Next Gen Workflow ideas

Elod.H

Hello everyone,

I am doing a bit of planning / researching at the moment in order to better prepare myself for the current / next gen requirements of game art. I recognize the possibility of an artist to settle into their workflow, keep doing that for years and years and slowly drift away from the new, next gen tools that will eventually be mandatory if one is to aim high and remain valuable to the industry.

I recognize that the focus needs to be on art itself, study and practice should be heavily focused on raw creativity, but it is obvious that in this field of work it is very important to keep up to date with the latest tools.

I am an Environment Artist and pretty much use the standard tools, meaning: Maya / 3DSMax, Photoshop, ZBrush, XNormal,QUIXEL tools. I model props, texture them, create tiling textures, create small environments etc.

In some of my free time I want to devote myself to learn new software that I see becoming very popular, such as: Unreal 4, Substance Designer and Painter, World Machine, Knald. UE4 is obvious, the Substance tools seem incredibly powerful and I have already started researching them. World Machine looks very powerful for Terrain generation and would allow me to more quickly create very detailed environments. I don't know a lot about Knald, at this moment I am unsure whether it will enhance my workflow.
What I am really looking for are tools that allow a non-linear workflow. I don't mind steep learning curves as long as the end result will be that I can focus more on art and less on the constraints of my workflow. The Substance tools for example seem to provide pretty amazing possibilities when it comes to jumping back and forth during the work pipeline to change the look of things.

I was just wondering what people think about what an artist definitely needs to look into software wise if they want to keep up with the pretty incredible advancements of software and hardware.

Thanks very much!

DireWolf

I'd say the only field missing from your software repository, is true 3D painting such as Substance Painter of 3D Coat. Quixel sort of covers that but it's not the same.

Elod.H

DireWold: yes, that is correct. I've been using 3DCoat in and out, but haven't familiarized myself with it enough to completely comfortably integrate it into my workflow. At the moment I need to learn how to live link it with Photoshop so I can jump back and forth between them. That shouldn't take too much time though.

perna: Thanks very much for the input. Your points make a lot of sense. To be honest what I would need to do in the future heavily relies on my job, I can't really predict it at the moment as Environment Art can encompass terrain generation sometimes as well, hence the interest in World Machine. What I like to do though is small dioramas with awesome atmosphere, silhouettes, color etc.

I`m really curious about what people think about achieving stylized / hand painted looking art with PBR. I started enjoying PBR quite a lot and I've seen people here and there create stylized / hand painted looking stuff "with it" , but I would like to gather a bit more info on this. Creating the exaggerated shapes and interesting silhouettes is no problem, but how does one go about adding all the nice color variation, tinted shadows etc. into the textures within PBR?
I`m very interested in what people think.

Thanks!

Bartalon

I don't think it's too important to know how to expertly use every piece of tech that comes around.

What's important is to keep informed about what's hot, new, or on the rise and check them out to see if they have any potential for replacing your current software set and lead to a better/faster pipeline.

On stylized PBR:

PBR Dagger

Thane-

Is the quixel suite a standard tool now?

ZacD

I've heard about more use of Substance in production environments, but that's anecdotal evidence. Maybe we should have a post in General Discussion about what's their studios general standard software for production of game assets. We've had Max and Maya polls, but it would be nice to see how widely used more software is.

Avvi

If you're into tech, learning Substance Designer can be your first step in making shaders. Then you'll be able to learn how to do similar stuff in realtime and animated - in Shaderforge/UE4. Useful knowledge if you want your enviros to live or change.

Elod.H

Thanks for all the replies guys. Yeah, Substance is definitely on my list, I've ran through the tutorials of Painter and about 80% of Designer. Now I`ll try to base a project on them.. if not designer then Painter definitely.

For pixel based 3D painting (not vert color) I use 3DCoat sometimes, but Painter seems a bit better for me because of all the masks, baking possibilities etc.
I`m more interested in creating smaller, very atmospheric environments at the moment, so maybe Marmoset will be enough instead of delving deep into UE4.