As technology evolves, the tools and requirements for creating current-gen game art are constantly changing. In this tutorial we will learn the current game art workflow in its entirety, from the low-poly model all the way to final game-ready asset. We will create a realistic grimy dumpster suitable for any urban setting.
This mammoth video training series features over 194 minutes of video instruction on all aspects of game art creation, including creating the low-poly and high-poly models, the UVW unwrap, baking normal maps from high-poly, and creating diffuse, specular and detail bump textures.
User Comments
( ADD YOURS )insic June 8th
This is awesome… perfect timing that I practicing Lightwave not 3DS Max though but this is fun… A lot of people waited this site to launch..
( )Shahid Rafique June 8th
Simply Great!
( )wow June 9th
wow insic ur beautiful…. o_o
( )Diego SA June 9th
She’s really beautiful! Glad she chose a great career!
Robbie Stewart June 9th
^^ hahaha. i agree
IJAHman June 9th
Hey Insic! How long you’ve been practicing Lightwave? Is it simple too learn?
( )I mean, some 3d apps have complicated buttons.. is lightwave easy to learn?
tnx
insic June 9th
I can say basics is simple
3D icons in my blog is a product of lightwave.
Modisana June 9th
Oh my God!!!
( )Nauman June 11th
Insic I LOVE YOU… ur beautiful
nice tutorial anyway…
( )junaid miran July 8th
Insic is cute but i dont think she is the author of this tutorial :S
:D
The author is Kaleb Aylsworth.
Sanid June 8th
Cool nice new Site , Keep it up will stay tuned
Will check this out a bit later
(one of the first comments out here
)
( )Htoo Tay Zar June 8th
Wow, Nice tut and new tut site. I think i should learn new CG tuts. Thanks a lot. Subscribed!!
( )saurabh shah June 8th
wow ! seems 2 be good … going to try now .. thnx for sharing
( )RVS June 8th
Great tutorial. Good thing to start with. Keep them coming
( )DavidS June 8th
Well done! Well done!
Great start for CG Tuts!
p.s – Greetings from London, Ontario
( )Mike Moran June 8th
Down and Dirty right off the bat, I love it! Kudos to the new site as well. Can’t wait for the next few months so it really gets running. And oh at the possibilities of the plus material!
( )shawn June 8th
This was my favorite website for information already and now you do this. You are by far the best one stop resource for all design creation. Thank you for these sites and thank you for the newest addition. I will subscribe to help you continue your domination in all things creative on the web.
Great Job!
( )Nysuatro June 8th
Nice tutorial. Looking forward for more.
( )ThaClown June 8th
Very cool!
I recently started learning Cinema4D, would you guys advise to try this tut in that software? (and keep focusing on 1 program) or learn 3DS Max 2009 as well?
Thanks for any tips!
( )tatasoka June 9th
C4D is a great program too. Most people use 3Ds Max, but you can do the same things in both programs in a different way.
( )babavalibob June 8th
Another tuts for 3d Hurray for CG tuts .
( )thank you…. for the tutorial,
Saad June 8th
ROCKS ROCKS ROCKS ! you guys simply rock, is there anything left for ‘envato’ team to come up with ? internet will owe you guys.
( )Matt June 9th
Anyone else notice the audio not syncing correctly with the video?
I did have some disagreements on the modeling techniques. Maybe some more advanced 3D people would know what i’m talking about. Anyways, at least we now have CGtuts. I appreciate that we have another great resource for learning the art of 3D and CAD
( )Sebase June 9th
Yeah, audio is not totally synced. Not really helpfull with a tutorial..
( )Mark Chaz June 9th
Today marks the most epic day in my design life, i just got into 3ds max and i have just completed the basics, i was getting bleak yesterday as i saw how little free online guides and tuts there were for 3ds max, and the ones that were available were really complex…this site could not have launched at a better time!
( )Palusko June 10th
“how little free online guides and tuts there were for 3ds max” – are you kidding? There’s tons, and I mean TONS of free tuts for 3ds max. Some are better, some are worse, some are easier, some harder, but to say that there is not enough of them is just not true. Still, it is nice to see a cool video tut that deals with game props. I sure will be watching this site….
( )yao June 9th
Can make those videos downloadable??Just like AETUTS??i will really appreciate it,thanks ^o^ so that i can watch it anytime anywhere,haha
( )Kid June 10th
Agreed …..I also would like to download these for further viewing when Im away from the internet.
( )miguel June 9th
WOW Great!!
Thank you veeeery much.
( )lawrence77 June 9th
Great….
( )ninjtso June 9th
nice one i really like it ,,, Very cool!
( )Aayush June 9th
This is amazing…
( )zik June 9th
Welcome to CGtuts !
And thanks for this very good first tutorial !
I may make a tuto “Introduction to Blender”, if some ppl are interested !
( )Alberto June 10th
Totally! That would be awesome!
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 10th
Hey thanks for the nice words! Seems like a lot of people are interested in Blender from the looks of the comments on the Skull tut….so I guess you better get started huh.
( )yao June 13th
Hey ^^ that’s cool,i will much more appreciate that u can introduce some basic knowledge like 3d max and maya,thanks for that^^
cedric July 13th
yes please do!!!
( )mike.l June 9th
i was writing an email asking about the launch of Cgtuts+ and i notic a new rss feed saying “Celebrating the Launch of Cgtuts+” what a day heheh
( )Jones June 9th
great
i hope bioshock 2 will be nice
( )Abderrahmane Tahri Jouti June 9th
Nice tutorial. keep going
( )3d June 9th
just downloaded blender nice and legal 3ds mas is 3 grand in sterling
looks good ill have to learn all of them
( )mohamed June 9th
hello, this web site amaze me more and more, i hope u keep it up……
( )Philo June 9th
Aweasome Tutorial!
( )Love 3DS Max! Using it for about a year now
Mohammad Atif June 9th
that’s really great
( )creationtwentytwo June 9th
Incredible!
I was waiting for a 3D based Tuts site and this is amazing. Fantastic tutorial and of a quality I hope is maintained.
Keep up the awesome work and I look forward to seeing what’s coming!
Subscribed!
( )jaanunlimited June 9th
hope to see C4d soon
( )awesome June 9th
awesome bring more sir
( )Makarand June 9th
Thank u
( )Adam Kerow June 9th
Yeh i’ve been waiting for this to launch and hope you guys will hopefully upload some cinema 4d tutorials. and thanks again =]
( )praveen June 9th
I am very happy waited this site to launch..
( )Snorri3D June 9th
Freaking AWSOME! keep em coming for 3ds max
( )Craigsnedeker June 9th
Videos not loadng…
( )simonataction June 9th
3DS Max is the best!
Great Tutorial
BTW: Watch the new Max 2010 there a some pretty nice, new Modeling tools!!! And real time Preview with Shadows, HDRI, Global Illumination and so on!
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=7658360
So great!!
( )Kingkhan June 9th
amazing…im sooooo glad that you’r covering CG….
and what better way to kick off than 3D studio max modelling and texturing tutorial….
brilliant….
please could you work on modelling a realistic model of a human face (i.e. famous actor such as tom cruise, tom hanks, Al Pacino etc) in 3dsmax and making realistic skin texture for the character as well as lighting and rendering for this..this would be awesome, as no other site does this at all….
keep up the amazing work mate…
( )Diego SA June 9th
Excellent first tutorial. Hope there will be Blender tutorials. I new at 3D and I only have Blender. Thanks for the tut!
( )lau June 9th
Awesome man
( )Roger June 9th
This is Great!!!
( )Thanx a Lot
Chiong June 9th
Excelente!, Los felicito en verdad son muy buenos los tutoriales
( )Aleso June 9th
nice tuto man, is good to see 3d tutorials like this one
( )Micke June 9th
wow, I love all your sites and I can’t imagine this to be anything but truly awesome!!!
Been inspired and learned so much from your collection of sites!
( )RemingtonM June 9th
I just watched the first tutorial, and it was good. The only thing that seemed to bother me was that I’m pretty sure that you recorded the audio seperatley from the video. I was kind of hard to follow when your talking about something that happened 20 seconds ago, while your doing something different. I’m not complaining because its an awesome free tutorial, I’m just giving some feedback.
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 10th
Yes you’re right, the audio gets slightly out of syn as the videos progress. I apologize for that…this was my first attempt at a screen cast. I realized after the fact, that the software I used to capture defaults to 29.75 frames per second, but the editing software exports at 30 fps…which caused a progressively more severe lag on the sound. I have fixed this issue now, so it should not be a problem in future tuts! Cheers, and thanks for the feedback!!
( )thomas hullin June 9th
Very interesting tutorial.
What about softimage xsi ? Can we create some tutorials on it ?
( )cedric July 13th
Now thats the one that has the least tutorials out here along with houdini. I would love to see more on those and Realflow also.
( )Rick Bross June 9th
much love, brother!
( )creationtwentytwo June 9th
I agree, while the tutorial is a fantastic insight into a pro workflow from a clearly talented guy, the out of sync audio makes this very tricky to follow. I’m not new to Max but I still found it hard to keep up, a beginner would really struggle here I think.
Also, adding video for download would be a great idea since the video’s need to be viewed full screen, and being Flash video, it minimizes every time you click your primary display or into another program.
It’s awesome you are offering this level of tutorial, but a little extra thought should have gone into it’s delivery I think.
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 10th
Yes it’s true about the audio (see post above). As for the difficulty level…this was not intended to be a beginner level tut, or a intro to 3dsMax, but rather, an overview of the total environment art workflow in games, and a little bit of theory to go along with it. I’m thinking of doing a beginner level intro to 3dsMax for my next tut (with the audio issue fixed of course.) Thanks for the feedback!
( )Menno June 9th
YES! Maya tutorials needed
Maybe a nice fluid tutorial?
Great site! Been waiting on this!
( )zuza June 9th
yea…cgtuts
( )Spartacus June 9th
Could the Audio be out of sync because we’re watching it on-line. It might be the case that when he watched it back on his local machine it was all in time.
I was getting some weird underwater noises in the background too.
I’m still on the first video just now but loving the insight into modelling for gaming.
( )Sirwan June 9th
Hey Kaleb, nice to see experienced pros here, but in your next tut could you describe what each button does when you click them, just abit more considerate of newbies. Maybe you could do a beginners quide to 3Ds max, I just graduated as an Architect and iv been using Sketchup through out my degree,… i gotta learn this fast, and its all unnerving.
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 10th
Yes, you’re right. This tut was an advanced level one, and focused more on overall workflow than on individual modeling tools. I’m thinking of doing an intro to 3dsMax for beginners as my next tut…so stayed tuned!
( )Sirwan June 13th
and btw stick to video tutorials, they’re much more effective, *am waiting for next tut* cheers
Spartacus June 9th
I forgot to say, Case studies are also make a good read and 3D world does this really well.
It’s good to have an insight into films or advertising projects created with 3D software or use compositing techniques.
( )simonataction June 9th
Yep, you are working really fast sometimes, using Hotkeys and so on.. OK I am able to follow you – and I’m from Germany and understand only ~90% what are you saying but what about a Display in the Video which Keys are Pressed for future Tuts?
I would say this great entry Tutorial is for Advanced Users – I think beginners are not able to follow you
But almost great, Please make more Videos, if you have enough time for this
And a personally question: On the top I read you have 3 Years prof. Experience – what did you made in the past with CG/Modding stuff? And was it hard to get to Digital Extremes?
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 10th
Yes, you’re right. This tut was an advanced level one, and focused more on overall workflow than on individual modeling tools. I’m thinking of doing an intro to 3dsMax for beginners as my next tut, and I’m going to incorporate a hotkey display as you suggested;)
As for my experience, I was the lead artist at a London based company called big blue bubble for 2 years, and I worked on several titles for the Nintendo Wii (Most have not been released yet, so I can’t say what they are). As for getting into DE…the application process was easy…the 6 years of education, and prior work experience I needed to get there…not so much:)
Hope that helps!
( )pixel.vasco June 9th
3DS MAXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Xcellent tutorials!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BTW: I have a question:
The module MoGraph for Cinema 4D generates very cool stuff through
Clone, Effortless Effectors etc ……
http://www.maxon.net/index.php?id=62&L=2goodluck_euro04.jpg
Is it possible to generate that kind of animations with 3DSMax? or is there any 3rd party plugin or scripts to do so?
( )Thanks ……
Dj June 9th
Very interesting, advanced tut. Would like some “basics” tuts as well.
Also, as mentioned above, audio and video didn’t match up making it difficult to follow. A good presenter – you and Jeff are a good match for screencasts.
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 10th
Yes it’s true about the audio (see post above). As for the difficulty level, I’m thinking of doing a beginner intro to 3dsMax for my next tut (with the audio issue fixed of course;)
( )Marshall June 9th
Nice! Thanks for adding CG to your arsenal.
( )…I’d love to see some tuts using MAYA
tobias June 10th
Great Tutorial .. It´ seems to be perfect to get CDTUTS also in the NETWORK …
( )Jochem June 10th
Wish list:
MAYA Tuts
Mudbox Tuts
Thanks!!
( )brepan June 10th
very nice, but for some of us you need to describe how you are doing things… not all of us know the basics
thanks alot anyway!
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 10th
Yes, you’re right. This tut was an advanced level one, and focused more on overall workflow than on individual modeling tools. I’m thinking of doing an intro to 3dsMax for beginners as my next tut, and I’m going to incorporate a hotkey display as well:) Cheers!
( )Bismarck June 10th
anyone maya?? xD, cool tut man, anyway there are somethings i would love to do in maya…yep im a begginer dude
( )beh June 10th
hi
( )Alex June 10th
What plugin did he use for the uv part!?
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 10th
It’s a free plugin called “Unwrap Tools v1.50″. Sorry…shoulda mentioned that.
( )Alex June 11th
Thank you.
kevin June 10th
I can’t believe this. I just told one of my boys I wanted to learn some 3d modeling. Wow! This is great….the whole ‘plus’ sites are awesome…thank you guys.
( )ZaFaR June 10th
Awesome thanks very much!
( )perry blunt June 10th
nice job man.could you please explain the tools and steps.
( )David Czech June 10th
Outstanding Tutorials.
The voice seems a little off with the video
I giggled at the “Hope you enjoyed yourself” part at the end
( )Buzzlair Voufincci June 10th
always been dreaming of playing around 3d. this whole thing is great!
( )jaanunlimited June 11th
nice
( )Ant June 11th
It’s called CrazyBump, not CraziBump.
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 11th
Oops…nice catch:P
( )tronpop June 11th
Can’t wait for Bioshock, yall! Cheers Kaleb!
( )MaxPeck June 11th
Very good tutorial, good all round coverage and whets the appetite for more.
It’s ashame about the audio sync, it’s slighly off putting.
Are you reuploading the tuts with synced audio? As I had downloaded all the tuts and find them so useful I’d nearly spend time and effort resyncing the material myself but if you’re going to to it for us I’ll practice some patience.
( )cgfan June 11th
great stuff. Thanks
( )Pat R. June 11th
Great Tutorial. Btw, I have a quick question about UVW unwrap. Your unwrap editor interface is different than mine. Is that a plug-in? Where do I get that? Thanks.
( )SreckoM June 12th
Idea is taken form Modo tutorial entirely (backyard alley)
but nevertheless great one.
( )Deke June 12th
Something’s not right. I follow your steps and create the low polygon. But when I’m about to start working on the high polygon a certain step isn’t working. When you are selecting the bottom front and back edge and click on “ring”, yours say “4 edges selected” but when I do it, it says “2 edges selected” so when I click on “connet” to get the parts for the “bumbs” in front nothing happens. Can someone help me?
One other thing. One of the last things you do in the “low polygon” version you select the dumpster and “convert it to editable poly” and the “symmetry” on the modifier list disappears but then in the “high polygon” version the symmetry modify is back in the list….what’s up?
Cheers!
Other than that, great tutorial , so far that is
( )Sergio Ordoñez June 12th
Hello Kaleb, great work
Would be possible getting the files of every step? I know how to model but would like to practice the texturing and rendering.
( )Ant June 12th
Hehe… by the way, almost same dumpsters in L4D (:
( )Srinivas June 12th
Very nice tutorial. Thank for sharing it.
( )Mkk June 15th
Attn: Envato we are waiting for your 3D marketplace.
( )Jukilo June 16th
You can download the videos.
Copy-paste the links of the vids into a flv dowload site like http://www.keepvid.com
part 1: http://blip.tv/file/2202880
part 2: http://blip.tv/file/2203319
part 3: http://blip.tv/file/2206886
part 4: http://blip.tv/file/2207106
part 5: http://blip.tv/file/2207434
part 6: http://blip.tv/file/2208074
Great tutorial, thanx a lot !
( )Jukilo June 16th
oops use http://dys.lexal.net/flv/downloader.php to download the links, keepvid doesn’t seem to work.
( )Brainshack June 17th
A tutorial i’d really like to see regarding Game Modeling:
Animate something and get it going in a real game. (e.g. a new weapon for HL-2 or something like that. that would just kick ass)
Keep on doing this videos, i think they work out much better then just text with images.
( )Bing June 21st
Tuts+ is the BEST!!!
( )Mehdi Pourshayegan June 23rd
Nice and very clear to understand
( )Gee June 23rd
How were you able to keep the image viewer over the active 3ds max window?
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 26th
I used a nice little free app called “always on top maker”. You can get it here: http://gosoftware.org/always-on-top-maker_software/
( )stop619 July 6th
Great asset for the community. Thanks, Kaleb!
( )mortal July 15th
Instead of filling 50% grey and overlaying for the shadows, you can fill it with anything and set the fill to 0%. Fill affects pixels only, not effects.
( )Mikael July 21st
great! I hope you make some more tutorials, I really enjoyed this one, hope you will make more tutorials with all your good general workflow comments!
this one is a great refresher for me that have been away from the industry for a while…
hope to see more!
( )David July 25th
I’m on video #2 and when you select the bottom edge in the front and back and hit ring to create and then hit connect to make an edge loop. mine will not create and edge loop once i hit ring and connect
basicly what im tying to say the ring option is not doing its job for some reason.
( )David July 25th
I’m on video two and the part im stuck as is after we turn the mesh to an editable poly once you get to the part when you select the bottom edges
from the front and back side when you hit ring and then connect to make the edge loop. my ring function want do anything and I tested it out on a box object and selected the bottom edges and ring works for that but with my dumbster it will not work
I need some help
( )Kaleb Aylsworth July 25th
Make sure that you don’t have any extra vertices on any of the contiguous edges in your ring selection. If any of the polygons that make up your ring have more than 4 sides, then it will break your ring function. Some other things that can break the ring function are: edges in your ring that are not welded (or the verts on the ends of those edges); polygons on the inside of your mesh; geometry that is otherwise unclean (not properly triangulated).
Hope that helps:)
( )jet July 29th
How you put that image window to foreground? THX
( )jet July 30th
Ooo i have it “always on top maker”
( )Mike August 6th
Great tut, Can you quickly explain what I suppose to put in the material editor in max for the final render
( )Kaleb Aylsworth August 7th
Thanks!
Under the “Maps” section of the Material ball:
Diffuse Color – Click on “None”, choose “Bitmap”, and then browse to your diffuse (color) texture map.
Specular Level – Click on “None”, choose “Bitmap”, and then browse to your specular (shine) texture map.
Bump – Click on “None”, choose “Normal Bump”, select the “Normal” slot, and then browse to your normal (bump) texture map.
Note: You will need to set up a light in your scene and render your view in order to properly see the effect of the normal and specular maps. A standard omni light should work just fine for testing purposes, although you will want to set up a proper light rig for a final render. If the normals are not showing up very clearly, just increase the value to the right of the “Normal” slot (I find that 3 is a good number for most situations).
Hope that helps!
( )Alex August 8th
Doesnt work for me, for some reason quicktime is messed up. sounds cool though
( )Mike August 11th
having a probelm with the baking when i add the normal map and preview it in crazy bump its a lil messed up, cant seem to find the problem, please help!! this is once i have created them from x normal.
( )Kaleb Aylsworth August 11th
Sometimes when you bake a normal map the green channel gets flipped. To fix it, try bringing the normal map into photoshop, opening your channels window, isolating the green channel, and going “Image > Adjustments > Invert”, or “Ctrl + I” on your keyboard. Then preview it in CrazyBump again to see if it worked:)
( )mike August 11th
its not the green channel i sorted that fine as you explained in the tutorial i flipped all the green channels, im getting funny lines and shading in areas its not suppose to and as i rotate around the object some parts look fine but then i change the angle and they get all messed up?
Mike August 11th
its not the green channel i already flipped them all in photohop, when i preview in crazybump theres lines and shading in places it shouldnt be, also parts of it look completely fine but when i go to rotate around the dumpster it gets messed up?
Mike August 11th
Could it be a problem with the UV mapping?
MIke August 11th
When i render the normal map in 3ds max it seems fine, but not in crazy bump, should i be worried?
fabian August 11th
Great tut but, there’s something i do not understand, the right, left, front and back polys of the dumpster have different smoothing groups, you did not chamfered the edges, and yet, you connected the front and right polygons in the same uv island, why you didn’t get errors in the normal map? as long as i know, polys with different smoothing groups should not be connected in the uvw…
Another thing that confuses me is that your low poly is noticeable bigger than the high poly in some areas, you know, because of the smooth, all the chamfered lines get rounded and underneath the low poly ones…but again, your final normal map is flawless…i mean, every time i have a low poly bigger than the high one, get weird shadows on the edges…did you tweaked the models or something like that?
Sorry for asking so many questions, and thnx for the great tutorial.
( )Mike August 13th
yo, nice tutorial, loving it just what i needed:) would love to see what people have created from this, post some images please;)
( )AzteKpr1de August 31st
Anyone knows if Autodesk is gonna make an OS X version of 3ds Max anytime soon?
( )Siphosethu October 5th
How to make a Game
( )vipul October 21st
thx
( )Mike November 3rd
great tut, any chance of getting a downloadable version?
( )Arik June 9th
Beat me to it
Gotta watch what you show, mr. designer employeed at a game design firm.
Good tutorial
Also as was said, the audio isn’t synced, which is a bit annoying.
( )Rick Bross June 9th
yeah, hahaha!
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 10th
Yeeesh! Fixing that now….but lets keep it on the DL ok;)
( )Siphosethu October 5th
where can i get a designer for a game bro
( )Stefan V. June 26th
Hey Kaleb/Everyone
I have a question.
This is my first time working with normal mapping and I can see that the smoothing groups on the lowpoly model determis quite alot of how the normalmapping turns out.
How should you arrange your smoothing groups to achieve the best normalmapping result?
( )Kaleb Aylsworth June 26th
This is a hard one to answer as it can only be approached on a case by case scenario. The main thing to remember is that the result you get when you apply the normal map to the low poly model will be a combination of the shading from the low poly model and the information from the normal map. Basically…if you have enough geometry in you low poly to have everything in one smoothing group without getting weird shading errors…then do that. But if you start to get weird shading in your low poly, you either have to add more geometry, or start separating you model into logical smoothing groups.
Hope that helps!
( )Stefan V. June 26th
Thank you very much for your reply Kaleb!
Though my normal map still won’t turn out properly.
I know this is big favour to ask, but would you be so kind to take a look at my project files ” I can include everything, Full mesh, exported mest, normal map”
I would really like to get the understanding of normal mapping, and if you could point out the the mistakes it would help me alot.
Kind regards Stefan
( )David August 6th
thanks for answering my question concerning the ring the edges I figured it out before I checked your reply. Yes i had rouge vertices’s from removing some of the loops but I’m done with my version of the dumpster just have to bump up some of the textures
( )