Looking for 3D artists, level designers and pipeline devs for information about Production Pipelines
Hello people,
My name is André, I’ve been doing research into the how of designing a 3D (environment) Production Pipeline for Virtual Reality training.
My goal is to have a pipeline that would allow us to build training environments as efficiently as possible. Due to the nature of the training, our environments are relatively small max 200m x 200m.
Our team is small 3-6 people but can change depending on the project. I'm especially interested in Houdini integration in the Pipeline for generating procedural assets.
If you are a 3D artist or level designer, could you tell me a little bit about your process and how you make use of pipelines? Do you make use of tools such as Houdini for development? Did you have to learn new tools or techniques to fit in with teams?
If you are specialized in building pipelines, or strongly associated with pipelines, could you tell me about how you would go about making a pipeline? What would it look like and how would it be used within a company?
Any
additions, other ideas, miscellaneous pipeline expertise etc. are also welcome!
Replies
Rigidly enforce naming conventions, scene structure standards and correct use of source control. If you document nothing else, document this.
Set things up so you can guess at the location of source data from location of the exported data.
Do not use git for art source control. Choose Perforce if you have the money, svn if you don't. Build dependency validation tools for commits so that your builds don't break.
Build a suite of small, self contained tools for your primary dcc apps to automate export and technical setup tasks. Do not make a huge plugin to deal with everything - it will ruin your life 6months down the line.
Use substance to manage your materials - follow rocksteady's lead on this, it's well documented and is a good strategy.
Focus on eliminating shitty, repetitive tasks and preventing human error rather than trying to build a clever tool that does art for you - It won't work and you'll piss loads of time away on it.