Estimate your work time!
admin
How long does it take you to make something? Let's get a feel for it in 2015.
From start to finish considering the usual errors and reworks too.
You can use hours, or days, approximations, etc. Feel free to add more objects that are more relevent to you.
1 day = 8 hours, a week = 5 days.
Medium quality = think PS2/PS3 graphics, basically less on the small details, more about pumping something out to a average standard, not AAA.
State whether realistic or stylized.
So:
AAA Barrel:
Medium Quality Barrel:
AAA Water Well:
MQ Water Well:
AAA Organic sculpture (human/animal):
MQ Organic sculpture (human/animal):
AAA Boulders and rocks:
MQ Boulders and rocks:
AAA Tree:
MQ Tree:
AAA Assault Rifle:
MQ Assault Rifle:
AAA Vehicle Car:
MQ Vehicle Car:
AAA Interior only house level, unfurnished (walls, ceilings, floors, windows, lights):
MQ:
AAA Character Human:
MQ:
remember feel free to add any objects relevant to you.
OK including pictures to help make things easier, basically think of it as a client just asked you to remake something exactly the same. AAA standard.
Barrel:
Water Well:
Sculpture:
Boulders & rocks:
Trees:
Assault rifle:
Cars:
Now as for AAA vs Medium quality it's hard to define but best example would be like the Assault rifle from a CoD game (AAA) vs a Assault Rifle from GTA 5 (Medium quality, basically doesn't have the smaller details)
From start to finish considering the usual errors and reworks too.
You can use hours, or days, approximations, etc. Feel free to add more objects that are more relevent to you.
1 day = 8 hours, a week = 5 days.
Medium quality = think PS2/PS3 graphics, basically less on the small details, more about pumping something out to a average standard, not AAA.
State whether realistic or stylized.
So:
AAA Barrel:
Medium Quality Barrel:
AAA Water Well:
MQ Water Well:
AAA Organic sculpture (human/animal):
MQ Organic sculpture (human/animal):
AAA Boulders and rocks:
MQ Boulders and rocks:
AAA Tree:
MQ Tree:
AAA Assault Rifle:
MQ Assault Rifle:
AAA Vehicle Car:
MQ Vehicle Car:
AAA Interior only house level, unfurnished (walls, ceilings, floors, windows, lights):
MQ:
AAA Character Human:
MQ:
remember feel free to add any objects relevant to you.
OK including pictures to help make things easier, basically think of it as a client just asked you to remake something exactly the same. AAA standard.
Barrel:
Water Well:
Sculpture:
Boulders & rocks:
Trees:
Assault rifle:
Cars:
Now as for AAA vs Medium quality it's hard to define but best example would be like the Assault rifle from a CoD game (AAA) vs a Assault Rifle from GTA 5 (Medium quality, basically doesn't have the smaller details)
Replies
AAA Barrel: 3 days.
AAA Water Well: too broad. N/A
AAA Organic sculpture (human/animal): N/A
AAA Boulders and rocks: 1 boulder 3 days. Rocks for scattering on the floor should be much faster or even procedural.
AAA Tree: Again too broad.
AAA Assault Rifle: 2 weeks
AAA Vehicle Car: 2-3 weeks.
AAA Character Human: 3 weeks.
Sometimes the client will want their models much sooner than that even for AAA games. Once, each our artist needed to rush 3 swords/axes in a week complete from model to texture.
Barrel: 4-8 hours
Water well: 8-16 hours
Boulders/rocks 8-16 hourss
Tree: dunno
Assault Rifle: 2 weeks
Vehicle Car: 2-4 weeks
Character: 1-3 months
even a rifle, can be totally different depending if its used in an FPS or in a 3rd person shooter.
I get what you are saying with the technical limitations but really that just has to do with optimizing your low poly assets more with a lower triangle count and possibly smaller texture sizes/simpler shaders?
So really I see no point in trying to differentiate the time between "Medium" and AAA.
I mean what are you going to tell employer's/clients? Hire me! I can create a "medium quality" (read mediocre) barrel in 1-2 days?
I would just drop 'Medium quality' let the Art Directors and leads to determine the technical goals for the project. Because it is probably going to be on a 'per project' basis.
Estimating is okay, but I really see no point in trying to estimate anything less than AAA.
Replace AAA with a model viewed up close in first person view and medium with third-person and it makes a bit more sense.
Especially with his comparison of a first person shooter weapon where a lot of areas are relatively linear so it's way easier to go crazy with the polycounts due to lots of objects being culled, versus the weapons in GTA V which were really made for a third-person view in an open world game, though they did up the texture res and models for the first-person mode in the latest consoles and PC versions.
One point that's not brought up and actually greatly affects the time it takes to create something, is whether you are recreating something or making it from scratch. Obviously working from a concept seems to pretty common, but translating a piece of concept art into a 3D model and figuring out how it'll look like in the texturing still would take up a lot more time than someone telling you to just recreate how the barrel looks in Skyrim.
Time is also dependent on the art style, technical limitations, special set of requirements (make this desk drawer able to be opened with an animation versus static as a simple example), what's the workflow you're using, will there be different LODs, is this viewable from only certain angles are all angles, are assets kitbashed or mostly unique, how much is tileable, are there any special sets of materials being created, is this piece going to be reused often or do we just need some background filler that will be seen for 5 seconds or a hero piece that'll really stand out and look good in our promo materials etc.
Barrel:
1 day
Water well:
3-4 days
Sculpture:
I suck at these so probably a week or more. I haven't spent any time on sculptures etc so it would require some experimenting.
Rocks:
Depends on how many but probably 1 or 2 a day at least.
Trees:
Same here but 1 would probably take at least a couple of days as I would like to bake everything down from high polys. I could re-use a lot of the bakes for several variations of the tree so once I got that done I can probably create a bunch of them in a short time.
AR:
4-5 days assuming I have refs ready. Edit: Actually, on second thought, it would definitely take me longer. 1-1,5 weeks for high poly, low poly and texturing.
Car:
Haven't done any cars before so probably a month depending on complexity. Could be a lot more or less. Hard to say.
It's hard to answer these with certainty though, because it all depends on so much.
Water well: 3-4 days
Boulders/rocks: depends on complexity
Tree: 3-5 days
Assault Rifle: 2-3 weeks, assuming it's used in fps view (i.e. really up close)
Vehicle Car: 3-6 weeks (assuming any interior is rather simple).
Character:4-6 weeks for non 'hero'. for main character in a AAA game, several months...
Whats more important is the order and priority of tasks. we just assume that everyone is professional and will attempt to do everything as quickly as possible. Working with a profit share helps with this.
That's why it would make a lot of sense for a company to add quantitative data like this to their post-mortems or internal learning processes, so you can use data, like how long on average certain assets took, and use them into estimation for their next project. If you use something like Jira or Hansoft and do proper tracking, you should be able to get these values.
For increased accuracy you could compare these values to e.g. the data in this thread and see if your own values are in the same ballpark range.
Also, use some multiplier with the values you got (1.2 or 1.5) to account for new tools, processes, and other unknowns of a new production.
1- 1.5 week for the entire weapon lol geez i must be really slow
Also, do I have refs? Are there complicated shapes? Lots of texture work? Etc etc.
Being a generalist myself, my time scales vary depending on the type of asset I am making.
Modular building kit with PBR textures and shaders (UE4) - 1 week
Dropship (Vehicle) - 10 days
The building was 5 Days
With clear vision of asset and no major iteration required:
Barrel: 8 hours
Water well: 8-16 hours
Boulders/Rocks: 8-16 hours (depending on size and ability to tile)
Tree: 2 days (but this art can be used as a kit to build many many trees as stated above)
Assault Rifle: 2 weeks
Vehicle Car: 1-2months (second most circumstantial, as I can build a forklift in a week but a major gameplay vehicle can be up to 2 months, depending on complexity.)
Character: 1-3 months (REALLY circumstantial, definitely the most)
(After each estimation, there should be a "depending on everything" appended)
AAA Barrel: 2 days
Medium Quality Barrel: 1 day
AAA Water Well: 3 to 4 days
MQ Water Well: 2 to 3 days
AAA Boulders and rocks: 1/2 a day per medium-sized rock, ~a day per large cliff rocks.
MQ Boulders and rocks: Probably use tiling textures. Maybe 2 to 3 days for a whole set? Most of that time spent making an amazing tiling texture.
AAA Assault Rifle: 10 to 15 days
MQ Assault Rifle: <10 days