Typical Workflow in Game Art?

Poseidon8734

What tends to be the typical workflow for an artist assuming you yourself are doing all the modeling, sculpting, and texturing yourself? I am talking as far a programs go. I have seen many people do it different ways but what is the most effective one?
Example: Zbrush, Maya, Substance Painter etc...

Eric Chadwick

There is no "most effective one". There is only what works best for you, and for whatever situation you are creating assets for.

Every game is different. I'm currently making assets for a 3D game for mobile phones, and I'm also making things for architectural VR. Both completely different. And totally different workflow from art for a realistic on-the-rails PC shooter. Which is totally different from art workflow for a VR platformer.

It all depends. What do you want to make?

Poseidon8734

@Eric Chadwick
I typically make props. No specific use though yet.

amyblack335

Hi. I think Maya is the best

ZacD

Pretty much every workflow typically involves creating a block out. Proper planning will save a lot of time and iteration. It's much easier to tweak a block out than your high poly, low poly, or both. 

Texturing in Photoshop alone is almost objectively slower than using Quixel or Substance at this point. Quixel and Substance are both completely designed around and for a game art workflow.

musashidan

Plus, with the software most of us use these days (a lot!!), the process is non-linear and iterative. 

But as a beginner, keep it linear. Try different approaches. Work through the traditional stages:

build a low/high-poly simultaneously by using a sub-d approach.

Optimise your low.

UV unwrap it

Bake it

Texture it.

Then try a different workflow:

Build a high poly using Zbrush or booleans or similar with 'polysoup' topology

Manually retopo your low-poly and unwrap

Bake it

Texture it

Etc.....Tidal Blast listed the many aproaches/paths to take. Learn them all. It will greatly benefit you as you will gain a wide variety of skills/knowledge that can al, work together as you begin to work on more complex assets.

hansolocambo

My personal workflow for hard surface or organic modeling alike. LP and HP stands for LowPoly et HighPoly. Green softwares are just my personal choices, but many of those steps could be done  with other softwares.
I just think that 3D-Coat is insanely good for retopology/unwrapping/reordering UV Sets. Substance non-destructive workflow is mandatory nowadays for baking compatible normal maps and texturing. ZBrush is the absolute reference for sculpting and quick sketching. And 3DSMax, well... I can't stand it anymore (unstable, no control on the pivot point, years old messy UI, etc) but that's what I know best for low poly and it's got many excellent tools. I'd maybe advise Modo or Maya for the latter.

Workflow :

• 2D Sketch or google for references.

• HP : Quick Sculpt / Quick ZModeler Low Poly (ZBRush)

• LP : Manual retopology (3D-Coat) / Modeling (3DSMax)

• HP : Sculpting / Detailing (ZBRush)

• LP : Eventual extra retopology / Unwrapping (3D-Coat)

• LP : Reordering / Regrouping UV sets (3D-Coat)

• LP : ID Maps (ZBRush)

• LP : Smoothing Groups (3DSMax)

• HP -> LP : Baking of Tangent Space Normals + AO + Curvature + ID Maps, etc (Substance Painter)

• LP : Normal Map detailing (Substance Painter)

• LP : Texturing / Painting (Substance Designer / Painter)

It's important to respect the steps or you'll end up re-doing your unwrapping or your smoothing groups many times : always keep in mind that going through softs using compatible formats .OBJ and .FBX is far from being 100% non-destructive.

I modified a lot my workflow recently by using Allegorithmic softwares so any suggestions / corrections would be more than welcomed

NoRank

Lol, idk why but it's really rare for me to have problems with 3dsmax. This is probably because you got used to other 3d softwares and then you can't get used to max workflow. If I had to point out something that is kinda bad in your workflow is that you change a lot of softwares, and this can waste some time (even if you have some good scripts that automate most of the process). 

Well, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter I guess, as long as you can get your work done with a good quality.

hansolocambo

Hey NoRank
You're right, I jump between 4 or 5 softs. But each soft has its qualities and faults. And using the good tools of each accelerates the workflow a lot. Try to sculpt in Max or do some PBR hand painting You have to use more than one.
Biggest fault of Max for years and it's never been implemented : you cannot move and rotate freely the pivot point of your selection. I use this soft since the DOS version and now every soft I know of have this option (Maya for example since 2016 version (only !) , at ANY moment, you press D and everything you do modifies the pivot not the selection). Even Spacedraw on Android does it ! But Max nope. You can specify a pivot for the object (but damn the amount of useless clicks to do so...). But you can't set and snap freely the pivot of sub-object selections. And this really sucks. It's filled with bugs and a too heavy interface with years old obsolete modifiers. It bakes normal maps that aren't compatible properly with any 3D engine, the viewport is the worst around by far, etc, etc. But I use it every day. Slowly moving towards Maya and Modo though. Not sure which one to chose yet.

NoRank

Yeah I know that you have to use other stuff for sculpting and etc. It's just that sometimes it's just a matter of setting some hotkeys and then you're fine with max. 
But for sure you're better the way you feel more comfortable with.