The Dark Side of Game Texturing [With CDROM] [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Anyone considering purchasing this who has bought David Franson's other book "2D Artwork and 3D Modelling for Game Artists" should think again. This book is just a much smaller version of that. I bought them both, and I was quite disappointed that David would just blatantly copy his other work. There are a few different tutorials but it's not worth paying the price, get the other book instead.

If you're like me, new to texturing with a bit of Photoshop experience and not much of an artist, you'll appreciate how this book starts slowly and builds to more and more interesting and challenging projects. You'll be surprised and pleased at what Franson can guide you into doing with so little effort on your part. You'll be pleased at finally using parts of Photoshop that you've looked at, but never tried. I think this is a great book to get you started texturing and producing some great results fast.

One great thing that I haven't seen mentioned but shouldn't be ignored is that the author has generously given us hundreds of his own digital photos on the CD to help get us started texturing right away.

However, there are a few problems, some of which people have already mentioned here. First, this book is Photoshop-specific, and that means _no_ Photoshop Elements. Some things just plain won't work with Elements (The open-source Gimp is a great workaround, even though you'll spend a lot of time learning the program itself).

Second, you really need to follow this book in sequential order. If you start with Chpt. 5, you'll find that the explanations are incomplete: Franson says things like "I did this just like in Chpt. 3). Fair enough, I don't need my hand held all the way, but the truth is that many people will skip the chapters that deal with textures they aren't interested in.

Third, this book stops with Photoshop. Someone mentioned not being satisfied with his/her results when imported into Maya, and I can report the same experience with UnrealEd. You'll learn how to make a texture look great in Photoshop, but things change when you go to import them into other applications. Franson gives a quick gloss of different editors and engines, but this really isn't a book about how to get your textures all the way into a game. But then there are so many games out there and so many possible applications of the textures, that maybe it's impossible for one book to be all things to all people.

So to sum up, I had a great experience with what this book gave me, but it left me wanting more, more, more!

I am big on textures for games and 3D. And this one was eagerly anticipated to say the least. I truly wish I was about to write a glorious review, because that would mean I had another new favourite book - but alas that is not so.

First a gripe. Why is it that 80% of the people who write books like this come more across as somebody looking for a job (and using the book as leverage for that), rather than the seasoned pro with several high profile jobs behind them? This seems to be another one.

David Franson takes us through a couple of different scenarios from a lackluster medieval fantasy tutorial to a few weapons tutorials, and ends up with the most interesting piece in the book, a dark futuristic wall tutorial (think Doom 3). However the level of specifications aimed for makes you wonder. At the moment, the world is eagerly awaiting Half Life 2, and Doom 3 will come out just in a few weeks. The texturing work in the current generation of FPS 3D games makes the stuff in this book look laughable. I know the book is fairly recently published, still it is only aiming for quality of work along the lines of Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

So when the users will painstakingly sit and make very dimensional textures, alluding to a lot of shapes and objects beyond the geometry, then they'll quickly and rudely find out that that was ten years ago. These days you have polygons enough for the pipes on your walls.

This seems to completely escape the author, which immediately gives it away as newbie work. So if you are expecting professional grade texture work from this book, don't bother we are unfortunately not even talking skilled mod skinner level, more like hopeful new joiner of mediocre mod team quality level.

I showed the book to my texturing lecturer, who is fresh out of the games industry (where she worked as a texture artist), and immediately the beginners mistakes were jumping at her. Guys, there is nothing in this book you can't find better and more up to date on the web. If you are lost for where to look, check out CG Talk. Or go pick up Matthew Omernick's superb book Creating the Art of the Game, which for once was written by an expert (he worked on Medal of Honor and is now Art Director with Lucasarts - not just gave up his programming or law career like David Franson here), and truly shows it.