When to know when your project is complete?
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Hey everyone, this is my first post on PolyCount so I apologize if there is a better forum topic this should go under, but I wanted to ask this question.
When do you know when your project, such as an Environment, is done?
I'm currently creating a 3D Environment myself and I'm having a hard time knowing when I should just call it complete and move on to my next project.
Thanks for listening to me and I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys have to say!
Replies
When the amount of effort to create something visually impressive is no longer proportional to the amount of time it takes.
I've ran into this issue when I'm creating houses for a city. For all the houses I want people to look up close, I spent time making them all look unique. But for houses that were 200 meters away, trying to individually hand craft each one was a waste of time. From the point of view from a camera, they were the size of a pixel, in which case you can't see any hand sculpted bricks or shingles. I switched to using modular/procedural detail to fill in those blanks.
So theoretically, I finished my project when the amount of extra detail no longer matters, even though I can always go back and make those special houses.
If i'm making an environment from imagination with only some references to inspire me than i call it done when the level of detail of the objects in the scene is enough that, when a player "play the game" from a FPS view, everything holds up well.
If i'm still making an environment from imagination but it is just a static rendering that it is not meant to be played than i usually stop when i get the "wow factor" or when i see that i can't add more relevant details ( ex. there is no point to add a lot of details on a building that you can barely see in the distance but you should add a lot of details on a giant fantasy door that is right in front of you ).
The overall goal is to maintain an optimal rate of learning new skills, reinforcing learned skills, and keeping my eyes from hurting because too much screen-time (seriously).
For non-beginners, I imagine there is usually a deadline, a concept, an art directors discretion... things like this that give a clear answer to, "is it done yet?"
A few things that I've started doing is keeping my projects small and trying to be as economical as possible. For example instead of thinking of every cool thing I could add to a scene or model, I try and sell the scene with the least amount of work possible. Once I get something that is working then I can focus on 1 or 2 key areas in order to take the scene to the next level.
I also try and focus on the process instead of the final output. Instead of trying to make a piece perfect, just focus on improving one thing compared to the last piece you did. It's better to produce a body of work, that progressively improves then slave away on one piece trying to create a "masterpiece".