Google SketchUp

I've been having problems conveying my concepts and views to the artists on the concept of my game maps. Its kinda hard telling people why certain objects are placed in in a map. People always have different views of how a place should be.
It doesn't matter if you think having piles of crates or warehouses is normal in factory/industrial area, they will argue with you that its "visually" doesn't suit the map, and changed the out door scene into an indoor (inside of factory) one.

In the end the artists always draws and modeled the things that they want and generaly screws all of my level designs. Just because they can't get what my original idea nad concept looks like.

Recently, my supervisor for the game dev project, Azfar introduced an interesting tool to me.
A simple program called Google SketchUp.

Its a really powerful tool for quickly and easily creating, viewing and modifying simple 3D models.
With SketchUp, I'm able to convey what my vision looks like in full 3D, than just top down view layouts or lists of measurements of areas.


A sample I did, its more of a obstacle course and have no relation to the game my company is doing XD

Give it a try, it might help you in your game dev projects.

Jya ne