Question to proffessional Environment artists! (about vegetation).

grimsonfart

Hi there!

I have a question i have had in my head for a long time, as a hobbyist environment artist i just involved myself into a project as a vegetation designer. The question is texturing vegetation...


Does the current industry lean towards hand created textures, or is photosource used when possible? To avoid confusion, i'm not talking about highpoly or not, i'm talking about texturing the actual highpoly vegetation model.


From my expirience, nothing can beat a good photosource. What i currently do is make feasable highpoly, unwrap it, get good photosource as texture.

I'm asking because i want to get into the industry one day, and i feel i need to know as much as possible about what the industry currently does.

Axi5

Not a professional (yet) but I did some intern work for a studio once.

My 2 cents, it's going to be heavily dependant on the art style of the game of course. If you're going for realism I don't see why photo textures shouldn't be used if available.

grimsonfart

Thanks for answering anyways. It is a realistic game, and i agree that photosource should then be used.

marks

The clue is in the name, photorealism

AdvisableRobin

At first I thought the title was named (About Vegetables) and got really excited to answer avocado related questions.

Photo Sourcing is completely an option, however the image is normally only ever used as a base to build up a texture with.

If you are interested in current industry standards for 'realism' then look into Physically Based Rendering and programs like Substance Designer or the Quixel Suite.

jfitch

It also depends on where you're working. Naughty Dog for instance may create most of their textures from zbrush/high poly models and use minimal photosourcing while Sledgehammer (COD) might do the opposite, and Blizzard will almost certainly continue to use hand painted textures until the end of time.