(For more resources related to this topic, see here.)

An example — save the whale!

The game can augment its levels of difficulty as we develop our world using different environments. We can always increase the capability of your character with new keyboard functions.

Obviously, this is an example. Feel free to change the game, remake it, create another completely different character, and provide a gameplay of another gaming genre. There are thousands of possibilities, and it’s fine if you deviate from our idea. It is important that you clear your design before you start your game library. That’s all.

How to create a library

If we start working with the Blender Game Engine (BGE), we must have a library of all of the objects we use in our game. For example, the basic character, or even the smallest details, such as the appearance of health levels of our enemies.

On the Internet, we can find plenty of 3D objects, which can be useful for our game. Let’s make sure we use free models and read the instructions to run the model. Do not forget to mention the authorship of each object that you download.

Time for action — downloading models from the Internet

Let’s go to one of the repositories for Blender, which can be found at http://www.opengameart.org/ and let’s try to search for what is closest to our character.

1. Write sea in the Search box, and choose 3D Art for Art Type, as shown in the following screenshot:

   We have some interesting options. We see a shark, seaweed, and some icebergs to select from.

2. Choose and click on the thumbnail with the name ICEBERGS IN 3D:

3. At the bottom of the page, you will find the file.blend downloadable. Click on it to start the download. Remember to click on RMB before the download begins.
4. Now, let’s try web pages, which have libraries that offer 3D models in other formats. An example of a very extensive library is http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/.
5. Write trawler in the Search box, and choose the one that you like. In our case, we decided to go for the Google 3D model with the title Trawler boat, 28′:

6. Click on the Download model button:

7. Save the file on your hard disk, in a folder of your game.

What just happened?

We have searched the Internet for 3D models, which will allow us to start a library for our game objects in Blender. Whether they are .blend files (original blender format) or of a 3D-model format, you can import them and work with them.

Don’t download models that you will not use. The libraries on the Internet grow every day, and we don’t need to save all of the models that we like. Remember that before downloading the model and using it, we need to check if it has a free license.

If you are releasing your project under some other free and/or open source license, then there could be licensing conflicts depending on what license the art is released under. It is your responsibility to verify the compatibility of the art license with the license you are using.

Importing other files into Blender

Before the imported mesh can be used, some scene and mesh prepping in Blender is usually required. It basically cleans up the model imported in Blender.

Google SketchUp is another free, 3D software option. You can build models from scratch, and you can upload or download what you need, as you have seen. People all over the world share what they’ve made on the Google 3D Warehouse. It’s our time to do the same.

Download the program from http://sketchup.comand install it. You can uninstall it later. Open the boat file in SketchUp, click on Save as, and export the 3D model using the COLLADA format.

The *.dae Collada format is a common, cross-platf orm file, which can be imported directly into Blender.