what is the difference between game and film for an 3D Artist?

Carrath · Dec 2016

Hey guy's
I've been working in the game industry as an 3D character artist for 2 years now. Due to fact that there are only a few bigger studios in germany I started to think about applying at filmstudios too. But I don't really know what the differences are for an 3D artist. The only thing coming to mind is that they can use a higher polycount. I'm sorry if this is a stupid question and I hope a few of you can help me.

artstream · Dec 2016

@dustinbrown nailed it on the head. They're pretty similar, with film having very few to no limits, as it's being rendered offline, vs real-time on consoles/PC/mobile platforms. The differences are becoming fewer, I feel they will always be there to some degree due to offline rendering (setting up a sequence to render over x amount of time) vs real-time rendering (3D art on the screen is constantly updating).

Kwramm · Dec 2016

@dustinbrown got it right. In addition you have higher specialization. E.g. people who just do shaders, people who just do textures, people who just model heads, etc. Models are also more complex - similar to your high poly meshes in AAA, with the exception that those have to animate.

Basically, the further you're at the start of the pipeline (starting with concept art), the more similar to games it will be.

fdfxd2 · Dec 2016

in movies
There is no such thing as too many polygons!*
You get to use displacement maps in place of normal maps
No compensating for rendertime*

in terms of software,

Mari in place of Substance painter
Vray in place of Marmoset Toolbag

* - within reason. DON'T make 10 iterations of Turbosmooth on a spoon

Burpee · Dec 2016

fdfxd2 said:

in movies
There is no such thing as too many polygons!*
You get to use displacement maps in place of normal maps
No compensating for rendertime*

Actually that's what I thought too, but when I started working in film I realised that people still want optimized mesh, same for displacement, as long as you can avoid them, they're happy ^_^

Carrath · Dec 2016

Thank you all for your replies

I thought there where more differences between the two industries. It's good to know that they are similar to each other. Do they use 3D Max and Zbrush for movies too? These are the programms I use most of the time. And I guess if I want to apply for a job i would need to learn mari and things like fibermesh and displacement maps first.

And @fdfxd2 i really laughed about the spoon xD And the bad things is, I knew people who would have done things like that xD

Burpee · Dec 2016

Carrath said:

Thank you all for your replies I thought there where more differences between the two industries. It's good to know that they are similar to each other. Do they use 3D Max and Zbrush for movies too? These are the programms I use most of the time. And I guess if I want to apply for a job i would need to learn mari and things like fibermesh and displacement maps first.

And @fdfxd2 i really laughed about the spoon xD And the bad things is, I knew people who would have done things like that xD

Maya / Mari are the must-have combo,

zBrush is also used a lot, but on some studio it's kinda hard to use it, since it's not working on linux, you might have more chance to stay with crappy mudbox.

SpaceRogue · Dec 2016

Movies also rather have you do Sub-D modeling, I'm a noob but I still just wanted to point out that modeling with Turbosmooth/ OpenSubd is a tiny bit more cumbersome then just being able to bevel/chamfer an edge and calling it a day.

Where I'm currently at we use Max for modeling and Maya for rigging, animation and rendering. Zbrush is installed for those who wish to use it, its primarily for characters and organic stuff tho.

edit ; in short, I don't find there to be a huge difference but modeling for movies feels more free than for games, when it comes to games you need to watch polycount, pollyflow, UV layout readabilety, several more maps. When it comes to movies I'v seen people trow in directly decimated meshes (non character things like rocks ) from Zbrush and call it done.

Carrath · Jan 2017

A little late but thank you all for your replies. Now that I am working on a portfolio piece I have a few more questions. I did some characters for a videogame I am working on but I don't know if I can put them in my online portfolio. Next to those characters is another older model I worked on every now and then. But it's only a high poly and I don't want to make a low-res out of it. I decided that it would be more fun to make a new model and this time with textures. But now I am at a point where I don't know if I should make it "game ready" or for a movie. I have about 20 different creatures/characters even if I am not allowed to put them on my online portfolio I could name the game. And I guess if I want to apply at movie studios too, I need and want to learn Mari. But I don't know what to take care of. Do I need clean UV's with different UV-shells or quick and dirty ones llike those where you have the whole character as one UV-shell. And if I want to polypaint in Mari do I use the HP?

And another question but not under the current topic. If I am not allowed to put my characters into an online portfolio am I allowed to use them for applying at other studios?

Thank you again for helping me out and a good morning/afternoon/evening

Taylor Brown · Mar 2019

Good bot.

what is the difference between game and film for an 3D Artist?

Replies