpful(0)Unhelpful(0)You have already voted this
★★★★★
Razor Shultz –
This book spends the first 100 pages or so delivering an excellent primer on the basics of colour, our perception of objects including light/shadows, texture and form. This section is a few pages long and as someone who is clueless about art, it was nice to gain some insight from someone who is clearly in the know about artistic observation and analysis. All the relevant language is introduced rapidly and you’ll be able to communicate your thoughts and understand those of others very precisely. This particular part is over with quickly, and we move on from traditional art topics and language to the technological context. Computer colour theory is succinctly explained and again, with all the essential terms clarified so you can communicate meaningfully on the subject. You’re introduced to the various kinds of images you’ll need to produce as a texture artist; diffuse maps, illumination maps, opacity maps, specularity maps, cube maps, and normal maps. The illustrations that accompany these concepts, which can be difficult to grasp for people who aren’t well versed in their knowledge of game technology, are incredible. You’ll quickly understand what purposes the various kind of texture maps serve as they are demonstrated individually, and as part of a completely textured object.
The writing is waffle free and everything mentioned is worth understanding. Once you understand the critical technical knowledge of texture art, you’ll realise that the job of a game artist is much more than using photoshop to draw nice surfaces that will be wrapped around walls and other models in game. You’ll also feel very pleased you understood it all perfectly the first time, because as someone who personally knows a lot of budding game artists, I found they were generally unable to articulate to me exactly what a “normal map” was, and what purpose it serves.
Once the technical stuff is over entirely, you’re plunged straight into the texturing tutorials; if you’re used to following photoshop tutorials on websites you will feel right at home. You will follow set recipes as means to a certain end effect, and be encouraged to experiment on your own to broaden your skills. If you’re the kind of person who says “why would I buy a book just to follow strict tutorials when I can do that on the internet?” Well for one thing, these tutorials are advanced and incredibly well written, and because the effects are explained and you’re given direction as to how you can improve on your own. It’s all a part of teaching you the fundaments that you can then toy around with yourself.
One last note, this book is NOT for people who are new to photoshop. Although I am no artist (I can’t draw or paint or anything like that), I am a seasoned photoshop user with years of experience and I can guarantee you, if you do not have strong photoshop skills you will find it very difficult to follow this book because no time is wasted teaching the readers its functions – this is a book for people who have a working knowledge of photoshop.
To any artists who want to become game artists, I warn you now that there is a lot of technical stuff to understand, so if you don’t like the sound of studying how shaders work (programs that combine lots of texture images together for certain effects) then I suggest you give up on games. This is something I will write in every review I write on a game technology career – there is NO career in the game industry that you can do without technical knowledge. Accept you need to understand some complicated technological theory, and you will be fine. As said before, this book makes everything incredibly clear and you will call me an idiot for even suggesting the material is difficult. That said, for serious buyers I wish you fun times with this book, it’s great.
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★★★★★
Amazon Customer –
I have been interested in game development for a while now, mainly within the level design, creating new maps etc. I am learning and using the Unreal engine at present. I spent many months learning how to create levels and getting the hang of the level editor, UnrealEd. However, I wanted to start creating new content, never before seen, so somebody playing on the level will not recognise any already used assets such as models and textures. So I then started learning how to create models to include in my levels.
This being all very well, but I desperately needed new textures to use on my models and within the level its self. Im not very good artistically and thought I would never be able to create good textures even using Photoshop, which I used to open, try to use, fail and quit again!
I could do a bit of everything else, so thought I may as well get a book and see if that can help…..even if it helps me create the most basic looking textures!
This book had good reviews and looked like what I wanted to learn to be able to texture my levels my self.
So once this book came I worked through all the tutorials right to the end. They were easy to follow, informative and quite fun. I even then imported them into UnrealEd to use them in mess about levels and they worked a treat.
I found the start of the book a little dull as it went though all the things to look at when creating art such as things being 3D and not just 2D etc, though I understand it was the theory so to speak, I literally just wanted to get into Photoshop and start “doing”…..it took a little longer then I wanted to get to the “creating your first texture” part! However, this was just me and im sure many may disagree as learning all the fundamentals about how art is and why it is etc is needed for a base line?
Once you do start creating textures its great fun, as I thought I would never be able to do it well. I was surprised just how easy it can be to get fantastic results. Also the more effort and tweaking you put into a texture the better it looks.
Needless to say after reading this book, I am now creating good quality textures and know how to navigate Photoshop. Though no expert, its certainly made a huge difference in my work and now everything looks even more unique and original which was the overall goal.
However, just a few notes, I was hoping the book would cover UV laying out, but it doesn’t, also best tools and methods used to import in and out of game engines and possible some examples of best methods? None of this is covered.
This book literally is just about creating textures in Photoshop and nothing more, though a fantastic book and I would not be were I am now without it, I think it could have done with just a little bit more info about other areas…..again just my opinion.
I would recommend this book for anyone starting of with texture creation. I would say maybe just a little bit of knowledge of Photoshop before hand may help as some parts in the earlier chapters presume you know what to do when asked.
I will certainly be keeping this book near by.
Helpful(0)Unhelpful(0)You have already voted this
★★★★★
Alexander Seow –
This comment is for those who have seen the first edition and is planning to buy the second edition. TAKE NOTE:– The chapter on Fantasy Scene (Chapter 7 in first edition IS IN THE DVD OF 2nd edition. Yes, it’s not on paper print anymore and No, I’m not complaining. I just want all who expect to see the Fantasy Scene Chapter knows where to find it in the 2nd edition.
Honestly, I almost breakdown and cry when I couldn’t find that chapter in the new edition, wondering why the author took it out from the book. I almost want to launch a complain to Amazon.com until I flip the book again and again and again and… er… until I saw the print saying, “the Fantasy Scene chapter in in the DVD…”
Oh boy! I stopped whining immediately. :p
Over all, it’s a good book for anyone who WANTS TO LEARN PHOTOSHOP and TEXTURING. For those who thinks they know something, or in fact know it all, then you can don’t bother to look at it. Go write your own book! Period.
Five Stars for the book! Amen! ^_^Y
Helpful(0)Unhelpful(0)You have already voted this
★★★★★
GREG P –
I have been scouring the Internet for texturing tutorials for over a year, now, after reading this awesome book, I think I just saved myself hours and hours of wasted time looking for tips and tricks. It answered many questions I had, as well as revealing basic fundamentals that I had missed before, which was why I was struggling. Already my texturing has advanced 200% in 1 week! I am actually using GIMP Paint-studio 2.8, which I know quite well, so that also is a good recommendation that I can use different software and get the same or similar result. Truly, this is where you should start if you want to learn texture creation for games! (Although I should point out if you use Gimp or other software than Photoshop, the filters are not named exactly the same, but all the techniques are gone over pretty extensively, so you can figure out how to do it, and you will need to develop your own technique to get the same end result. But it is a good way to learn Texturing.)
SuperDave –
An ok book for an absolute clueless beginner, but limited real value to anyone whos been in the industry on the artistic side for a while, which is disappointing because it came highly recommended. Some of the techniques are outdated, and only suited to low-fi non-HD graphics, defiantly not suited for next gen development. Its decent at what it does though, so if your clueless about graphics for games, or want to learn some nifty photoshop techniques that you can probably find on youtube for free anyway, go ahead and grab it for the bookshelf!
L. C. MacDonald –
There’s a lot to like about a book like this for the beginning texture artist, such as myself. It gives you the fundamentals of how to recreate a texture from the ground up without actually having to paint hardly anything! Just use what Photoshop has to offer and you can follow this book all the way through.
That would be the downside though, must have Photoshop! If you don’t then I wouldn’t see you getting much out of this book except the techniques, which may or may not be done in another paint program.
This is just a beginner’s book because it doesn’t cover anything about skin or human painting and texturing, which is what I’m now looking for in another book. This just covers inanimate objects, but it just blows my mind how easy it now is using his techniques. I’m no longer intimidated by a blank white screen with no textures, and am now cranking stuff out a lot better looking (not professional yet, but getting there).
Deffinantly worth getting for beginners or people apprehensive towards texturing.
A. –
Das Buch ist für Texturen, die in Photoshop gemacht werden. Lt. Dozent eines der wenigen Bücher, die wirklich gut und brauchbar sind. Buch in englischer Sprache.
Versand erfolgte auch umgehend.
Chuck Roddy –
This book turned me from a hack into someone who could actually make textures in a reasonable amount of time. The book does a great job of how to apply all those photoshop tricks to quickly create amazing results. It also gives you a methodology on how to make your textures easily modifiable.
The book mostly covers textures found in the environment. There is no organic character texture creation. There are also a couple technical flaws here and there with some of the steps. This isn’t too horrid, you’ll just get a slightly different looking texture here and there.
Even if you can’t draw a straight line to save your life, you’ll learn tools and tricks to make some really nice results. The time saved is well worth the purchase price.
Todd S –
First the good.
The book does a good job of giving you a backround of the texture history and progression. It also gives you a lot of tips and tricks, explained plainly. It also provides step by step instructions on how to do many things that professionals rely on. Overall, it is a well thought out with lots of good information on a professional level.
The bad.
Since this is a third edition it makes use of the previous 2 editions and some of the material. Unfortunately it requires use of files that were on a disk from previous editions. There is no CD with this book so several of the exercises and files cannot be followed. There are worthwhile excercises you can do without the files, but it does diminish the value of the book significantly. Until the publisher puts these files online for the users, I can’t recommend this version of the book. Very disappointing.
Edit:
I contacted the publisher and they said that a CD does not come with it. Even though the book makes numerous mentions and has tutorials to follow. They also said I should send them all the page numbers with references to a CD so they can delete them. (I thought that is what an editor is supposed to do.)
Do yourself a favor and purchase a different edition so you can get the files or try and and an alternative means of getting the files.
Edit:
Author has since moved downloads to website so you can now access file. In this case it is certainly a worthwhile purchase.
Matthias –
Das Buch ist ein echter Gewinn. Anfänger bekommen hier alles gezeigt und viele essententielle Grundlagen angelernt. Für Fortgeschrittene zeigt dieses Buch viele Techniken und Möglichkeiten seine Arbeiten weiter zu verfeinern. Ich beschäftige mich schon seit einigen Jahren mit der Materie und habe viel neues dazugelernt. Das Buch ist eine echte Empfehlung und jeden Cent wert.
Razor Shultz –
This book spends the first 100 pages or so delivering an excellent primer on the basics of colour, our perception of objects including light/shadows, texture and form. This section is a few pages long and as someone who is clueless about art, it was nice to gain some insight from someone who is clearly in the know about artistic observation and analysis. All the relevant language is introduced rapidly and you’ll be able to communicate your thoughts and understand those of others very precisely. This particular part is over with quickly, and we move on from traditional art topics and language to the technological context. Computer colour theory is succinctly explained and again, with all the essential terms clarified so you can communicate meaningfully on the subject. You’re introduced to the various kinds of images you’ll need to produce as a texture artist; diffuse maps, illumination maps, opacity maps, specularity maps, cube maps, and normal maps. The illustrations that accompany these concepts, which can be difficult to grasp for people who aren’t well versed in their knowledge of game technology, are incredible. You’ll quickly understand what purposes the various kind of texture maps serve as they are demonstrated individually, and as part of a completely textured object.
The writing is waffle free and everything mentioned is worth understanding. Once you understand the critical technical knowledge of texture art, you’ll realise that the job of a game artist is much more than using photoshop to draw nice surfaces that will be wrapped around walls and other models in game. You’ll also feel very pleased you understood it all perfectly the first time, because as someone who personally knows a lot of budding game artists, I found they were generally unable to articulate to me exactly what a “normal map” was, and what purpose it serves.
Once the technical stuff is over entirely, you’re plunged straight into the texturing tutorials; if you’re used to following photoshop tutorials on websites you will feel right at home. You will follow set recipes as means to a certain end effect, and be encouraged to experiment on your own to broaden your skills. If you’re the kind of person who says “why would I buy a book just to follow strict tutorials when I can do that on the internet?” Well for one thing, these tutorials are advanced and incredibly well written, and because the effects are explained and you’re given direction as to how you can improve on your own. It’s all a part of teaching you the fundaments that you can then toy around with yourself.
One last note, this book is NOT for people who are new to photoshop. Although I am no artist (I can’t draw or paint or anything like that), I am a seasoned photoshop user with years of experience and I can guarantee you, if you do not have strong photoshop skills you will find it very difficult to follow this book because no time is wasted teaching the readers its functions – this is a book for people who have a working knowledge of photoshop.
To any artists who want to become game artists, I warn you now that there is a lot of technical stuff to understand, so if you don’t like the sound of studying how shaders work (programs that combine lots of texture images together for certain effects) then I suggest you give up on games. This is something I will write in every review I write on a game technology career – there is NO career in the game industry that you can do without technical knowledge. Accept you need to understand some complicated technological theory, and you will be fine. As said before, this book makes everything incredibly clear and you will call me an idiot for even suggesting the material is difficult. That said, for serious buyers I wish you fun times with this book, it’s great.
Amazon Customer –
I have been interested in game development for a while now, mainly within the level design, creating new maps etc. I am learning and using the Unreal engine at present. I spent many months learning how to create levels and getting the hang of the level editor, UnrealEd. However, I wanted to start creating new content, never before seen, so somebody playing on the level will not recognise any already used assets such as models and textures. So I then started learning how to create models to include in my levels.
This being all very well, but I desperately needed new textures to use on my models and within the level its self. Im not very good artistically and thought I would never be able to create good textures even using Photoshop, which I used to open, try to use, fail and quit again!
I could do a bit of everything else, so thought I may as well get a book and see if that can help…..even if it helps me create the most basic looking textures!
This book had good reviews and looked like what I wanted to learn to be able to texture my levels my self.
So once this book came I worked through all the tutorials right to the end. They were easy to follow, informative and quite fun. I even then imported them into UnrealEd to use them in mess about levels and they worked a treat.
I found the start of the book a little dull as it went though all the things to look at when creating art such as things being 3D and not just 2D etc, though I understand it was the theory so to speak, I literally just wanted to get into Photoshop and start “doing”…..it took a little longer then I wanted to get to the “creating your first texture” part! However, this was just me and im sure many may disagree as learning all the fundamentals about how art is and why it is etc is needed for a base line?
Once you do start creating textures its great fun, as I thought I would never be able to do it well. I was surprised just how easy it can be to get fantastic results. Also the more effort and tweaking you put into a texture the better it looks.
Needless to say after reading this book, I am now creating good quality textures and know how to navigate Photoshop. Though no expert, its certainly made a huge difference in my work and now everything looks even more unique and original which was the overall goal.
However, just a few notes, I was hoping the book would cover UV laying out, but it doesn’t, also best tools and methods used to import in and out of game engines and possible some examples of best methods? None of this is covered.
This book literally is just about creating textures in Photoshop and nothing more, though a fantastic book and I would not be were I am now without it, I think it could have done with just a little bit more info about other areas…..again just my opinion.
I would recommend this book for anyone starting of with texture creation. I would say maybe just a little bit of knowledge of Photoshop before hand may help as some parts in the earlier chapters presume you know what to do when asked.
I will certainly be keeping this book near by.
Alexander Seow –
This comment is for those who have seen the first edition and is planning to buy the second edition. TAKE NOTE:– The chapter on Fantasy Scene (Chapter 7 in first edition IS IN THE DVD OF 2nd edition. Yes, it’s not on paper print anymore and No, I’m not complaining. I just want all who expect to see the Fantasy Scene Chapter knows where to find it in the 2nd edition.
Honestly, I almost breakdown and cry when I couldn’t find that chapter in the new edition, wondering why the author took it out from the book. I almost want to launch a complain to Amazon.com until I flip the book again and again and again and… er… until I saw the print saying, “the Fantasy Scene chapter in in the DVD…”
Oh boy! I stopped whining immediately. :p
Over all, it’s a good book for anyone who WANTS TO LEARN PHOTOSHOP and TEXTURING. For those who thinks they know something, or in fact know it all, then you can don’t bother to look at it. Go write your own book! Period.
Five Stars for the book! Amen! ^_^Y
GREG P –
I have been scouring the Internet for texturing tutorials for over a year, now, after reading this awesome book, I think I just saved myself hours and hours of wasted time looking for tips and tricks.
It answered many questions I had, as well as revealing basic fundamentals that I had missed before, which was why I was struggling. Already my texturing has advanced 200% in 1 week!
I am actually using GIMP Paint-studio 2.8, which I know quite well, so that also is a good recommendation that I can use different software and get the same or similar result.
Truly, this is where you should start if you want to learn texture creation for games!
(Although I should point out if you use Gimp or other software than Photoshop, the filters are not named exactly the same, but all the techniques are gone over pretty extensively, so you can figure out how to do it, and you will need to develop your own technique to get the same end result. But it is a good way to learn Texturing.)
Sheila Mark –
super