Time constraints

Busterizer

I am curious how does 'average' 3d department in games industry operate.

Whats the time frames given to artists to complete a model, with all textures and everything (considering the team is small)?

How flexible deadlines are for 3d department considering amount of work that needs to be done, and be in sync with the rest of the team?

Shiniku

There's not much of an answer here, the time it takes it varies wildly. Are you modeling a piece of rebar that'll be in the background of one scene, or modeling the hero character or vehicle for the game?

The flexibility depends a lot, too. It's understandable when some things become a harder task than expected and take longer, but that should be balanced out by models that are knocked out quicker than expected. If a company has reasonable deadlines and you're consistently late on them, don't expect to hold your job for too long.

In my experience though, even though things are fast paced and we're expected to complete projects within a set amount of time, I'm generally not given time constraints on any per-asset basis. As long as the work gets done and meets the quality standard, people are generally happy.

Chimp

indeed - its a bit different working in-house compared to freelance - you tend to not think it terms of each individual asset's timeframe because you'll usually have a fair few - the scene will have a first-pass deadline of say, a week, and you need to get all your parts done within that time.

that is another thing that you notice too, compared to freelancing - things are done in passes. you do a rough approximation first, then refine - sometimes repeatedly. but these are different deadlines, and the refinement might even get done by somebody else.

different studios work differently, and on different projects they work differently too. there is no real answer.

generally, you'll be working alongside others so you'll keep each other on track and all be updated with timeframes in meetings.

As shiniku says, its difficult to estimate because it varies so wildly. Perhaps you could show some example assets and people will be able to give rough ball parks for how long it should take.

Busterizer

The project I am working on is cyberpunk fps, that is currently in its very early state. So early in fact that there is no any kind of playable version at this time, and technology is being developed for it. There is a really good reason we are not going for UE4 or Unity.

Artists are currently doing various props that will be used throughout the game levels, and will also serve as good benchmark for testing and all that. Given that all props need to have diffuse/normal/specular texture chain with them, there are few cases where guys take quite some time to finish their work (read: months - granted we all work in free time). Originally we wanted to have all models that are not 'work heavy' finished in 3 weeks maximum, complete with all the texture work.

I don't really think that I am actually too slow, but I am not confident enough to say I can deliver all my stuff high quality in 2 or 3 weeks time in all cases. For example I did model of human skull. But I didn't model it from scratch, instead I traced around flawed high poly version that I found on the net. It took me around 15 days to have it on good quality for todays game.

Based on what you guys say, i am not really that slow am I? I wanted to check if there is some kind of known deadlines since there shouldn't be anyone lagging behind in development.

Chimp

Well, if it were full-time I'd say yeah, that is slow. I would not set two weeks for a skull in any scenario really - think of it in hours - thats one-hundred and twenty work hours for what, a prop or a small portion of a character.

The fact that you effectively retopologised an existing high poly makes that even more extreme, that should at most take one day for retopologising a skull - not 120hrs.

That said, you are doing it in spare time, so we if we assume 2 hours a day then that's 30 hours which is a bit more reasonable but by no means a professional production timeline.

That said, you shouldn't be discouraged by that - it takes years to get good AND fast and it all depends on what ultimately needs to get done.

What I suggest you do is estimate the number of props you need and their complexity. figure out how many you need to make and how long they will take to make, then estimate how much time until you plan to launch.

If one skull sized prop takes 15 days, and you are going to need 200 or so models of that complexity thats 200*15 work days - thats THREE THOUSAND WORK DAYS or EIGHT YEARS to complete all prop modelling on the project? bit long isn't it?

Maybe we can identify what is causing you to spend so much time on these things, could you elaborate on your process from beginning to end, explaining what you did for each of the 15 days?

Busterizer

That is actually really helpful, it made me check how much time I would actually need for the project I working on. I need to get me some improvement real quick.

Maybe we can identify what is causing you to spend so much time on these things, could you elaborate on your process from beginning to end, explaining what you did for each of the 15 days?

I did retopo of the model in 3ds max, by making a plane, and doing edge extrude all around the model until I was happy with the result. I know this was way slower process than using zbrush or something else to do it. But this way I felt that i had more control over the result and using 3ds max at the time seemed as good way to go, for making all quad model that had more than one mesh for everything.