Artstation Props Question?
polycounter lvl 5
Hi guys,
So I've been seeing a lot of detailed props on Artstation recently that have lots of small detailed parts, especially in terms of topology. I'm confused as to whether their props are optimized game ready assets as they don't specify in the descriptions.
Also, If showcasing a prop only piece in your portfolio, are you allowed show more polygons instead of baked detail to show off modeling capability?
Thanks in advance!
So I've been seeing a lot of detailed props on Artstation recently that have lots of small detailed parts, especially in terms of topology. I'm confused as to whether their props are optimized game ready assets as they don't specify in the descriptions.
Also, If showcasing a prop only piece in your portfolio, are you allowed show more polygons instead of baked detail to show off modeling capability?
Thanks in advance!
Replies
For you second question, if you want to work for games you would want to have at least a couple of well optimized and good looking scenes in your portfolio to show that you know what you are doing, after that you can do what you want, you can even model super detailed props or characters and render them with some fancy offline rendering software like Arnold to show that you can create bad ass stuff.
There are a lot of artists that do that but first you should have something game ready in the portfolio.
However. Regardless of the intended output platform you should build assets with as much geometry as is required to make the object look right at the distance you are viewing it from.
Usually that means you shouldn't be able to see facets in the geometry and anything that sticks out visibly wants to be built, not textured on.
@Andreicus Thanks for your reply! By smooth curves, are you referring to Bevels o objects?
@poopipe Thanks for the reply! That's usually how I try to visualize most of my props anyways.
That example is a well made prop that could easily optimize down and still hold most of its detail if the project suddenly demanded it, which happens more times than most people care to admit.
1. Viewing distance to asset (will you see it up close?)
2. Target hardware for game (is it for mobile or high end pc?)
3. What else is going on in the game (are there 100 enemies or complex lighting and effects?)
Generally speaking though, modern hardware can push a lot of triangles, and props and things can be optimized more than necessary. For instance, it's probably not any more expensive to render a 500 triangle prop than a 50 triangle prop in most engines. But you should consult with your technical artists and / or engineers to get a good understand what of is appropriate.
As far as assets for artstation or your portfolio, you should aim for the high. So I wouldn't get too caught up in trying to make assets with the minimum amount of triangles. That's not to say you should make inefficient meshes, just that you want to show that you both understand how to make smart game meshes, and that you're capable of producing very high quality results. Unless the mesh is really wasteful, nobody is going to complain that the art in your portfolio is *too good*.
https://www.epicgames.com/unrealtournament/download
I'll give you an example, in the asset that you linked before, when the artist that made it show a close up to the frontal panel, you can clearly see that it is a low polygon mesh where circle-like components are not so rounded but if you look at it from a certain distance it looks fine.
For an offline render or an high poly mesh in general you don't want that.
Anyway i know that polygon count as well as all the other technical stuffs are a pain when you start out and some of them are hard to understand so what can i tell you is that after you made your high poly mesh and you start to retopo it to make the low poly, you should simple remove all the polys that you can without altering too much the general shape, after that zoom out with the camera a little bit until you reach the distance where the player will see it ( more or less ) and ask yourself: does it look good from that distance ? If the answer is yes, try removing some more polygons, zoom out again and ask yourself the same question, if the answer is no, do some ctrl+z and your mesh is probably done at that point.
Also take a look at this chart where you can see the usual polycount of various assets for various console: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xJmSuBZbdMOlIcdXmO9hu46GJ7-wIiWCclJwimIOJa4/htmlview
Regarding beveling edges, you can do it, i mean i do it everytime because nowadays i go for a medium poly workflow without any bake unless i really need to.
BIGTIMEMASTER Thanks! I'll take a look at that!
Andreicus Thanks for the reply! The way I'm thinking about making the high poly is simply duplicating the low poly and adding in the extra geometry where needed so I can bake that version later. I usually don't make the high poly version first then retoppologize mostly because I think it's just a longer process. I have done it before with characters but for environment assets, I think it's not really needed.
As for beveling, I used to bevel all the edges and didn't really keep in mind its effect on the actual silhouette of the object so now I just bevel certain edges and only to an amount I feel would better suit the silhouette.
Also thanks for the chart! Lots of neat info in there.