The title says it all: With this book, you’ll learn how to model, UV map, and texture first- and third-person game weapons in a step-by-step progression from simple to complex. The book begins with a lesson on customizing your modeling application for ease of use, and then turns to weapon creation. Each weapon — from a samurai sword to a modern high-velocity, fully automatic machine gun — is first modeled and optimized, then UV mapped, and finally textured for realism. While the tutorials were written using Maya, the principles described will work with any polygonal-based modeling package. On the CD: The companion CD includes all the models, textures, and reference images from the tutorials; a trial version of Adobe Photoshop CS2 for the Microsoft Windows operating system; and over 100 additional high-resolution reference images of weapons. Please visit http://www.artofvideogames.com or www.wordware.com/files/3dweapons for more reference images and updates. Christian Chang is a video game developer and author. He began his career at the Naval Postgraduate School’s MOVES Institute in Monterey, California, where his responsibilities included modeling and texturing the weapons in America’s Army: Operations. He then worked for the U.S. Army as a level designer on America’s Army: Special Forces. He now works at Electronic Arts, where his credits include Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07 and James Bond: From Russia with Love. Luke Ahearn has more than 14 years of professional game development experience and has served in lead positions on seven published game titles including Dead Reckoning and America’s Army. He has written six books on game development and ran his own computer game company for ten years. Currently, he is art director and partner of ICPU.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Preparation: Creating a Custom Shelf in Maya Chapter 2: Project 1: The Samurai Sword Chapter 3: UV Mapping the Sward Chapter 4: Texturing the Samurai Sword Chapter 5: Project 2: Third-Person Crossbow Chapter 6: UV Mapping the Crossbow Chapter 7: Texturing the Crossbow Chapter 8: Project 3: Sci-Fi Weapon Chapter 9: UV Mapping the Sci-Fi Weapon Chapter 10: Texturing the Sci-Fi Weapon Chapter 11: Project 4: MP5SD6 Chapter 12: UV Mapping and Texturing the MP5SD6 Index