Best Current Workflow?
polycounter lvl 6
Been out of modelling for a few months due to school commitments. Wondering what the best current workflow is for making game-ready models. Current Workflow =
Concept + turnaround + reference board:
3DS MAX Low Poly.
Zbrush High Poly.
Substance Painter Texturing.
Is this good? Are their other things required? Trying to get my workflow as effienct as possible. Thanks.
Concept + turnaround + reference board:
3DS MAX Low Poly.
Zbrush High Poly.
Substance Painter Texturing.
Is this good? Are their other things required? Trying to get my workflow as effienct as possible. Thanks.
Replies
https://gumroad.com/snefer
First thing - do you need to make a 2d concept? Because outside of school it is rare that you will be doing both - concept and 3d modell - yourself. If you are not planing in becoming a 2D concept artist there are a lot of benefits in taking existing concepts and use them for practice purposes or - with concent of the artsit - for portfolios. If you want to do your own thing, you still might want to start off with simple blocking out in 3D and once you have the basic big shapes get into details. Basically doing the 2D concepting simply in 3D, without worring about details. If you choose this approach you might consider doing it in 3Ds max or/and with Dynamesh in Zbrush (or even using Marvelous Designer for clothing - keeping in mind there are also different approaches how to use it).
Again depending on your preferences you can either prepare you base meshes in 3Ds Max for sculpting or work with Dynamesh and retopo afterwards.
When it comes to details and sculpting once again choices are to be made - what will you push into the sculpt and what kind of detail will you leave just for the texture maps to handle.
As I said, working on a project many things might be demanded from you that will force you to go a specific approach - like meshes for the rigger to start working on the rig so that animators are not hold up too long.
My personal approach for personal stuff is to get an idea what I want to do in 3D, not waste time in doing anything detailed in 2D as I know I won't get anything worth showing in 2D fast enough, and than start with the base meshes in Maya. For organic modells I use a combination of modelling in Maya and low poly 'sculpting' - rather pushing few verticies - in Zbrush. But I tend to finish all base meshes for ZBrush before moving into Zbrush, so that I have the silhouttes and idea of the model as well as controll of vertex density for sculpting. It is also a solid foundation for intermediate rigging and animations if needed.
When it comes to sculpting I sculpt details that I need controll (like microfolds in arm/knee pits and similar areas) of into the HP model and do with textures just the generic material definition. I also tend to keep my subtools at underneath 4 millions polygons in Zbrush as my Maya can't handle the baking otherwise - so this is also something to keep in mind when planing your workflows.
After sculpting I export the lowest or 2nd subdivision level from Zbrush back to Maya and reduce it to my needs, sparing me to do a retopo from scratch, and adjust things for baking.
But as said before it comes to your own preferences and needs. You should try to understand why people choose specific workflows and see what of those you can incorporate yourself. The worst thing I've seen is people blindly following famous artists workflows without understanding them and actually neither fitting their own strengths nor their project needs resulting in getting stuck and frustrated. As long as a project doesn't have a specific demand it is all fair game what makes you efficient.
Right now the high poly workflow is under revision by a lot of tech artists and artists,which is why you see a lot of new methods and tools trying to "get it".
The best thing you can do to start working with this so called best workflow is to try out different methods and prototype in your modeling/sculpting application to find out how to create assets faster and better.
The low poly workflow hasn't changed that much for almost a decade sadly,you still have to do the same retopo and unwrapping things that we always did.A lot of new methods and techniques make things faster,but these operations in the long run should be (semi) automated imho.
Tor Frick / Wolfenstein: The New Order / Old Blood
Naughty Dog (for at least pre-vis)
Swizzle/Xavierck uses Modo, but I don't know if he used it on Ratchet and Clank
EarthQuake (Did some weapons for Brink) http://www.joewilson3dart.com/
I'm sure there's a lot more, just the first few to come to mind.