Game Level Design with SketchUp

Link via TechRadar

The best way to take those first tender steps into level design isn’t through an SDK, though. It’s through one of the most powerful and easy-to-use 3D programs in recent years – Google’s SketchUp.

SketchUp has been used to create everything from models of real-life locales in Google Maps to photo-real models of aeroplanes.

Although at heart, SketchUp wasn’t really built with level editing in mind, its interface is very similar to that used in level-editing software, and its intuitive nature makes it the ideal starting point for any kind of 3D modelling.

SketchUp packs a couple of other advantages, too. Valve’s Hammer editor now includes the ability to import models from SketchUp, so you can create detailed and interesting models that would be nigh-on impossible in Hammer and import them.