精略Robin Williams的《写给大家看的设计书》
Art and Design Resources
During the course of development, more often than not I have had fairly limited financial budgets to work with. As such, I have used pre-built art resources extensively. Several sites offer high-quality collections of 3D models, animations, 2D artwork, sprite animations and textures that are usually very reasonably priced.
Often you can save many months of work by carefully sourcing pre-created collections, and with a little tweaking and re-texturing here and there you can really make such art your own and tailor it to your game.
As an example, you may buy a pack of skyscraper meshes but re-texture many of the surfaces (again using bought in assets). Add your own signage and props, and with fairly minimal time and effort you have something unique for your game. Compare that to recruiting an artist, who could take several weeks to achieve the same results if creating the artwork from scratch.
Below I have included a list and summary of several of the places I have used in the past, so all of these come with a personal recommendation.
Turbosquid
Website:http://www.turbosquid.com/
The biggest collection of art resources on the internet; there is an absolute treasure trove of content on here and it has a very good navigation interface. You do have to be careful with the quality and polygon count for some assets, but I have found the quality to be mostly pretty good with plenty of outstandingly good models. There are also hundreds of game ready, low polygon models with normal mapped textures (just type ‘game ready’ in the search engine to view them).
Dexsoft
Website:http://www.3dmodels-textures.com/store/
Very high-quality meshes and textures, all of which are game ready. They have a number of different theme types, including sci-fi, modern day, fantasy, vegetation and 3D characters. The prices are very competitivetoo, so it is a great resource. One thing to be aware of—some of the models can be a little high poly, so make sure you check the PDF details for each collection to ensure the poly counts match with your requirements before you buy. I would say Dexsoft collections are mostly tailored to PC/console type games rather than lower spec mobile devices.
Game Textures
Website:https://gametextures.com/
One of the newest texture sites, and one of the best. A nice range of architectural, sci-fi and natural textures, all of which feature a full range of maps including normal, specular, height and emissive. The textures on Game Textures are modern ‘AAA’ quality, low cost and rather wonderful.
GameDev Market
Website:https://www.gamedevmarket.net
GameDev Market is a new entry in the field, current at beta phase. There are quite a few good quality 3D and 2D assets on here. There are two types of licence for each asset, commercial and non-commercial, with the commercial licence costing more.
Marlin Studios
Website:http://www.marlinstudios.com/
I have only used their texture collections (they also do models), but these are a little dated now. Marlin haven’t released any new content for several years, so their texture collections lack up-to-date features such as normal maps. Also, many of the textures are a little low-resolution, but that said they are still very good quality and ideal for mobile.
3DTotal Textures
Website:http://shop.3Dtotal.com/total-textures.html
A mixed bag of textures with some odd aspect ratios not ideally suited to games. The prices of the texture collections are relatively cheap and there are enough good textures to make the collections worth owning.
Absolute Textures
Website:http://www.absolutetextures.com/
Like Marlin Studios these are getting on in years now, so lacking essential features like normal maps. That said there are some good town and city architectural texture packs, but the prices are quite steep.
Sub Dimension Studios
Website:http://subdimensionstudios.com/
Some good textures, particularly the natural textures and architectural edging and tile textures. The prices are low, but again there are no normal maps.
Arroway Textures
Website:http://www.arroway-textures.com/
Collections of base building material textures such as wood, concrete, stonework and tiles. The textures are of a high standard and are very high resolution but often in sizes and aspect ratios that are not compatible with games, so you will need to do some work to make usable textures.
CG Textures
Website:http://www.cgtextures.com/
A huge range of photo textures, most optimized for game use (the site founder has a background in games). Just about everyone in ‘the biz’ uses CG Textures, and the subscription prices are low and provide unlimited access for a year.
Human Photo References
Website:http://www.3D.sk/
A great site that specializes in human reference textures such as skin, eyes and pre-made head textures.
Backyard Ninja Free Stuff
Website:http://www.dumbmanex.com/bynd_freestuff.html
A small selection of free to use pixel/2D art. A mixed bag but certainly some good examples on here.
OpenGameArt
Website:http://opengameart.org/
A great selection of free 2D, 3D and sound resources. Quality varies from awful to great, but there are plenty of gems on here. Be sure to read the usage licence for each item before you use. While many are free to use, other content is covered by rather silly restrictive licences, which makes commercial use impossible.
Graphic River/Envato Network
Website:http://graphicriver.net/
I love this site—if you want 2D and vector art, this is the place to go. But why stop there? They also have dedicated sites that sell 3D art, sound effect, video clips, code and stock photos. One of the best resources for developers on the internet.
Graphic River has also recently added a number of 2D game tile sets, sprites, GUIs and other game-specific content.
