Cry Engine VS UE4 VS Marmoset Toolbag

Christian Cunningham

What one should I use? I am an environment artist. I find that things in marmoset look much better than while in cry engine and ue4. Keep in mind that marmoset tool bag used PBR. As an environment artist should I really have to make my portfolio as I was a level designer? Is it okay to create stunning mealtime environments and just use marmoset instead? Why Do my assets look much better in marmoset? My projects look good in cry engine 3 or UE4 but there is a big difference I put them into marmoset. Help me!

ZacD

For displaying an individual prop or asset, Marmoset Toolbag is the best. In toolbag, there's less compression and optimization going on than you would see in a real game. But also Marmoset is missing a lot of features an environment artist would want to use in a larger scene, mostly in terms of lighting, effects, texture/vertex painting, etc.

Rurouni Strife

ZacD's right on the money. If you want to do an individual prop or diorama, Marmoset is quick and easy to get a great looking result right out of the gate. However, if you're making a full environment as a project-grab Unreal or CryEngine to show you know how a full featured toolset works.

Plus, they're all pretty affordable so why not get Marmoset and one of the other engines?

Christian Cunningham

alright. As For Cry VS UD4 what is your opinion? I am thinking with UE4 being newer it would be better to use that to show positional studios that I am learning on my own and progressing as an artist. But with that being said should I really put my time and money into something a level designer would be doing in the industry?

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Justin Meisse

I worked at a studio where the Environment Artist would create an entire play area inside Max, the Level Designer would place extra collision, monsters, NPCs and scripted events.

Experiencing a variety of engines is good, knowing how to deal with the quirks of Unreal & Cryengine will better prepare you for the quirks of working on a proprietary in house engine.

Christian Cunningham

thanks guys!

ZacD

I'd say UE4 is more artist friendly, has more tutorial content, and is more flexible. Also it's a better deal because you can cancel and resubscribe as often as you want, and your content won't be locked until you resub, which was the situation with CryEngine. Also in the future if you want to sell a few assets on the UE4, you can use it to make some extra money.

gsokol

As an environment artist should I really have to make my portfolio as I was a level designer?

If you want to show your skills as an environment artist who will likely be working in some sort of game engine? Yes...you should probably show your work in a game engine.

Why Do my assets look much better in marmoset?

Image based lighting is probably a big factor in that.

DireWolf

I imagine a level designer's portfolio would focus on different things. It's more about game play - making the level fun for players to explore, creating puzzles the players need to solve, etc. Probably has less to do with art.

I may be wrong but I remember watching God of War 2 behind scene DVD and the level designers' screens pretty much look like this
http://images.eurogamer.net/articles//a/1/0/2/4/8/8/1/LevelDesign_000.jpg.jpg

Once the mechanics are in place and player are able to walk around, the scene would be sent over to the artist where they create final piece of model/texture and replace everything with beauty assets. In that sense, having a fully dressed set in your portfolio will definitely help.

Cry vs UE4, I love real time lighting and natural scenes in Cry. However UE4 seems to be the hot spot for small team and indie developers right now. Maybe a bit early to tell but I have gut feeling that there are much more opportunities with UE4, paid or free.

Don't get carried away trying to pick an engine tho. Good model + Good texture = good on any engine.

Zack Maxwell

Everything I've heard says that Cryengine is taking a pretty hard nosedive right now, and their future is far from stable.
If you intend to learn just one or the other, UE4 seems like the better option.

peanut™

Grimwolf wrote: »

Everything I've heard says that Cryengine is taking a pretty hard nosedive right now, and their future is far from stable.
If you intend to learn just one or the other, UE4 seems like the better option.

I would like to point out that UE4 took a lot of things from CE. They can surely give a match to UE4, just wait what's up around the corner, you may be surprised.

TAN

peanut™ wrote: »

I would like to point out that UE4 took a lot of things from CE. They can surely give a match to UE4, just wait what's up around the corner, you may be surprised.

Please enlighten us, would you ? What exactly is around the corner ? Come on tell us.

Christian Cunningham

I am going to learn ue4 and use that for environments but for props and such I will use marmoset. Thanks again for the advice.