You're a student. One day you wake up and your room looks different. You can't quite put your finger on why. It just looks wrong, somehow, well... bigger. You roll over and slap your face on the bare floorboards. Instantly you're awake. You understand. Your bed's gone. So is your pillow, sheets, the wardrobe, your chair, and the bedside cabinet. In fact, it's all gone. You leap up and bound down the stairs to face your housemates. They've left you a note on the kitchen table: "You can have your stuff back, as long as you can remember what was there. Whatever you can't remember goes to the dumpster." You think, "Where did I get such hilarious housemates?" but you're uneasy. What did I have in my room?
We all get so used to stuff that we don't really see it anymore. That is, unless you're one of those people with a photographic memory. Most of us aren't. Take it all away and we won't be able to tell what we're missing—just that things don't look right. Rooms and places are sterile without random things and junk. A little empty, but we don't know why. That's worth bearing in mind as a game artist. Most of your job is down to seducing the player into thinking they're in a real place. If the place feels sterile, empty, you've failed. The answer to this is to start paying attention to the world you live in - and that starts with the room, bus, train carriage, or plane you're in now.
Ask yourself—is this place neatly organized? Is this stuff where it's supposed to be, orderly, or just lying around? Is that table straight or at an angle with the wall? Is the sheet on that bed ironed or crumpled? Is that bag or suitcase new and shiny or a little bit worse to wear? Have the objects that are here perhaps seen better days?
As an asset and level creator it's actually best to lean on the side of worn, weary and aged than neat, orderly and new. That's what we'll base this chapter on. Let's create some standard assets that are going to give a sense of life to the scene, without stealing the show. You should almost not notice them, but if someone took them away, you'd feel something was wrong.
In this chapter you will learn how to:
- Build a fence with posts and wire mesh
- Quickly generate believable buildings
- Import and clean up 3D-Warehouse models for game use
- Generate quick standard assets such as barrels and tools
Along the way you'll pick up loads more SketchUp skills. You'll also practice what you already know from the previous chapters.
There's nothing better than some fencing when you want to keep the player out of areas you've not had time to fill with assets. There's a fringe benefit, too. The more you keep them away, the more they will try to get in, which keeps them playing. Fencing also looks good, but only when you follow my one-step plan:
- Make it as grubby as you can
Yes, make it as grubby, shabby, and broken down as is allowable within your overall game style. There's nothing more appealing in games than old broken stuff. Having old, broken, messy stuff lying around everywhere makes us feel like we're really living in the game. I used to really live when I was a student.