Are you an artist or programmer who would like to come to grips with game creation in Unity? You may be an artist who has learned 3D tools such as 3ds Max, Maya, or Cinema 4D, or you may come from 2D tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator.

Fully updated to cover scripting with C#, this new edition also covers baked global illumination and precomputed realtime global illumination with the new Enlighten lighting system, including light probes for use with the high definition render pipeline. You'll take advantage of surface shaders and physical materials, so all the lighting, shadowing, lightmapping, and forward vs. deferred rendering are handled automatically.

This book introduces key game production concepts in an artist-friendly way, and rapidly teaches the basic scripting skills you'll need with Unity. It goes on to show how you, as an independent game artist or designer, can create interactive games, ideal in scope for today's casual and mobile markets, while also giving you a firm foundation in game logic and design.

By the end of the book, you will be able to actively use the Unity 3D game engine, having learned the necessary workflows and problem solving skills to utilize your own assets and bring your ideas to life. You will also have an assortment of reusable scripts and art assets with which to build future games. If your strength is in programming, Beginning 3D Game Development with Unity 2018 will help you to understand the design and graphics side of game production.
What You'll Learn

• Evaluate ideas and functionality with prototypes
• Assess, evaluate, and incorporate assets for use in your games
• Locate and then incorporate existing code into a project
• Create shaders without having to write code using the Shader Graph functionality
• Engage special effects with new improvements to the Shuriken Particle System
• enhance the first-person experience with Navigation and Pathfinding for NPCs
• Streamline PC and console games without compromising on quality with LOD and Occlusion Culling.

Who This Book Is For
Artists familiar with 3D tools, such as 3ds Max, Maya, or Cinema 4D, who would like to learn more of the programming aspects. Also programmers experienced with coding who want to understand important design principals and techniques.

Sue Blackman has been an instructor in the 3D field at art schools and community colleges and in involved with the commercial development of real-time 3D engines for more than 20 years. In the past, she has been a contributing author for New Riders Press (Max4 Magic) and written for AMC Siggraph on serious games. She has written product training materials and instruction manuals for developing content with real-time 3D applications, used by multimedia departments in Fortune 1000 companies including Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, among others. In addition to writing and teaching, Sue has been the lead 3D artist on several games for Activision and its subsidiaries.