i require polycount wisdom

aesir

I was hoping that you guys might be able to offer some advice and ideas to me with my situation

Basically, I’m about to enter my Junior year of college in my school’s animation program, and since I’m a bit of an overachiever, and like getting an early start on my work, I was planning to start on my senior thesis and at the very least, get all the prep work and planning done before my senior year. Part of the reason I want to start now is simply because I like having a big project to work on.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what I should do. The program I’m enrolled in is geared toward film, and most students (who are hoping to get jobs in the film industry rather than in games) make a short film as their thesis, however, the instructors are very lax about what we can do for our thesis, and the head of our department basically told me that it can be whatever I want, as long as it is animation and I have something to screen (by screen, I mean that everyone’s thesis’ are played in a big theatre with all the other animation majors) at the end of the year. Also, it can’t simply be portfolio work. It has to be a single cohesive project. People in the past have made everything from highly experimental abstract animations with oils and liquids, to elaborate flash games, to cartoons and CG films.

Now, my main interest is with games, and while I’d love to actually make a video game (god knows I have all sorts of ideas floating around in my head. I’m sure we all do), unfortunately any sort of programming makes my head explode. I want to make something that I could actually use (at least most of) in a games related portfolio, and right now, I really don’t know what I’m gonna do.

So, basically I was hoping some of you might have some ideas for a type of project I can get started on....

dfacto

Well, that seems simple then. If you are in an animation course, and you want to work in the games industry, model up a few different normal mapped characters with different body types and movements and put them in some sort of short film.

You'll have textured character models and a bunch of animations left over for a portfolio after the course is done.

Neo_God

Yeah, you could always make a short film that looks like a game. Sorta like that coke commerical posted before, but instead of making it with high poly models, actually do it with models that are more of a game res. You can also try to adjust the render settings to make the final product appear to be in realtime.

milla

Something that always really impresses me is animators who can convey character with very simple meshes, and very good animation. I think it'd be cool to have a really simple, characteristically ambiguous mesh running a series of animations, perhaps with music that suits the characters the animations are bringing to life, demonstrating character with no geometric or textured characteristics....if you know what I mean.

I think what I'm getting at is that games characters often have to communicate aspects of themselves through appearance and movement that film characters don't, because you get to know film characters through stacks of dialogue and acquaintance gained through the story, but a lot of the time you don't get that in games. Demonstrating that aspect of games character art explicitly in a short film, where a single mesh does a series of 'impressions' would rock. Just an idea

It might be a very silly idea, but good animators really stand out for me in their ability to convey character through movement alone, and if you're good at what you do it'd be a damned good portfolio piece. Of course, if you're not that good and can't convey character through animation don't do it!

Tulkamir

Just as another idea, dunno if it's good or not, but you could try to do some machinima. Just import your own models into a game engine and use that engine to render it all.

warby

id say check out pirate baby cabana street fight 2006 its a fake gameplay movie of a none exisiting game do somthign like that with lowpoly 3d models also the machinima ( game engine render) idea is really good !

Zwebbie

Plenty of games do their intro- and inbetween-movies with their regular game models. You could always make it as if it were in fact an intromovie for a game, using good old lowpoly models.

ebagg

Pretty much the exact same situation happened at my school. If they tell you outright, it has to be a short animation, and not a portifolio reel, that is ridiculous and you need to prove to them that it IS a cohesive piece that works for the project. In my case I told the instructors I wanted to do a series of portifolio pieces, and that WAS the element that ties them together, the fact that it was all for show pieces with a cohesive presentation design. Everyone else in 3d animation did short animations! And unsurprisingly, none were very good, partially due to their skill and determination, but also because a short animation you have to worry about too many different aspects, animation, rigging, storyboarding, camera angles, lighting etc etc etc, whereas if you want a game industry job you need to hone down to characters or environments, or some other specific role you see in many companies you hope to aim for after graduation. Hopefully they will let you do a demo reel, because that's definitely the better choice.

Robert Headley

Do a video. You don't want to have to rely on other people for something as important as your thesis. Just try to keep the animation actiony and the characters realistic, or at least stylized realism. As a recruiter, experience is nice, but more importantly, can you animate the kind of motions needed for a game and do so fluidly. You can demonstrate that well enough in a short film. The idea of using game specifications for the characters could be interesting, tho you might want to make it painfully obvious that was your intention going in.

SkullboX

If you want to start right away, do side projects for school credit where you take care of all the concept work, writing, storyboarding and perhaps even content creation.

If you want to focus on games, simply do everything game res. Bear in mind that by the end of your college career specs will have gotten up a lot, so I wouldn't be afraid to go crazy on polycounts and normal maps - whether you do machima or prerendered.

I'd personally go for someting at least slightly stylised, as generally very realistic characters come of very uncanny when animated. Check out the Team Fortress 2 trailer or some of Daxter and Jack's animations to give you an idea, though both of those are extremely stylised.

Speaking of the Team Fortress 2 trailer, that one basically was a character reel. If you go for that type of character intoduction type trailer presentation, perhaps your teachers might let you do a more conventional demoreel, just don't pitch it as such.

Ryno

Even game-rez looks pretty good these days. We wouldn't even consider hiring someone if they didn't show us normal mapped/spec mapped/light mapped models with a good silhouette.

And what's with all of the character recommendations? There's a lot more work to be had in environments and effects.

If I were going to do it all over again, I'd do a small outdoor scene. A building or two, a tree, some grass and shrubs, a burned out vehicle with smoke coming out of it. Paint a big skybox/digital backdrop to finish off the world in the background. Camera pans across environment. Helicopter/flying vehicle flies by at low altitude, dust kicks up, hovers, raises up, and it begins firing at something off camera. It gets hit, explodes, drops onto a building, crushing it.

That would be very ambitious, but would totally kick ass for getting a job doing environments, vehicles, or fx. It could apply to either games or film. Just go with something that seems interesting to you, and you'll be best off.

Don't try to do too much, just try to do a couple of things very well.