Is the way game artists texture bad?
polycounter lvl 18
I was recently reading a blog post from a game developer I respect a lot, Jon Blow. In it he said:
"t seems, in video games we have developed a tradition of bad texturing, whatever that means: unsubtle, unrefined, or just plain ugly"
http://the-witness.net/news/?p=668
Is he right?
"t seems, in video games we have developed a tradition of bad texturing, whatever that means: unsubtle, unrefined, or just plain ugly"
http://the-witness.net/news/?p=668
Is he right?
Replies
Texturing can take ages if done to perfection but then would some games be finished in time
from my studies, game artists in particular have some really bad tendencies when it comes to texturing, something i generally don't notice in film/archvis/other forms of CG artists. i am betting the cause is just misinformation, but perhaps another reason is because so many of these artists are lacking traditional art skills, or just forgetting to apply that knowledge to their textures as well. here are just a few of the really common flaws i've noticed:
overloading textures with too much stuff (this one is super common)
poor/wrong use of spec and gloss maps
too much high frequency noise, not enough big clear shapes.
not enough localized detail
keeping archaic techniques (normal map blue channel as AO etc)
not thinking about how the surface is in the real world (bright diffuse scratches etc)
making things look too 'gamey' (trying to imitate other game art, which likely has several of the above flaws)
rarely is it that i see a portfolio where the art doesn't have these issues, and most of the people who don't succumb to these mistakes are already hired and often don't have a portfolio, so i wouldn't even get to see their art.
i dunno, these are just some things i've noticed.
I mean, I love braid, but sometimes some developers try a bit too hard on writing essays on quite simple things when it boils down to "didn't like that, so I'll do this", especially if they're not too experienced in some area.
"And, it seems, in video games we have developed a tradition of bad texturing, whatever that means: unsubtle, unrefined, or just plain ugly."
Tradition?
[ame]
for lowpolys it's bit similar... I say you need to be able to draw and paint to be really good.. you can learn to model if necessary.. but learn to texture without knowing how to draw and paint is way more tricky
I think this is some of what he is getting at. I don't think you have to be an expert in 3D art production to judge if something looks good or bad.
My original reaction to the post was that he was wrong. For example, you have something like this:
Which looks an awful lot like "bad" game art, but it looks that way because of contrast levels and lighting, which are often outside the 3D artist's control.
And I didn't like how he seemed to conflate the ideas of "bad" and "ugly". Not all good art is beautiful. Some people think Thomas Kinkade paints very pretty pictures, but most art critics think he's terrible.
Or maybe it was a case of sweet lemons, sour grapes. Because he didn't think he had the art resources to do "next gen" art, he decided he didn't want it anyway.
But then I started to worry that he was actually right. That the bad art we have been making is one reason so few people are willing to take games seriously. I guess what I am interested in is, if he is right, what would good game art look like?
maybe these are good starting points:
I think one solution, the easy, cost effect solution is to simply pick a style that works within this limitation - Mirrors Edge did it and they made the conscious decision to make things whiter, show the color bleeding and the GI. They turned it into their art direction. It's clear, readable and they added strong color elements to guide the player through the maps. It's pretty elegant, we're also doing this on Warsoup - the colorTexture takes the back seat and is only being used for decals / text. The highFreq detail is in the spec.
The problem, imo, is mostly the resolution of our textures. Compared to cinematics / film, our shading / texturing / lighting is just incredibly primitive and if you have close-ups, you'll see just that.
Edit:
Racer hit the nail on the head
As an indie developer you really shouldn't try to make that the focus of your game, the game should foremost be fun to play, just compare eskil's LOVE to minecraft, both similar, but look at which one is the seller.
I agree to some extent. One thing I thought about game art is that maybe it has evolved to be more "readable", and this conflicts with it's aesthetic qualities. I actually think the art in Minecraft is a lot better than in LOVE though.
Even when it comes to getting crits. When doing the sculpt, people will point out all sorts of problems with proportions, anatomy, design and whatnot. But when it comes to the texturing, the response goes way down, because it's a field that people are generally struggling with more than the others.
One thing that bothered me a while ago is the sheer lack of good tutorials on the subject. I mean especially paid ones. Like Gnomon for instance, I don't think in their entire library there's even one DVD that touches on texturing for game-art. I remember getting the Vitaly Bulgarov DVD when it came out, and was really excited to see how he does stuff, but then all of a sudden it just cuts right before the texturing part. The second DVD never came out.
That's just one example, but it's the way it is all over. They have lots of information about the sculpting/modeling part, but hardly any on texturing.
I think if there were more resources out there on texturing it would alleviate the problem.
Or in other words, I have much more respect for developers who dare talk about what they did wrong in their previous game, and how they would fix it.
There are a ton of better, cheaper and way faster and way better looking ways of dealing with his artstyle issues rather than throwing tons of post processing filters and GI sollutions on what will most likely be not so good models.
I think the discussion we've spawned here is totally legit though, but most likely not anything to do with jon blows adventures.
If he means that a lot of games just plunk in detail for detail's sake, then hell yeah, he's right. I think 90% of everything on Polycount, including everything sci-fi and most fantasy, is ugly. Something being impressive doesn't mean it's [/i]pretty[/i]. Something pretty will never win a Dominance War.
He never actually talked about texturing though.
Not sure I can agree there. Global Illumination is getting more and more common in the newer engines. Take Beast(the lighting engine Mirror's Edge used) and UDK(the light engine name escapes me at the moment), they both do a baked GI pass that ups the realism on every static object in the level, and before that level designers would usually manually place lights in order to fake the global illumination.
(doh, pressed report first time I tried to post this, doubt any admin would take it serious thou! Sorry! :i)
Good points, Ive found that over time Im developing more of an artistic eye for things. Now that Ive got a couple of years experience with 3D Im able to spot what Im doing wrong more often.
I dont think there is some magical rule of thumb that represents good art practice and we can all just implement it without any experience or learning. So I dont see what this article is trying to imply.
it pays to have a good grounding in traditional art to make a good texture artist
but not many courses will teach you to paint or to use specific techniques.
also to get all the members of your art team to texture in the same way is tricky , so perhaps a simpler style helps in this regard
Mirrors Edge, and TF2 (as previous examples) have little to do with texturing practices, as much as it has to do with stellar art direction.
Well, but to be fair we're also talking about personal work. Like personal projects, or competitions such as Domwar and the likes where it's all in the artist's hands.
Earlier the problem was described that every artist is familiar with, where you start working on something and the high-poly looks great, then the low-poly and the bakes look great, but at the texturing phase it actually takes a turn for the worse. I have that problem too, and I feel that way every time I do a new piece. But I don't know how to help it exactly.
one of the things that also helped in the specific case of Mirror's Edge is the small team size, as far as I know a single level artist got to work on 2 or 3 levels by his own, therefor keeping the consistency of the levels pretty much a like.
Whereas in huge teams, with many 3d artists and texture artists using different texture painting techniques, more often than not you'll have a lot of style discrepancies. Yes, that's what the Art Director is for, to bring a style together, but the bigger the team, the harder it gets.
Just sayin.
The funny thing is, ancient roman and greek scultpure was originally painted in quite bright colors, which would in out eyes probable take away from the beauty of the well defined shapes and distract. It's similar with modeling, as soon as color and material comes in you have more things to focus on than just shape. And all of it fights for attention in your brain.
Usually the weakest then wins - because it doesn't feel "okay". Sort of "it's just as good as the worst piece of it". So I can see how he can say that textures can ruin a piece.
While some 3D artists are incredible at their craft - they're just not good designers - putting too much detail, too gaudy colors etc. That's why I prefer working from other people's concepts who're better than me finding the right balance.
I think it's a combination of different things--not only the practical question of getting his game done and looking good without being to AAA style spec, but I think just asking the wider question if we can't grow our idea of what constitutes good art styles for games. Mirror's Edge and TF2 get a loooooot of play in discussions like this because nobody had ever done that kind of thing before, and now it's something that is established and we can point to it when we're talking in otherwise some very hard to agree on/hard to define problems and solutions.
If we knew how to come up with a crisp, easier-to-pipeline art style hopefully we'd be doing it and then nailing the wider world with the surprise of how good it looks
eld: I really admire Blow but I also thought that video was really funny, pretty great caricature of his speaking style
http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/braid
His last game had a 93 metascore. Just saying.
:S
Problem is, the more one guy is allowed to get lost in his words, wise or not, the further it goes, and it can end up like this: http://iloapp.quelsolaar.com/blog/news?Home&post=79
I would dare to say that Braid was greatly overrated. Sure, it was a good game (I absolutely loved the puzzles myself), but its not a life-changing experience as some critics would like us think.
I see its success more as a result of industry being so starved for unique ideas that it will accept anything to fill the void, even if its filled with triviality hidden behind a façade of pretence. It might be me, but in spite of all the fun I got out of it, Braid strikes me as cold and calculated product. Ironic, considering that its what Blow was trying so hard to avoid.
Dont get me wrong, just like Blow I also dont like the direction that gaming has taken, but I am also not sure if I like his idea of what gaming is meant to be.
it was a good platform puzzle game, but look at the reviews and tell me it's not full of assholes trying to convince us that games are art
if it was sonic bouncing round manipulating time, it would have got scores in the 80 range, braid got such high scores because it's an indie art game, and reviewers love that shit because it lets them point to games and go "see, we have pretentious bollocks too"
Braid is a completely focused experience that, well, focuses on one thing and just gets it right - sounds familiar? http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/portal - This game did the same thing. And a lot of times, that's all you need to create a great game. Here's another example: http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-3/flower
Not every game has to be an insane, epic, $50 million rollercoaster ride. Most of the time it's enough if you get one thing right - because frankly, even though most AAA games offer more, their core often isn't necessarily stellar to begin with.
I think what Jonathan refers to is simply that a lot of times bad texturing and memory limitations ruin video-game art and that there are ways out there that we can use to create different styles. Now, I don't think that the progress he shows is particularly impressive, but I do get where he's coming from and I do appreciate him showing and discussing his research.
on his budget and looking at the portfolios of artists he could afford with it, models usually look better when they're GI-lit and not so much when textured due to the inexperience of those artists.
And in the end a game on that budget couldn't afford good texturing, so to solve his problem he'll skip out as much on texturing as he can.
He's right on one thing, good looking 3d games are expensive.
I've never noticed this, but now that you mention it... Heh I guess that's why it's good to have traditionally taught artists, vs people who went to game art schools. Still, a simple radiosity solution just seems too easy, lol, as game artists we have to complicate things. I bet there is a nice middle ground somewhere. Maybe Heavenly Sword?
Also important is context. An edgy techno game wouldn't be textured like a Medieval game. In the Medieval game you'd want dirty textures.
[edit/update] Even then the best idea is to be realistic, not noisy. This probably seperates the game texture artists from the film texture artists more than anything.
ahahaha
This is why highpoly renders often don't require texturing past color and a mild noise filter. There are shaders and material settings which can do all the legwork.
As for "bad" texturing, I can't really agree. It's often ugly due to tech limitations, sometimes due to poor work (those random assets in games that look absolutely terrible for no reason), but on the whole most big budget games with professional staff have excellent texture work. Seems to me he was just looking at sub-par portfolios, or he has a very specific style he prefers.
I fully agree, I'm also not a fan of overblown high-budget experiences like recent COD games that offer little, to no depth (talking about the single player here, so don't hate on me yet
However, unlike Braid, Portal doesn't aspire to be something more than your regular video game. Quite the opposite, it revels in the geek culture and fully embraces all that comes with it. Its experimental value is also much more subtle than Braid's; often hidden by huge amounts of comedy it doesn't strike you as something that tries to come out as profound or meaningful. It's playful and clever and that's why we love it.
Braid on the other hand could be stripped from its cryptic message and the game wouldn't lose any of its value. All those "story areas" appears as an afterthought; while there is a basic theme that connects the story to the game, they remain separate.
And then, when you finally decipher Blow's machine code and Braid's meaning clarify, one might start to wonder what all this hassle was all about; it's trivial and not worth the trouble.
A great example of how a game can combine the narrative and gameplay is ICO. Each part of the game (having to lead Yorda through the castle while protecting her from enemies, animation, puzzles, etc.) tells you the story of the characters you control. More so; ICOs gameplay IS the story; it doesn't rely on cut-scenes or walls of text to make sense, but on your very own experience with the game.
And what's the best about it; it's simple. It's so terribly simple and yet it doesn't try to hide that fact even once. While his games are often put in the same artsy bag as Braid, Limbo, The Path or The Graveyard, Fumito Ueda dismisses the idea of being an artist, or making art games. The guy makes fantastic games that keep influencing the industry, but retains his humble attitude. Blow on the other hand often comes off as extremely arrogant about what hes doing. While I dont want to resort to personal attacks his persona is deeply tied to the game; people will expect something more from people who make big claims and in my opinion, Braid simply does not deliver.
Sorry for derailing the thread, but you knew that someone had to do it :poly142: