Moving Right Along

In this chapter you learned how UV unwrapping relates to the texture files known as skins. And you learned how to apply that understanding to images for game objects ranging from the simple (a soup can) to the complex (a human character).

I hope you also take away from the chapter the idea that hand-drawn concept artwork is a useful tool. Draw everything in sketch form before you start working on your models. It's a great help.

Finally, you can see that a fully featured image processing tool like Paint Shop Pro has quite a few features to ease the effort of creating images for skins. We've only scratched the surface of what the program can do. Don't be shy about using Paint Shop Pro's built-in Help utility. It's well done and chock-a-block-full of information.

If you want to make great skins, you are going to need to practice, practice, and practice some more. Here are some of the many ways to do this:

• Create your own models and make the skins.

• Make skins for other people's models.

• Make skins for other people for popular games like Half-Life and Tribes.

• Make monster skins, policeman skins, airplane skins, light pole skins.

• Make a set of stock skins.

• Make skin templates that you can use to make the skinning task easier.

But most of all, get down and do it!

In the next chapter, we will continue with the visual aspects of developing our game, but this time we will be looking at how to create graphical user interface (GUI) elements, by using Torque script to insert images and controls.