The time given to complete a task

MJays

Hello everyone. I'm 22 years old and I'm trying to start a career in 3D. I am diagnosed with asperger syndrome and anxiety and would like to know the time taken or given to complete a task.

For example, the time to create a tiled texture, character in Zbrush -- model, uv map and create textures for props -- hand animations -- level blockout/creation -- lightning, things like that.

I sculpted a rock in 10/15 minutes some days ago and I'm sure the time i taked to make somehing like this is small.

I tried to explain as best I could so sorry if it got confusing.

Thank you.

Taylor Brown

Honestly, I wouldn't even begin to concern yourself with that question till your portfolio is at a level where you could be hired. Just keep focusing on your work; the speed comes with time and repetition.

PixelMasher

don't focus on the time it takes to do the task, focus on the results. especially when you are first learning. I know people who spend several days sculpting rocks at work, so you definitely get time to really push the quality in most cases. 

speed comes with practice and doing things over and over. If you are learning, just focus on getting the best possible looking end result  

MJays

Thanks for the tips. My biggest problem with time is that I have a bad habit of giving up easily if I don't like how work is going. I heard somewhere that only gets good looking on the final stages.

Thanks again.

Benjammin

Efficiency is more important than speed, and giving up on something is definitely a habit to train yourself out of - it won't be an option in a production environment!

ned_poreyra

Time is the biggest taboo in CG society. They will never tell you. It's always "it depends", "it varies", "there are also meetings and stuff, it's hard to estimate" etc.

Taylor Brown

Taboo is a strange word to use about this topic. The truth is, time becomes an issue when you miss deadlines, don't communicate to your leads about issues you're having, don't follow guidelines to avoid needless iteration / cleanup. Because at that point you're just wasting the team's time. 

PixelMasher

MJays said:

Thanks for the tips. My biggest problem with time is that I have a bad habit of giving up easily if I don't like how work is going. I heard somewhere that only gets good looking on the final stages.

Thanks again.

this is pretty true. Most environments I have worked on both personally and professionally shape up in the last push during production. On watchdogs 2 I worked on about 6 city blocks of San Francisco for almost a year, so there is some context for you in terms of how long you can spend on a project sometimes. A good environment will probably take a couple months usually for a personal project, more if you are a beginner. 

MJays

PixelMasher said:

MJays said:

Thanks for the tips. My biggest problem with time is that I have a bad habit of giving up easily if I don't like how work is going. I heard somewhere that only gets good looking on the final stages.

Thanks again.

this is pretty true. Most environments I have worked on both personally and professionally shape up in the last push during production. On watchdogs 2 I worked on about 6 city blocks of San Francisco for almost a year, so there is some context for you in terms of how long you can spend on a project sometimes. A good environment will probably take a couple months usually for a personal project, more if you are a beginner. 

Wow, almost a year? It must have been pretty tiring.

-==-

Thanks again for the tips. Im doing a forest scene based on this art by Jeremy Fenske (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ogwaW)

My biggest problem is the vegetation parts (rocks, grasses, trees, etc)
Here's a album with my vegetation progress: https://imgur.com/a/rcZXb0a
The rocks were created on Zbrush. The Grass leafs were made on Blender and imported to Zbrush for Bending and Polypaint.

Critics, suggestion are more than welcome.

poopipe

Break things up into small milestone tasks and timebox them - I also recommend working in layers (Eg. Get everything to stage1, then get everything to stage2 etc.) 

In terms of real world  timescales it'll depend where you work and what the styles are but from my experience leading asset teams and running outsource for a few years the following seems to be a decent rule of thumb

A modular set of about 10-15 pieces (Eg, machinery, rocks, girders etc)  for a AAA title would take 15-20days including feedback cycles.
This includes high res, low res, material, LODs and ready to go in game. 
This is with preapproved concept art, technical specs, block out models in place and an artist at junior/standard level doing the work.

I've seen complete levels built for FPS games in 3 months but I've also seen them take 2 years when stuff goes horribly.  It's hugely dependent on scale, complexity and whether stuff changes or not..