Game Art Educational Program -- Advice needed
polygon
Hello everyone! I have a friend in a game art program, and while they've seemed to improve in a lot of places, one place that seemed to be frustrating them and they had serious problems with turned out to be 3D Art. I'm pretty experienced with 3D art-- not exactly a professional but I understand a great deal about the technical and practical techniques to go about things.
However I've been noticing that a lot of what my friend is being told from a particular teacher is very contradictory to... well, everything. Even the other teacher in the program that is teaching 3D is telling my friend other things, as well as everything I read on polycount, everything I see in tutorials, and everything I know about video game art in general.
This all came to a head today when my friend begged me for help with an assignment. They sent me the scene as an OBJ (as I currently only have access to Blender after a reformat and a move, and they use Maya at the school), and as soon as I loaded it I saw some serious issues. Some of these were from my friend not being taught proper techniques, and some of it is just... mindboggling.
You can view the gallery here http://imgur.com/a/IiIrW, but I'll also link the relevant images to explain what I find incorrect here. Please feel free to correct me if you believe me to be wrong-- I'd love to know if I'm incorrect in things, but as it stands, it seems like this teacher is doing much more harm than good with what he's teaching. Keep in mind this is just one scene. My friend doesn't want me to show anything else, otherwise they might be identified and they're worried about how the teacher would react, since they have more classes with them. There has been a long history of this teacher doing weird things and my friend asking me for help; the most prevalent of which is the teacher's obsession with turbosmooth. Especially with props or character models, the teacher insists they must smooth the model before turning it in, and do absolutely nothing else afterwards.
Okay, so here's the scene in question.
At first glance it might not look too bad. But then you'll notice a few odd things, like how some models were not smooth shaded, and how some were, and the obvious difference in poly distribution...
The first thing I did was inspect the walls...
Umm... Hmm. Someone didn't tell my friend not to let meshes clip through each other. Not a big deal, I guess... Seems very basic, though. And why are there extra edge loops? Wait, is the floor separate?
Yeah, it's separate... But what's with that geometry on the side?
What in the world is going on here? It's not even a closed model. A simple cube stretched out would have been better and more efficient. Who said this would be a better way?
Okay, so maybe my friend just made some mistakes. Happens to everyone, and sure, confusion is common with beginning 3D. What about the models inside the scene, are they weird too? Well, I asked, and apparently only one of these models were made by my friend. The other were provided from a library from the instructor.
This is my friends model:
It's not too evident from just this (it's hard to show), but at the top there's a hole in the mesh that the center collumn bit with the dongles on it is placed into. This confirms my earlier suspicion: No one told my friend not to have holes in the mesh. How could this be glossed over? Also note that the entire model was turbosmoothed, the edge flow is crooked and lopsided and the bottom is curved up instead of flat.
Since my friend specifically asked for help with UV Mapping, I took a screencap of that as well:
[IMG]]http://i.imgur.com/yEsZ5DH.png[/IMG]
It seems like they just automatically unwrapped it and were told to organize it afterwards. Anyone who has done UV Mapping knows this is a nightmare to work with, and should be avoided at all costs. Very rarely does automatic unwrapping work the way you want it to.
So wait, if the other models weren't made by my friend, why do they all look so weird? I did some snooping and found the following...
The window and Door models were automatically triangulated. Not that big a deal, but it'd be nice if the models were at least consistent.
That doesn't appear to be the case, however:
This apple looks like it was a simple edited sphere with what looks like a procedurally extruded stem from it. Notice it isn't smooth shaded, while most everything else seems to be.
What in the world made this tray? There's a serious waste of polycount with the corners leading all the way into the center. At this point I began to wonder if everything here was procedurally generated from NURBs or Subdiv, then converted to polys.
Wow, that rim is intense. I selected just the top to see how many triangles were there, and it's over 1000 for just the top rim. Altogether (with the cookie models and lid and everything) the triangle count is 9960. That triangle count might befit a movie or film, but definitely not a game, and even if that triangle count was for a movie or film the layout of the geometry is incredibly bad. I want to stress that these were NOT made by my friend, a student, but were provided by a 3D instructor for a student to then UV Map and texture.
I have no problem with being provided models to work with for texturing or animation or etc., as long as they are provided properly with licensing and ownership issues understood and aware of. My problem is that this is incredibly bad topology to be teaching a game art student at a professional game art program. If my friend were to model something this poor, I feel they would have a great deal of trouble obtaining any work. I also realized that these were definitely procedurally generated at some point, not just because of how clean the geometry was, but that when I re-exported the scene to my friend and they loaded it up, their Maya began to run very slowly (No wonder-- there is 141k triangles in the entire scene). I came to the realization that the teacher was attempting to make them texture what appears to be NURBs-- not NURBs that were then converted to polygons, but the NURB objects themselves. Ignoring for the time being how inefficient NURBs are for games other than for crafting extremely simple props, texturing a NURB object is an entirely different thing than texturing a polygon object. The teacher appeared to not make this distinction or even inform my friend about the objects they were using.
Here is one of the teacups. Notice that the handle is a completely different object and is not in any way grouped with the cup itself. Granted, if it were grouped, that may have been broken when exporting it for me to open it; but even if that's the case, it would be simpler to make them one object unless they were meant to break apart at some point. As this is a still render frame project, I have a feeling that isn't what's going on here. The tricount for this teacup is 72704. This cup alone is making up almost half the polycount in the entire scene. There are two of them.
The handle. The tricount for this is 8960. Even for a film this would only be acceptable for an extremely up close shot, and even then 8000+ triangles seems excessive.
This is the only thing left in the scene worth discussing (the table is mostly well done, actually). This strange pitcher thing boasts a tricount of 83872. It appears someone modeled a simple pitcher object then hit turbosmooth several times. Notice that the lid isn't the same density as the pitcher, and seems out of place on it.
Okay, this is pretty absurd. It appears that it's just this teacher, and not an issue with the program at large. I'm not sure what to tell my friend, however. Should they file a complaint with the school? How would they gather enough evidence to support the complaint? What steps should be taken?
I feel like my friend is in a situation where the teacher just is not qualified for the position. The amount of harm this single teacher has done for the past 8 weeks with my friends 3D art skills is mindboggling. They appear to know nothing about good game art, because even when I tell them or provide tutorials (even the polycount wiki and tutorial threads!), the teacher seems to try even harder to contradict us and reset any progress my friend has made. I do not want to name names; that's unprofessional and I feel like this is something that my friend needs to try and resolve with the school first. I could be totally wrong, even, and that's why I'm making this thread, to gather more information and see what can be done about this.
If this is in the wrong place, please inform me and I will be happy to change or move this as necessary. If this is not appropriate for polycount at all, I will also remove it. However, I have done my best to hide the identities of the people involved, and am attempting to help a friend I feel is in a harmful situation, and I felt the wonderful community here would be able to help us figure out what to do.
Any and all advice/criticism is more than welcome. Thank you for your time.
However I've been noticing that a lot of what my friend is being told from a particular teacher is very contradictory to... well, everything. Even the other teacher in the program that is teaching 3D is telling my friend other things, as well as everything I read on polycount, everything I see in tutorials, and everything I know about video game art in general.
This all came to a head today when my friend begged me for help with an assignment. They sent me the scene as an OBJ (as I currently only have access to Blender after a reformat and a move, and they use Maya at the school), and as soon as I loaded it I saw some serious issues. Some of these were from my friend not being taught proper techniques, and some of it is just... mindboggling.
You can view the gallery here http://imgur.com/a/IiIrW, but I'll also link the relevant images to explain what I find incorrect here. Please feel free to correct me if you believe me to be wrong-- I'd love to know if I'm incorrect in things, but as it stands, it seems like this teacher is doing much more harm than good with what he's teaching. Keep in mind this is just one scene. My friend doesn't want me to show anything else, otherwise they might be identified and they're worried about how the teacher would react, since they have more classes with them. There has been a long history of this teacher doing weird things and my friend asking me for help; the most prevalent of which is the teacher's obsession with turbosmooth. Especially with props or character models, the teacher insists they must smooth the model before turning it in, and do absolutely nothing else afterwards.
Okay, so here's the scene in question.
At first glance it might not look too bad. But then you'll notice a few odd things, like how some models were not smooth shaded, and how some were, and the obvious difference in poly distribution...
The first thing I did was inspect the walls...
Umm... Hmm. Someone didn't tell my friend not to let meshes clip through each other. Not a big deal, I guess... Seems very basic, though. And why are there extra edge loops? Wait, is the floor separate?
Yeah, it's separate... But what's with that geometry on the side?
What in the world is going on here? It's not even a closed model. A simple cube stretched out would have been better and more efficient. Who said this would be a better way?
Okay, so maybe my friend just made some mistakes. Happens to everyone, and sure, confusion is common with beginning 3D. What about the models inside the scene, are they weird too? Well, I asked, and apparently only one of these models were made by my friend. The other were provided from a library from the instructor.
This is my friends model:
It's not too evident from just this (it's hard to show), but at the top there's a hole in the mesh that the center collumn bit with the dongles on it is placed into. This confirms my earlier suspicion: No one told my friend not to have holes in the mesh. How could this be glossed over? Also note that the entire model was turbosmoothed, the edge flow is crooked and lopsided and the bottom is curved up instead of flat.
Since my friend specifically asked for help with UV Mapping, I took a screencap of that as well:
[IMG]]http://i.imgur.com/yEsZ5DH.png[/IMG]
![http://i.imgur.com/yEsZ5DH.png[/IMG]](http://i.imgur.com/yEsZ5DH.png[/IMG]){kind=link}
It seems like they just automatically unwrapped it and were told to organize it afterwards. Anyone who has done UV Mapping knows this is a nightmare to work with, and should be avoided at all costs. Very rarely does automatic unwrapping work the way you want it to.
So wait, if the other models weren't made by my friend, why do they all look so weird? I did some snooping and found the following...
The window and Door models were automatically triangulated. Not that big a deal, but it'd be nice if the models were at least consistent.
That doesn't appear to be the case, however:
This apple looks like it was a simple edited sphere with what looks like a procedurally extruded stem from it. Notice it isn't smooth shaded, while most everything else seems to be.
What in the world made this tray? There's a serious waste of polycount with the corners leading all the way into the center. At this point I began to wonder if everything here was procedurally generated from NURBs or Subdiv, then converted to polys.
Wow, that rim is intense. I selected just the top to see how many triangles were there, and it's over 1000 for just the top rim. Altogether (with the cookie models and lid and everything) the triangle count is 9960. That triangle count might befit a movie or film, but definitely not a game, and even if that triangle count was for a movie or film the layout of the geometry is incredibly bad. I want to stress that these were NOT made by my friend, a student, but were provided by a 3D instructor for a student to then UV Map and texture.
I have no problem with being provided models to work with for texturing or animation or etc., as long as they are provided properly with licensing and ownership issues understood and aware of. My problem is that this is incredibly bad topology to be teaching a game art student at a professional game art program. If my friend were to model something this poor, I feel they would have a great deal of trouble obtaining any work. I also realized that these were definitely procedurally generated at some point, not just because of how clean the geometry was, but that when I re-exported the scene to my friend and they loaded it up, their Maya began to run very slowly (No wonder-- there is 141k triangles in the entire scene). I came to the realization that the teacher was attempting to make them texture what appears to be NURBs-- not NURBs that were then converted to polygons, but the NURB objects themselves. Ignoring for the time being how inefficient NURBs are for games other than for crafting extremely simple props, texturing a NURB object is an entirely different thing than texturing a polygon object. The teacher appeared to not make this distinction or even inform my friend about the objects they were using.
Here is one of the teacups. Notice that the handle is a completely different object and is not in any way grouped with the cup itself. Granted, if it were grouped, that may have been broken when exporting it for me to open it; but even if that's the case, it would be simpler to make them one object unless they were meant to break apart at some point. As this is a still render frame project, I have a feeling that isn't what's going on here. The tricount for this teacup is 72704. This cup alone is making up almost half the polycount in the entire scene. There are two of them.
The handle. The tricount for this is 8960. Even for a film this would only be acceptable for an extremely up close shot, and even then 8000+ triangles seems excessive.
This is the only thing left in the scene worth discussing (the table is mostly well done, actually). This strange pitcher thing boasts a tricount of 83872. It appears someone modeled a simple pitcher object then hit turbosmooth several times. Notice that the lid isn't the same density as the pitcher, and seems out of place on it.
Okay, this is pretty absurd. It appears that it's just this teacher, and not an issue with the program at large. I'm not sure what to tell my friend, however. Should they file a complaint with the school? How would they gather enough evidence to support the complaint? What steps should be taken?
I feel like my friend is in a situation where the teacher just is not qualified for the position. The amount of harm this single teacher has done for the past 8 weeks with my friends 3D art skills is mindboggling. They appear to know nothing about good game art, because even when I tell them or provide tutorials (even the polycount wiki and tutorial threads!), the teacher seems to try even harder to contradict us and reset any progress my friend has made. I do not want to name names; that's unprofessional and I feel like this is something that my friend needs to try and resolve with the school first. I could be totally wrong, even, and that's why I'm making this thread, to gather more information and see what can be done about this.
If this is in the wrong place, please inform me and I will be happy to change or move this as necessary. If this is not appropriate for polycount at all, I will also remove it. However, I have done my best to hide the identities of the people involved, and am attempting to help a friend I feel is in a harmful situation, and I felt the wonderful community here would be able to help us figure out what to do.
Any and all advice/criticism is more than welcome. Thank you for your time.
Replies
Yeah, this is definitely what I'd expect to see from a high school "3D program". Unfortunately, this is a very large, professional, college-level educational institution. In fact it's well known, though I won't name it obviously. The fact that my friend is paying a massive tuition for... this, is insane.
Here is an example, only the courses that the industry feel worthy being accredited get on the list, the course also has to meet lots of targets.
http://courses.creativeskillset.org/pick_the_tick_degree_courses/accredited_computer_games_courses
This is a great link, thanks for showing it to me. Me and my friend are in the United States, so I'm sure there's a collective accreditation list somewhere. I've personally been burned by a scam school that was accredited in the past but at some point severely dropped their standards and did not meet the accreditation targets at all, so I'm wondering if there is a list that is rigorously updated yearly to reflect situations like these?
I don't think it's a problem with the overall program, however. I believe it may just be this instructor and the courses they're teaching. If it does appear to be a deeper problem then this information will be extremely handy, but if it's just the teacher, I'm hoping that something can be done to either clarify what he's teaching or, if he's incompetent, to remove/replace him.
This is a good idea. It appears there is another teacher that my friend interacts with (I don't think they have any classes together yet but they seemed to have spoken and discussed classwork and the like) who is quite good (I've seen his work! Amazing stuff.) so hopefully a little more light can be shed on it from a faculty perspective by asking them. It may be a better way to approach the issue than jumping straight to the head of the school, who may or may not know a great deal about this specific teacher or part of the program.