What speciality I should aim for in the games industry? Also some pipeline questions.
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Hello everyone!
I'm currently in high school and I'm studying 3D stuff for 1 year or so now. I got into a lot of things (VFX, animation, compositing, motion graphics etc.) before settling down on Blender and ZBrush doing simple props. I've wanted to be a character artist, but I dont want to sculpt something I dont like, so I dont want it as my job. I want to spend my time on 3D packages such as Maya or 3DS Max while I'm working. And the most suitable job for this is seems to be Environment Artist. I know you need to be sculpting, but that seems to be mainly to add details, and you dont make anything from scratch with clay. And that's where the problem begins. I didnt really think about Environment Art, since I thought it was just getting the assets and building the level. Some people say its the opposite. Here's one of my concers, do Environment Artists build the world, or just provide the assets for I dont know, level designers to put it all together? I'm nearly 1 years in to this, and people do amazing stuff after 1 year, but I'm unable to do it. I should have focused on something, so I'm trying to gather up information about the specialities (jobs) in the industry. Any help would be appreciated. I opened the companies' job listings and started to open Environment Art jobs, and it differs a lot from company to company. From Software even lists "Creating landform models" as a requirement, but no other company points this as a requirement on their job listings.
A bit info about myself: I really enjoy Painter and Designer. I also love modeling, if the thing I'm trying to model is a thing I can do it, of course.
My pipeline questions are, I'm quite confused about 2 things.
My first question is, for example, I'm trying to model a chair with a lot of ornaments for games. Should I model those and bake it on a low-poly model, or should I not model it and paint/draw them on Painter with normal data? Second option seems hard, but first option is not very easy either. In the end, is this personal preference or is there a certain way of doing this?
Second is, should I decimate the models, or should I retoplogize them? I have seen people decimating the models that wont deform while animating, and say that its much easier. Then I see people retopologizing simple rocks.
I'm currently in high school and I'm studying 3D stuff for 1 year or so now. I got into a lot of things (VFX, animation, compositing, motion graphics etc.) before settling down on Blender and ZBrush doing simple props. I've wanted to be a character artist, but I dont want to sculpt something I dont like, so I dont want it as my job. I want to spend my time on 3D packages such as Maya or 3DS Max while I'm working. And the most suitable job for this is seems to be Environment Artist. I know you need to be sculpting, but that seems to be mainly to add details, and you dont make anything from scratch with clay. And that's where the problem begins. I didnt really think about Environment Art, since I thought it was just getting the assets and building the level. Some people say its the opposite. Here's one of my concers, do Environment Artists build the world, or just provide the assets for I dont know, level designers to put it all together? I'm nearly 1 years in to this, and people do amazing stuff after 1 year, but I'm unable to do it. I should have focused on something, so I'm trying to gather up information about the specialities (jobs) in the industry. Any help would be appreciated. I opened the companies' job listings and started to open Environment Art jobs, and it differs a lot from company to company. From Software even lists "Creating landform models" as a requirement, but no other company points this as a requirement on their job listings.
A bit info about myself: I really enjoy Painter and Designer. I also love modeling, if the thing I'm trying to model is a thing I can do it, of course.
My pipeline questions are, I'm quite confused about 2 things.
My first question is, for example, I'm trying to model a chair with a lot of ornaments for games. Should I model those and bake it on a low-poly model, or should I not model it and paint/draw them on Painter with normal data? Second option seems hard, but first option is not very easy either. In the end, is this personal preference or is there a certain way of doing this?
Second is, should I decimate the models, or should I retoplogize them? I have seen people decimating the models that wont deform while animating, and say that its much easier. Then I see people retopologizing simple rocks.
Replies
Maybe you could work on modding one you like a lot. That will mean you have to do a little bit of everything. If you stick with it -- even with parts you don't like -- you'll probably get to a point where you undoubtedly know what parts you like doing the most.
Also, whatever job you are doing -- 3d or otherwise -- you will have to do stuff you don't enjoy. So, learn to enjoy whatever you are doing as much as you can, even if it's not your favorite thing.
These are some amazing tips. Unfortunately, I tried to do some modding, and actually did, but it takes so much unnecessary time, and its very annoying to get it to work in-game. This is what I've seen from Bethesda's games, I dont know about others. With Fallout 4 and Skyrim:SE it got a lot more unnecessarily harder, converted in-game files are hard to convert back etc. and I dont want to go back to that again.
I have heard your second advice from a lot of people I've talked with, but I still want to do something that I "mostly" enjoy, at least. I will try to keep your second advice in mind! Thank you.
You're going to need sculpting if you're going to sculpt a humanoid statue. Or possibly Victorian filigree. Extrapolate possibilties from there.
1) Depends on which is fastest and what elements you're going to actually give silhouette/volume in the model. No silhouette for elements justifies "painting in the normals."
2) You can do either or mish mash both. Whatever it is, it better be some clean topology at the end.
That being, I even just recently did two variants of a decimation to cobble together a quick retopology of an asset I made. Saved me a ton of time.
Really? Then Environment Artists needs to know how to sculpt the human figure as well. It seems like this job is harder than I thought. I've also been researching, and looks like design teams block out the levels, and environment artists are just putting the assets to where they should go according to the design. It's really confusing to not have a definite answer to what Environment Artists do, I had to listen to multiple podcasts just to have a basic understanding of what environment artists do.
There's so much to learn, its kind of overwhelming.
Also, thanks for answering my workflow questions!
It really depends on how much responsibility you get to take on, and this depends on the level you're currently at and what you want to specialize towards or at all.
For instance, an artist might start as a model artist, which is a general role, then find themselves good a making rocks, and become a rock artist for environments.
So linkedin says environment artist, but all the artist has done most of their career is rocks.
Can I hire this guy to make Venus on a clam shell?
I'd have to look at his personal work, then decide if I want someone specific to making statues.
Since he understands the process of 3D, perhaps this artist can be accommodated in a team making my Venus on a Clam Shell.
That depends on my budget and other influencing factors.
However as an artist, you'd do well to learn all the skills and techniques to achieve an objective. You have to be mindful of what you've chosen to work on depending on whether you feel you're up to the challenge.
If you've tasked yourself with making the Trevi Fountain, its upto you to challenge yourself into learning to make statues, or you could focus on the other elements and get really good at that.
Perhaps you'll be the water shader artist.
For portfolio, its important to set practical goals, and be passionate about what you've taken up so you can show your best.
You're basically trying to show that you can see a task through to the end and match a reference accordingly while being genuine about what you did to get there.
A smart company would be as likely to hire a artist skilled at doing one thing, to hiring an artist that can do a little of everything.
They would just adjust their budget accordingly.
Can't speak for other companies that don't know what their doing and hire artists for roles that either don't need an exceptional skill set or ask something and expect something completely different. That's just bad management and its probably not worth working for these companies (Though you could enable a freelance arrangement to get around this)
Within the industry, especially in AAA, its not uncommon that even a specialized artist might be put on less specialized stuff, just to get the job done. Its why many character artists never touch a face sculpt and just make clothing, but for all intents and purposes they are character artists.
I reckon its the same for environment work, since the work load is shared.
Environment artist can be an umbrella term, its usually on the company to fit you into a role and for leads to assign work that they feel you are capable of doing well.
Do you have any samples of current work and collected references which you want to reproduce in 3D? This would help to gauge where your interests lie.
About your pipeline question, there are many ways to go about modeling an ornate chair.
You could sculpt details, model them in highpoly in maya and then bake them on a low.
You could also draw them into a normal map, and I would explore designer further for a more recent workflow.
Like this artist made a viking axe entirely in substance designer, all the detail is on a plane, of course there are some specific use cases, but its a great example of what's possible.
Since your still in high school, I'd rather you take the time to experiment and develop your skills as an artist rather than getting too technical or concerning yourself with what it takes to join the industry, since the market can change quite rapidly.
First of all, thank you very much for your long and detailed reply.
This was an eye opener. I realized a lot about myself. Also thanks to your advice, I kind of have a vague understanding of where my interests lie. I think I was too obsessed with specializing, I was thinking about this stuff for a long time before opening this thread. I think my best bet would be to do the things I want to do even if I know that I will fail, though I really dont want to .p
As far as artistic exploration goes there isn't a lot to fail with. More how can I improve further.
Be mindful of pushing a piece to completion without feedback, though even that gives some experience and speed.
Always helps to get a second opinion from the right people, good way to create a connection.
Most studio jobs for 3D artists, deal with capturing a reference image in 3D, so that's a good start to understand fundamentals, then you can innovate more into concept work if that's what you like.
And I forgot to link the substance designer viking axe in the earlier post,
This is the thread.
https://polycount.com/discussion/204051/substance-designer-viking-axe#latest