Does creativity exist for the 3d artist?

dom

Does it in this industry, I'm not a veteran in the games industry but I have been in post production for a few years. I'm just curious to know whether 3d artists actually get any creative freedom when making their assets, be it characters, props or environment. Or is it just keeping close to the techboard, like a factory worker, churning out assets, making changes as ordered, and move on to the next asset.

MoP

Depends where you work I guess

I'd imagine smaller teams get more freedom with their work since they might get to have more say in the overall design and art direction...

I reckon for a big studio churning out a movie tie-in though, it'll just be "get a concept, model the concept exactly, move on to next concept".

Mark Dygert

I've been spoiled =/

I work on a small team and one of the biggest rewards is having massive creative freedom. Or CD and AD don't really impose their creative will on the artists unless it is to help the overall vision of the game or make sure key elements of the design are put in place.

Since we make adventure games the design docs read more like scripts to a play with just enough descriptions about the sets to convey a general idea. Each environment team (normally 2 people) is encouraged to dream up their environment as they see fit. The deeper the history and level of interactivity the better.

There is a fair amount of churning out assets just because they need to be made, however what those assets are, their poly ranges and design are all left up to us. There are key intractable items that must be in the environment and everything needs to be kept within our ESRB rating category of course. So its not like they sky is the limit and I'm totally free to do whatever. I also need to sync my environment up with the other artists but I do have an amazing amount of creative freedom within my own sand box.

Honestly I'm not so sure I could go to work for some place else where I didn't have that. Plus I like everyone I work with they are a great bunch of professionals who are well seasoned but open to new ideas and leaning new ways to be faster.

Ryno

It depends. I worked on a bunch of realistic, simulator type games where I was just reproducing reality with no room for variation. But I've also worked on games where there was little vision and I had lots of freedom to influence the style.

I actually prefer a project with a well-defined style guideline, that allows me to make art that fits within that overall look. This is the best of both for me, in that I have some clear overall direction, but am allowed freedom to work within those broad guidelines. Luckily that's the type of stuff that we've been doing at work lately.

Tulkamir

It also depends on how you define creativity. Personally I feel that creativity can come through process as much as subject. (IE: Problem solving, etc...)

Wells

[ QUOTE ]
Does creativity exist for the 3d artist?

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Yes.

Emil Mujanovic

I used to... But now I have about 25% creative control of the environments I'm building. But I do think it depends on where you work and your position in the company as well as the project you're working on.

-caseyjones

nitzmoff

I'll echo that it completely depends on the studio, who your art director is, etc. I've worked on projects where I knew what I had to make, what the style was it had to fit in to, how big it was supposed to be etc. and I've had opportunities to really go nuts.

The place I work at now lets me do really anything I want. I have complete freedom, it's great.

adam

Oh hell yah - for me anyway. I'm like Vig, I've been spoiled. I came to Threewave as the 8th employee and we now have ~45 people here (60 total) spread out to 1 of 3 different FPS shooter (each 1 of the major engines) projects, so the teams are insanely small. The small team definitely adds to the creative freedom. It quite literally goes from concept/doc -> artist -> AD for approval. And even then the concept or document is a loose description.

I luvr it.

dom

Good to know. I used to have much more creative freedom working in post production, especially on commercials and tv spots. It'll be nice to experience a more creative environment, where design choices can be made together with the AD, concept artist, and 3d artist. Having to stick close to the techboard down to every milimetre can be quite ... monotonous, and then i thought whether this was common for most games studios, or rather the larger ones.