Asset Creation & Game Art

Game Development 101: (incomplete)
a. Basics of Game Development
b. Designing your Video Game
c. Math in Video Games
d. AI Decision-making & Pathfinding
e. Asset Creation & Game Art
f. Physics & Collision Detection
g. Shaders & VFX in Games
h. Multiplayer & Networking in Games

Table of Contents

What are Game Assets?

Game assets consist of textures, 2D sprites (which are just images); or 3D models, sound/music files, animations and other elements used to synthesize game world & its sounds. Include game’s GUI menus as well.

How do they look like? Some examples

Getting Free Assets

There are numerous websites online that have collections of free assets that you can use. However, free assets are not always compatible with your graphics style & are often too common to make your game unique. But still, it is worth mentioning:

OpenGameArt.org: All kinds of art (from 3d models to audio files)
Itch.io: Although a game store; it also has assets.
BlendSwap.com: For blender 3D models. You can export them from blender to your game.
Poly.pizza: There used to be poly.google.com; but it is no longer. This one is the replacement.
PolyHaven.com: A place for good textures.
Sketchfab.com: 3D assets.
And many more…

Make sure to look at asset license as some people do not allow commercial use (or use without giving credit). It is better to only use CC0 license assets; as they have no restrictions and are in public domain.

Making Your Own Assets

We are jumping into artist world. Asset creation is an art and for each kind of assets, different skillset is required. For example, a 3D artist makes 3D models, 2D artists make sprites, musicians make music. Sound effects are made by people (search for term ‘foley artist’).

Software Popularly Used

For 3D: Blender, Maya, 3ds Max, or any other
Textures: Substance Designer, or any other
2D Sprites: Photoshop, GIMP, or any other
Music: LMMS, FL Studio

Making 3D Assets/Models

I’ll link to a few resources to get you started. However, it is an entire discipline & mastering it would take quite some time.

Blender Basic Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoXOplUvAw

Making 2D Pixel Art

You can find some decent books & resources on creating pixel art online.

Procedural Assets

Terrains, buildings and some objects can be generated procedurally using algorithms such as noise functions, marching cubes and so on (some intro here).

gameidea