Creating Urban Game Environments in 3ds Max

Follow a practical guide to building 3D cityscapes for games. IAuthor Adam Crespi constructs a city block in 3ds Max utilizing low-polygon modeling and advanced texturing techniques. The course shows how to model common city elements such as buildings, intersections, curbs, and roofs and explains how to expand a city quickly and easily by reusing existing geometry in a modular way. The course also sheds light on simulating real-world detail with baking, lighting, and ambient occlusion techniques and offers a series of best practices for exporting to the Unity gaming engine.

Topics include:

• Understanding the design process and software requirements
• Analyzing concept art for texture and key shadow detail
• Planning differently styled buildings
• Laying out city blocks
• Organizing construction elements and models using layers
• Cloning geometry and texture
• Testing the module for correct floor-to-floor heights
• Arranging, aligning and cloning modular elements
• Building a texture library
• Creating stone, wood, and brick textures
• Constructing texture sheets
• Drawing detail
• Using occlusion as a foundation for dirt
• Preparing for Unity as a world builder