Size maps for video games
polycounter lvl 2
What size maps should I make for an asset that is a portfolio piece but that I’d like to get comfortable with for the purpose of working on for video games? I’ve worked in maya for a while but I’m newer to substance painter
Replies
in before everyone says current gen means 8k maps (it doesn't, they are wrong and everyone who might be thinking of employing you knows it)
Provided you're making good use of UV space and are taking advantage of the resolution then 4k is acceptable. you're very unlikely to get away with 4k in a production environment but reviewers understand that you want to maximise the prettiness of your portfolio work.
Texel density is the ultimate determination of how crisp and detailed an asset looks. If you spend 4k with poorly UV'd model thats bad. If you can find technical ways to get the detail via detail maps, shared UV space, trim sheets or tiling textures, RGBA Masks, Vertex Painting etc etc etc you show more technical skill and can hit your target texel density while using generally smaller or re-usable textures.
If someone wants to present procedural materials, 8k can achieve really nice details and crispyness. I'd say for presentation, thats fine. Its like you said, reviewers understand that portfolio work has different requirements. In the case of substance designer, graphs can behave quite differently on various resolutions. So it might be a good idea to export presentation and production resolutions, present one in a nicely rendered fashion (like marmoset etc) and the production resolution in a game engine.
Thats what this question is ultimately about: In your portfolio, you want to show the reviewer, that you understand and that you are capable of meeting the requirements of real time game art.
4/8k is pretty and everything, but for portfolio, it is also a good idea to demonstrate the skill that is to be able to retain and describe details with such limitations frequently found in game dev.
In other words, not relying on super high resolution textures to make things look nice. Everything can look great and fantastic at 4k, let alone 8k, but would the artist have the technical/artistic abilities and know-how to visually match results at a lower, more tangible and practical resolution such as 1k?
yes I completely agree with you. Like I mentioned, its a good idea to work towards production resolution (like 1k)