Environment Artist Workflow?

JimDeen1234

Hay guys, before I try to explain myself ill try to put it short as to what im trying to achieve. I am wondering what the best workflow is for an environment artist who wants to generate normal/ roughness/ diffuse/ metallic maps with a high/ low poly model of multiple assets on one UV map in Maya. I have already made low poly models and am now wondering whats the best route to go down.

I am have made a bunch of low poly environment assets such as a wooden bench, table/chairs and much more in maya, all combined onto 3 UV maps with overlapping UV's to mirror the painted textures on some parts. I am just a little bit mind boggled as to where professional environment artists go from here.  

I understand each artist will have different workflows to some degree but what would you guys say is the best workflow for an environment artist wanting to pump out assets for a game with them textures on. I am new to ZBrush and know that a lot of artists put them over into ZBrush and even start in ZBrush and then put them over into maya and make a low poly asset out of them for normal map baking. I just feel like this process would take a very long time starting from scratch in ZBrush right?

 I just think that the workflow of making the low poly in maya aswell as the high poly doesn't make the asset as good as it can be, hence why i tried putting them into ZBrush and finding myself running into many exporting problems such as needing to lower down the res to bake a normal map, that just defeats the whole objective as to what i was trying to achieve. I tried exporting the high poly models.obj (from zbrush) and the one low poly models.obj (from maya) of which are on the same UV map. After that I tried baking a normal map from xnormal but It didn't look right.

One last question is about texturing in terms of making the spec/roughness/metalic. I have previously done this in photoshop for PBR and then tried some Quixel but for hand painted textures with the PBR elements whats the best route to go down?


Any questions as to what I mean feel free to ask. I am desperate to get a consistent workflow as to what I can rely on for most assets I want to pump out. I'm sorry for over explaining myself, its what I tend to do :L

Bletzkarn

I would like also like to know this, from the few levels I have made the most important thing to have is good planning. Everything should be done in pen and paper before you hit the CAD. Overall scene, textures, references, hero shot, assets and center pieces. Just trying to bang something together as you go will lead to many headaches.

I think the really tough thing is there's so many ways to make a level and knowing the best way is very difficult. Unreal, Unity, Snap to Grid, material setups etc. Especially as you jump from game project to game project and each place uses a different method.

This picture gives a pretty good workflow.

JimDeen1234

Thanks a bunch I always create a good level design and plan out my mechanics and story relating to the theme etc before I even get started on producing anything else, so that will be very handy to me as to keep me on track

As for just low-> high poly for multiple meshes on the same UV space what would be the best route to take in terms of programs to produce a normal map?

pixelb

Good timing, I just finished putting together an explanation of my workflow for my portfolio. This example is for one prop, but it would work just as well for several- I would just export the stereo, trophy, bottle, and so on separately at the very end. As for textures, I don't go into it here, but it generally involves blending my baked maps together to get greyscale values I like, then using gradient maps to add color, then hand painting small details over top of that.

lorenzo_di_pietro

@PIXELB Very interesting explanation, thanks for sharing!