Requesting Advice on Game Environment Design

Decoding

I understand that game assets in most cases require a high poly and a low poly to create good normal maps. I am able to create good "main props," that would need a high poly model, but I'm now attempting to learn environment design and I realize now that this scale of complexity makes high poly modelling seem way too time consuming to achieve a decent result. I don't see a purpose of using a high poly model if I simply have a wall or a floor, however what if the wall is somewhat complex and caves in?

Essentially I'm asking what makes the creator decide upon using a high poly model and what methods are used instead of high poly modelling?

CrackRockSteady

Things like walls and floors can often be modular and/or used with tiling materials made with something like Substance Designer.  Depending on what sort of details you're looking to make or how much time you have, actually creating a HP model and baking may not be necessary.

Likewise, something like Substance Painter could be used to create a normal map for a prop if you just need to quickly stencil on some details.

Whether you choose to make a HP model to bake to a LP or to use some other method is really dependent on a lot of factors.  What specifically you are making, how good it needs to look, how close the player will be to it, how much time do you have to spend on it, lots of different things can affect how you choose to create textures for assets.

Brian "Panda" Choi

NaughtyDog medium poly models props that don't need as hero/focal points, but they need to make it look good. They don't high poly model everything. 

We dont do that at InXile as well. 

Larry

I would say for now try to focus on creating materials. Many items on enviroments are simple shapes. You can create astonishing enviromental work without having alot of modeling skills. 

Stuart Campbell

In most cases I would recommend doing the broad strokes with the high poly and keeping the smaller details for a texture based approach using Substance Painter or NDO. Modelling the smaller details takes significantly longer and is also much harder to amend later. Putting these in with texture workflows instead is faster and offers greater flexibility. 

Kevin Albers

One thing to keep in mind is 'likely distance from the camera'. If you have a general idea of where the player/camera is going to be, and where it won't be, you can choose simple approaches for assets that never get real close, e.g. midground elements the player can't get to, or usually won't go up to.

Michael_Ingrassia

Honestly depends on the environment (jungle vs cityscape) as to how you approach the high poly. Our studio details high poly either through zbrush sculpt or with substance. Depending on your experience level youll have to decide whats best. But bottom line is always do a detailed high pass to capture better details in the normals. Even more importance is optimization especially for vr work. Its a whole new world out there and vr is shaking things up.