chatacter art - Shifting from realtime to "cg(?)"

goekbenjamin

Hey guys, right now i completed my 4th game ready ( for my novice-bsr o.c.) character.

In every single piece i made i noticed always the same:

i LOVE sculpting,
 than there comes retopo, uving, texturing.
sadly these steps takes the most time.
Its so frustrating to know that i have to stick with technical-art to complete it, in that time i could have got sculpted another model and get better.

1. What is that term called? (non realtime, but for movies etc, CG?)

2. when modeling, do i have to model in a-pose and "rigg" that highpoly too? i guess right? otherwise some parts wont be visible of the sculpt, which would be useless.

I really feel more and more frustrating when i have to "burn" time on non-sculpting. :-(

I know there are jobs out there in which you only create highpoly (and maybe texture it too) and that those are more rare and harder to get a job in than in realtime-industry?

I know that there are companies out there where i would be able to do only highpoly and pass it on to a retopo-guy, but those are rare jobs too i guess?

I heared alot that you have to be able to create ALL in the workflow of a realtime character,
highpoly retopo, texturing, hair etc etc.

So i think i want to focus more on highpoly and train my sculpt skills only without the hustle of tech-art xD

Am i just naive with that mind-setting?
Is that just a "way too high goal"?

If you read it that far, i want to thank you! :-]

Alex_J

It's just that if somebody is gonna pay you to ONLY do the fun part, you have to be goddamn amazing at it. As in, so talented that it would be a waste of resources to have you doing retopo and UV's.

If you are having trouble with making game ready assets, I'd say just tough it out, watch more tutorials, make more characters, and really try to figure out why you are having trouble with specific parts. It's really not too hard once you get the hang of it -- personally I like the planning involved and the technicalities, gives a nice rhythm of organization, logic, art, problem solving... especially for characters once you get a small library of base meshes you don't have to be doing much of that shit at all really. And even if you make new topo for each character, with some determination you can get to where that will only take you half a work day or less for retopo and UV's.

So, don't be discouraged. Just slow down and try to figure out how to work smarter. I don't think it's necessarily naive, but retreat is a dangerous habit for anybody not absolute certain of their own strength of determination.

also be careful about misusing the term "tech art". That's actually a distinct profession usually centered around tool-making and whatnot. UV's and retopo is not tech art, it's part of character art.

oglu

Its not that much a diffrence if you do a Game Char or one for Cinematics. You just bake a Displacement map instead of a Normalmap.
And you spend much more time in maya modeling the best topo on the plantet.

Cause the dispmap is just "suface noise" the shape does have to be modeled. And retopo wont give you the best result in a lot of cases. Retopo meshes tend to be a easy way to get the surface covered with a even quad topo. But that is not the best way to get the shape nailed and ready for animation. Retopo is a good start but than you have to go in and model the details by hand. Send the mesh over to the rigging department to get feedback. Send the mesh to the sim department to get feedback. The way to get the final mesh is much longer. 

Neox

yes you are naive, the job that you envision barely exists and the people doing those have proven time and time again that they are badass in the rest of the pipeline as well.
What you would like to do would get a big nope from me on any application, and we did turn away much much better sculptors than you are for the exact same reason. I want artists to own their assets, to be able to do the whole process and understand what follows after the current step. Otherwise people following you will just suffer.
That said, if you suffer with your own work, there is probably a lot of experience missing on your end prepping your sculpts in a way that makes the followup steps easier. If you worked with basemeshes for your human characters you would for instance be able to cut the retopo time on the skin parts by a fair bit. if all this is prepared with UVs, you can also save time here.

To me this sounds more like an issue with lack of experience than anything else. this stuff is crucial to the final product and there will always be technicalities you have to take care of. maybe autoretopo will be one day on the same level als handmade production ones, maybe uvs will be as well, there is other shit you will have to take care of then.

goekbenjamin

yes you are naive, the job that you envision barely exists and the people doing those have proven time and time again that they are badass in the rest of the pipeline as well.
What you would like to do would get a big nope from me on any application, and we did turn away much much better sculptors than you are for the exact same reason. I want artists to own their assets, to be able to do the whole process and understand what follows after the current step. Otherwise people following you will just suffer.
That said, if you suffer with your own work, there is probably a lot of experience missing on your end prepping your sculpts in a way that makes the followup steps easier. If you worked with basemeshes for your human characters you would for instance be able to cut the retopo time on the skin parts by a fair bit. if all this is prepared with UVs, you can also save time here.

To me this sounds more like an issue with lack of experience than anything else. this stuff is crucial to the final product and there will always be technicalities you have to take care of. maybe autoretopo will be one day on the same level als handmade production ones, maybe uvs will be as well, there is other shit you will have to take care of then.

Thanks

we did turn away much much better sculptors than you are

Just to get this correct, i dont meant that i am already on a good level of anatomy-sculpting, i never would say that
I am aware that every job has its "cool" stuff and its "bad" stuff, with that post i just wanted to express my current frustation about it.

As a beginner it is hard to tell which job has what tasks, sometimes its just 2 othertimes i read its about 8 tasks etc..all dependent on the company/position you are in, so i feel somewhat lost sometime

I really apprechiate ALL of your replies here.

Zhanks alot!

Ashervisalis

If you have the technical stuff down (UV, retopo, etc), and you find this process is slowing you down whereas you could be getting miles better just doing the high poly, why don't you just do high poly sculpts for a few characters to progress yourself, until you feel you're amazing, then start with the technical stuff again?

edit: on second thought, I think one should get as good at texturing as they do at modeling, so this is a bad suggestion.

NikhilR

goekbenjamin said:

we did turn away much much better sculptors than you are

Just to get this correct, i dont meant that i am already on a good level of anatomy-sculpting, i never would say that
I am aware that every job has its "cool" stuff and its "bad" stuff, with that post i just wanted to express my current frustation about it.

As a beginner it is hard to tell which job has what tasks, sometimes its just 2 othertimes i read its about 8 tasks etc..all dependent on the company/position you are in, so i feel somewhat lost sometime

I really apprechiate ALL of your replies here.

Zhanks alot!

Just posting this reply I made to another thread where you'd commented, 

Thanks alot for your reply 
Yeah its somehow crazy how much you have to do as an character artist no?
I miss sculpting so hard when i stuck on painting/retopo/rigging....and because everything is so complex, to get barely good at something you have to spend SO much time in all of it, so i wish i could just sculpt highpoly without worring to retopo later ;-(
 xD

You can have actually have this kind of work (pure sculpting/posing) in the miniatures for war games/board games, scale miniatures, and designer toy industry.

While some artists simply power through the count spamming the detail, decimating and then tossing the work to a printer, it does help to know proper edgeflow for more consistency in detail, the appropriate way to break down a model for modularity, preventing overhangs and understanding model thickness, escape holes and other good habits for 3d printing and injection moulding.

But for many of these studios that do this sort of work, the criteria is a strong body of pure sculpts, posed and rendered in zbrush (basic material shader), the more detailed the better.
Example HazardousArts, Weta workshop, Hot toys digital sculptors.


Another area is pure sculpting for compositing. Meaning you do an artistic piece, that is then either painted over or touched up for a graphic art print.
Well really what your doing is creating art, not game art, just art for appreciation, hopefully it gets a following and you could maybe earn with a patreon, teaching your craft when you have a hook?
One artist that does this (abstract/stylized), https://www.artstation.com/mccabe86/albums/92519
or
Hossein Diba (for realsitic style) (while this work can be used as hi res for retopo into game res model, sometimes its just for marketing purposes and branding.)

The end goal is to have a model optimal for printing/prototyping/compositing, so any knowledge of topology is consistent with that end result focusing more on deformation/proportion and detail rather than animatable topology.

The key is to know what you're good at and be consistent with it.

Andreicus

CG is a mix between art and technical stuff, so it doesn't matter if you are working in games, motion graphics or films, you will alway encounter some degree of technical workflow that you must do.
That means mostly UVs, optimization ( retopo ), troubleshooting of problems and everything that has to do with pure theory like knowledge of the software, lights etc.

If you want to do only art you have only 1 option: drawing ( or painting ). Drawing be it Concept Art or Illustration, is 100 % art, the only technical hassle that you will encounter is how to learn the software that you will use ( clip studio paint, photoshop etc. you only need 1 ) and maybe the images format. That's it.

Talking again about 3D, there are some jobs out there that let's you only sculpt like sculpting characters that will become figures using 3D printing.
That's a big market in Japan or asian countries in general because a lot of people buy anime figures but i don't know about the market here in the west.
In the movie industry sometimes you can find people that do only sculpts but you must be at this level here to get a job: https://www.artstation.com/zhelong

Anyway the technical stuff like UVs etc. aren't difficult after you learn the theory, how and why you do certain things. They are only repetitive and boring.

NikhilR

Andreicus said:

CG is a mix between art and technical stuff, so it doesn't matter if you are working in games, motion graphics or films, you will alway encounter some degree of technical workflow that you must do.
That means mostly UVs, optimization ( retopo ), troubleshooting of problems and everything that has to do with pure theory like knowledge of the software, lights etc.

If you want to do only art you have only 1 option: drawing ( or painting ). Drawing be it Concept Art or Illustration, is 100 % art, the only technical hassle that you will encounter is how to learn the software that you will use ( clip studio paint, photoshop etc. you only need 1 ) and maybe the images format. That's it.

Talking again about 3D, there are some jobs out there that let's you only sculpt like sculpting characters that will become figures using 3D printing.
That's a big market in Japan or asian countries in general because a lot of people buy anime figures but i don't know about the market here in the west.
In the movie industry sometimes you can find people that do only sculpts but you must be at this level here to get a job: https://www.artstation.com/zhelong

Anyway the technical stuff like UVs etc. aren't difficult after you learn the theory, how and why you do certain things. They are only repetitive and boring.

That is a good level to aspire to, I can't entirely say that you have to be at that level to get a job only doing sculpts. 
An artist of that caliber can create his own market, and his focus is on the artistic result of the piece while knowing what is needed to achieve the end result.
Getting a job also depends on the company and the job market. Having additional knowledge will only help you, and if that reflects in your portfolio all the better.

Some descriptions for what seem like pure sculpting jobs can be vague and require more clarification.
For instance this one 
https://careers.technicolor.com/job/montreal/3d-environment-sculpting-artist/3488/11076942?utm_campaign=google_jobs_apply&utm_source=google_jobs_apply&utm_medium=organic

Is for an environment sculpting artist in the heading, but elaborated as 

We are looking for 3D Environment Sculpting Artists with talent and experience in the modelling / sculpting of environments, realistic creatures and/or characters.  

It also mentions,

- Proven ability in modeling and surfacing custom photo realistic 3D props, spaceships and aircrafts, vehicles and environments

So...  A generalist sculptor who can do everything? idk


Anyways, I'd say just get your fundamentals down and learn all you need to learn to create the art you want.
Some subjects have a better chance of gaining a following than others.