Normal 3D game art VS VR projects art

Hassan

Does the 3D game art that is done for a 3D AAA game or any 3D game in general, differs from the art made for a VR project, in terms of the art style, the techniques, the presentation of the asset in the game engine (shaders for instance )....etc???  

poopipe

Short answer : yes.

Longer but still short answer:
It mainly differs at the macro level. Art direction for VR is different,  colour choices, levels of contrast, scale, visual noise etc. All take on different meanings and level of importance once you're wearing the hat. 
Technically speaking VR requires more resources to draw to the screen  than standard 1080p  so you will have to budget for that.
In terms of asset creation,  you can't fake geometry with normal maps to the same extent as in 2d and in general VR is less forgiving of half-assery .


The plus side is that it's amazing when it works 

JordanN

I tried putting together VR art resources thread that answers some of this.

It's still a bit short at the moment, but I imagine more info will come out if/when VR reaches higher levels of adoption.

Hassan

thanks , this would be beneficial so much 

Noors

Besides the extra computations needed, i dont see why art would differ from a "regular" game.

Antialiasing is extremely important. Also the resolution is fairly small so care with flickering, tiny objects, high specularity...

Which means usually going forward rendering with MSAA, and even super heavy SSAA.

Most postprocesses are also very costly and should be adapted to work in single pass, along with shaders. Basically it's like working with 10 years ago spec.

Keep in mind that you gonna see some elements very close so they need a bit of love. Care with textures compression aswell. I agree that true geometry will make a better effect than normal maps, but honestly normal maps are still working fine. You can't do without for details anyway.

Also, you need dithering post process because you can see a lot better in the dark, and you'll notice horrible banding in dark areas that you wouldn't notice on a screen.

But all these are technical considerations, not really related to art itself.

poopipe

The big risk is that there are many  comfort triggers that aren't necessarily obvious until you've spent a fortune on large scale user testing and research.

Some triggers are extremely sneaky and can be very subjective - personally I'm affected quite badly by high levels of brightness but you can fire me down a candy striped tunnel full of explosions  at 100mph and I don't bat an eyelid.  Some people can't tolerate vr unless the image is desaturated, others are sensitive to contrast and so on. 

a fair bit of research is documented online or has been covered in GDC talks (Sony London have a couple of good examples iirc) so a lot of the legwork has been done for you and its well worth spending some time reading up on the subject.