Is everyone still in the consensus that enviroment art is still the easiest way into the industry? I know at BW we employ alot more enviroment artists than character.
Not that I have any professional experience to speak from, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's the easiest way into the industry. There is a higher demand for environment artists than character artists, but at least from what I've noticed, there are also more aspiring environment/prop artists than character artists. So it seems like the open positions to potential employees would stay relatively the same between environment and character artists.
Do you guys just say fuck it, I'll pay my dues in environment art and work my way up? or do you just keep hammering away on one character folio piece after another until somebody gives you some love?
This can be a very dangerous trap in my opinion.
Say you do get a job as an environment artist (and like others said, it'll probably be props), then that's time you're spending doing non-character stuff. Which means if you weren't hireable as a character artist before, then you won't be hireable after a year of doing just environment art.
To beat this, you really have to do environment art at work, then go home and do character art in your spare time.
But really, would you? Working at least 8 hours a day doing this stuff, up to 12+ hours a day during crunch, will you really go home and do ANOTHER few hours doing characters at that point?
Lots of people don't. And then they get into a "fuck it" situation where they're just doing something they don't really love and can even get bitter on that.
And really, for me at least, I love doing characters, studying anatomy, shape&form of the human body, etc, so therefore I became a character artist. It's not the other way around, of wanting to be an artist in the industry, so I arbitrarily picked a field and chose to study it.
And I really do believe that anatomy is a life-long study. It never ends.
Say you do get a job as an environment artist (and like others said, it'll probably be props), then that's time you're spending doing non-character stuff. Which means if you weren't hireable as a character artist before, then you won't be hireable after a year of doing just environment art.
To beat this, you really have to do environment art at work, then go home and do character art in your spare time.
But really, would you? Working at least 8 hours a day doing this stuff, up to 12+ hours a day during crunch, will you really go home and do ANOTHER few hours doing characters at that point?
Lots of people don't. And then they get into a "fuck it" situation where they're just doing something they don't really love and can even get bitter on that.
And really, for me at least, I love doing characters, studying anatomy, shape&form of the human body, etc, so therefore I became a character artist. It's not the other way around, of wanting to be an artist in the industry, so I arbitrarily picked a field and chose to study it.
And I really do believe that anatomy is a life-long study. It never ends.
Thank you so mutch.
This it partially what has happened to me. I've worked on Vehicles at an art house for the last 3 years. I got so burned out I just hated every day at work.
Going in to it I assumed I would come out with that "year of experience" and I would still do characters in my free time.
I've had to realize that the last three years were basically spent stagnating on my figurative skills like anatomy and sculpting. and Additionally no one cares that I have a year of experience modelling Vehicles when I show them a character art portfolio.
so yeah I guess its really about doing what you love and doing it every chance you get until your become a "rockstar"
I don't even agree with the rockstar thing all that much. It's kindof the way it is now because so many studios got shut down, and what used to be the junior positions are now outsourced to other countries. But there's still room for junior character artists out there. If nothing else, then in those very same outsourcing studios. It's just that it tends to be outside of the US. Or otherwise in whatever smaller studios are left (which is where I'm working).
But I'm sure as hell no rockstar artist. And I'm working as a character artist, and am gaining experience, and in the future who knows.
Good thread, I just wanna add that I must be a weirdo because I want to do environment and props only :P
Don't care for characters, weapons, or vehicles, though weapons and vehicles can be fun. I am a Rockstar fan, fan of GTA, as far as I'm concerned generic peds and an assortment of cars could last a whole generation and only changing the map really matters to me :P
My biggest problem is actually MAKING stuff because I may be fast and efficient with modeling things (textures take my time though), but NOT conceptualizing. :P
Good thread, I just wanna add that I must be a weirdo because I want to do environment and props only :P
Well that doesn't seem weird to me. I mean people say environment art is repeditive but not characters? Constantly making the same special forces guy every game? Making 20 human heads for the background characters? That gets old too...
It's just like any other art form. Some people are obsessed with the human figure and all that entails. Others are fascinated by nature and all that comes with that. I'm sure you can spend a lifetime just studying trees.
Well that doesn't seem weird to me. I mean people say environment art is repeditive but not characters? Constantly making the same special forces guy every game? Making 20 human heads for the background characters? That gets old too...
Plenty of character artists dislike working on those examples. But couldn't someone hyperbolize env art and say they are tired of making wooden crates and barrels? or the same football goal every year just with rounder sides?
There are repetitive boring tasks in either position.
maybe Im getting brave cuz Im on poops side but check it out:
Understanding and recreating anything that is man made (from a crate, to a as-of-yet uninvented mech or something of that nature) is a matter of observing inter-related rigid structures and shapes.
Understanding the interconnected relationship of individual muscles and how they interact (the way a ligament running across a muscle can alter its shape wether that muscle is flexed or relaxed) is a matter of both obervation and a fundamental level of TECHNICAL knowlege on anatomy.
The aspect of Env art that involves things like vis portals, skyboxes, and triggers are something I can't really find a analogue for in character art.
so I guess I can't say, nor would I want to, that Modeling/texturing/rigging a character requires more knowledge going into it than building an entire level on your own.
but eh, who knows. I know I could never get tired of modeling human heads, as every single one is different.
theres only so many varyiations on a crate you can do.
Plenty of character artists dislike working on those examples. But couldn't someone hyperbolize env art and say they are tired of making wooden crates and barrels? or the same football goal every year just with rounder sides?
There are repetitive boring tasks in either position.
Well that was my point Poop. But do people outside the industry realise that environments can be just as exciting? or that characters can be just as boring?
Is everyone still in the consensus that enviroment art is still the easiest way into the industry? I know at BW we employ alot more enviroment artists than character.
To answer your question from my exp so far, absolutely without question easier to get in the door as a prop artist. Mainly because again from my exp the environment / prop team are much larger than the character teams. Then again ive only ever worked in the action adventure, fps and now mmorpg genre's so in others it may be differently balanced (Would make for some interesting metrics methinks)
I dont want to downplay any of the specialties, I think each of them have difficulties and technical restraints to overcome - though one note that I thought I would throw down here though, great level designers / world builders and environment artists typically flex their composition / lighting / mood muscles much more than character artists do.
I my opinion comparing character and environment artists is pretty useless. Like if a character artist would also automatically be a great environment artist etc.
I can only speak from what I do (env art), but there is SO much more to it than trying to create something beautiful.
The biggest challenges (again my opinion on this) are to build environment functional from a gameplay perspective (I don't know how this works on all companies of course, but where I've worked I've always been very involved with the gameplay aspect as well), something that is optimized AND a very important thing: come up with workflows that speeds up the process, try to get all the tools necessary, come up with standards for your assets (measures, pixel density etc.).
I'm not saying these things doesn't affect character artists as well, but they affect them in a totally different way, and they have to deal with a lot different problems (connected to rigging and setting up all that smoothly I assume is quite a big part).
From my experience you want to work very, very closely with level designers as an env artist, as well as with concept artists and AD for the visual part. That is what I still love so much about environment art, the variation, freedom and being involved with so many parts of creating a game. I've personally never even felt the slightest urge to try and move over to character art (perhaps a bit because I'm an absolutely horrible character artist... probably )
I can't see myself wanting to move away from env art anytime soon. I'd rather work towards expanding my knowledge in further areas (especially animation).
Well... just my thoughts. Interesting thread for sure
A lot of interesting thoughts more recently. As an aspiring Environment Artist about to graduate next spring I'm finding little nuggets of in all these posts. I can honestly say I envy Character Artist's for their grasps on the human form, but their job is just as demanding as any other within a studio...just different challenges and obstacles they have to overcome.
I would kill to be an Environmental artist. Too bad there are people who want to start out as Character artists. I convinced a buddy of mine not to start out that way. You have to be real good or have hella industry experience.
I my opinion comparing character and environment artists is pretty useless. Like if a character artist would also automatically be a great environment artist etc.
I can only speak from what I do (env art), but there is SO much more to it than trying to create something beautiful.
The biggest challenges (again my opinion on this) are to build environment functional from a gameplay perspective (I don't know how this works on all companies of course, but where I've worked I've always been very involved with the gameplay aspect as well), something that is optimized AND a very important thing: come up with workflows that speeds up the process, try to get all the tools necessary, come up with standards for your assets (measures, pixel density etc.).
I'm not saying these things doesn't affect character artists as well, but they affect them in a totally different way, and they have to deal with a lot different problems (connected to rigging and setting up all that smoothly I assume is quite a big part).
From my experience you want to work very, very closely with level designers as an env artist, as well as with concept artists and AD for the visual part. That is what I still love so much about environment art, the variation, freedom and being involved with so many parts of creating a game. I've personally never even felt the slightest urge to try and move over to character art (perhaps a bit because I'm an absolutely horrible character artist... probably )
I can't see myself wanting to move away from env art anytime soon. I'd rather work towards expanding my knowledge in further areas (especially animation).
Well... just my thoughts. Interesting thread for sure
Plenty of the most iconic classsic architecture was designed by sculptors/Renaissance masters.
Not sure if this serves the point im trying to make, just had to raise my voice there.
Ok so, since what everyone got from my post was that last part, ill specify.
Are all environment artists working on these high level things that seem to be defined as elements level design and not particularly related to modeling/texturing?
To me it would seem that a studio would need (just like character artists) only a few people who really handle this side of it. and a whole army of prop modellers behind them.
If im wrong again let me know, I haven't seen the inside of a game studio before so this is all from the outside.
Hey I dont think what i wrote means that there are no exeptions... Also there where much more universally trained people in arts and science back then.
Did I start that? My bad, cause what poop said is totally true. I was just joking when I said he was mad. Now he's gonna post about how triggers and visible percent is child's play compared to animation or even just rigging in prep for anim. I joke again poop lol xD
Yea man, rigging up characters can become really monotonous. When we're paving our worlds and worried about one set of disciplines, those character guys handle a lot of other disciplines and tool sets for weighting vertices to the right bones, making them move right without messing up the mesh and all. That can probably become tedious, especially in AAA situations with a high target on the characters and a high count of them to create. But they love doin that shit. lol.
Just like environment artists, we love making worlds and props and stuff, but there are really monotonous things about that as well.
What I do not love is being so DRY. I have had a hard time making things on my own for a long time. Need a site like conceptart.org but for worlds instead of characters. Anyone got one? Or to buddy up with some matte painters who want to make some levels and give me precious target sheets and mood boards. I don't do that stuff, I want to see your drawings, images, and all that, then I make them in realtime 3d. It's been hard to find the people with the drawings and palettes, and as much as I love making things, it's been hard to come up with my own ideas [for open worlds] for a while too.
Interseting! Almost every single portfolio thread in P&P has been from environmental artists (including myself). I was afarid the industry was swamped with them, but apparently not?
Not to hijack this thread, but are there really and decent tutorials of guides for environment artists in anyway or form? Hell, even just guide-runs from the pros in the industry?
Not to sound a sour-puss, but how can anyone be surprised with the lack environmental artists when all we gets are blogs, threads and you occasional 'old' book for this part of thing? I literally learned everything about Envo. Art thanks to threads on PC and by hopping to one blog to another.
A friend of mine wants to be a environment artist because it's the easiest way to get in (that's what he said and still says), although at this point I really doubt he can because he keeps on using Booleans and Decimation master for everything.
The problem is he went to a CGI school and all the full fledged diploma and stuff, but not even the teachers there know much about environments and stuff like that for the game side of things. One teacher is a Arch-Design guy who keeps everything in NGons (for renders it's fine I guess, but not for games) and keeps on telling everyone how making holes in everything is fine (not in games).
The game-related teacher doesn't know much in this area either, and even the animation teacher just keeps on saying "lets the physics and particles do all the work".
Good old art and hidden gems such as how they animated the hearts on Doom, Quake and Prey games with bones and Half-Life-esque methods of spawning props and other assets without the needs to stress and let all the engine do the work unfortunately aren't available, and the closest thing I can imagine would be Eat3D's tutorials on Pillar, that's it.
We have everyday, about hundreds of tutorials showing us how to draw, sculpt, paint, texture, bone and have babies with character models, yet the best I can get about Envo. models is how not to paint more then required texture size to not lose my detail.
You hit those nails square on the head, it is really true, the information is sparse and you're always left to translate it for whatever you're actually doing.
this thread is 4 years old now - there's tons of info and decent number of environment artists.
check out the polycount wiki, Eat 3D & 3D motive, to name a few resources.
Those aren't enough. A game character tutorials and even a general one will almost always be outdated somehow within a couple of years, but still stand the test of time for it's basics.
A game environment however will change more, and aren't as easy to nail down from generation to generation.
What I was referring to is the general lack of coherent tutorials from A-Z. I don't see why we can't have a 7.5 hour tutorials on how to create an environment, with inside looks as to texture organization, modular vs. condensed, material cost vs. texture vs. polygon cost, alphas and other nick nacks, yet are able to cram 7.5 hour tutorials for you space marine #4674646.
Let me put it this way: You can learn maths all you want, you can even make it your job, it still won't help if you won't be able to apply it in real-world applications.
I just read this thread, and honestly I'm a bit shocked. My ideas about industry competitiveness were more or less wrong. I've heard plenty about how characters are harder to do professionally, but I wasn't aware that environmental art is suffering as bad as you guys say it is. Then again, I don't play many games unless they're absolutely amazing.
My joy is environment art. I'm buying an intuos4 whenever paypal transfers money to my bank, then it'll be only a matter of time before I start cranking out some rad stuff. When that happens, I'll be absolutely sure to post it on these forums.
Seriously though, I don't really understand. I have always like environments more than characters. When people said that character jobs are harder to land I thought that was only because most games don't need that many characters.
this thread is 4 years old now - there's tons of info and decent number of environment artists.
check out the polycount wiki, Eat 3D & 3D motive, to name a few resources.
Yea when this thread was first created, all three of those things didn't exists... Youtube had one video of a dramatic groundhog. Also polycount was flooded with space marines...
I would say to anyone looking for a way to learn environment art practices, start making levels in source or UDK with assets available, as well as poking around maps that come with the editors. You get feel how things get put together beyond 'make prop > drop in scene'. For me learning to model props and then environment set pieces came as natural steps after learning hammer and wanting to make something different to the stock source content.
I agree with you guys. There isn't really a lot of very general "tutorials" or guides out there for the env artists tbh. But I think that is also because it is very hard to write good general enviroment art tutorials IMO. Env creation differs so much depending on the type of game you work on, engine, limitatations (target platform) etc. I believe it differs a lot more on environments in how you plan and actually build your stuff compared to characters. of course you have to take all of those in account when creating characters too, but I think it extends even further for environments.
I tried to create a couple of kind of generic environment art tutorials focusing on modular assets. But I noticed it was very hard not to go out too much into different things and workflows... So you still end up with sort of a narrow tutorial sadly... environment art is just so spread out, it's hard to say "this is how you do it" because it depends so much on so many different factors.
Still, I agree it would be nice to see some more tutorials in general on the various aspects of env art. I will try and pick up doing a couple of more ones when I buy a computer (hopefully kind of soon ). I really enjoyed doing the previous ones, and if they can help anyone that's just really good and rewarding, even if it's just a few hints or tricks that are useful to people.
@PhillipK, Your old tutorials have helped. I have benefited from your older rock tuts, and hopefully will be able to use some of your techniques from the wood, and metal texturing workflows. Thanks for making those back then.
ace: 3dmotive is pretty much all environment art focused - the modular building tutorial looks pretty nice and it's cheap too. Hourences is a good resource as well. Really the best way to learn is to just do it.
I agree with this point, there's not a lot of recources out there. the main problem is, I think, the evolution of the industry. the technology changes every single day, and each and every day a new rendering algorithm or a new texture sampling, light calculation etc... is invented or stumbled upon, which also direclty and very heavily influences game environments and the way they're created.
in the days of half life (to give a very good example), one more square pixel of texture size immedeatly had a massive impact on the performance, along with some extra triangles, and whatever else greatly influences a game's performance. today, game environments are getting more and more realistic, detailed... a very good example is the upcoming game battlefield 3: if you've seen the new trailer, and you know a bit about the upgraded version of the frostbite 2.0 engine they're using for the game, you know that AO is no longer used, and deferred lighting is now calculated in real-time, eliminating the need for manual placement of bounce lights.
half-life 1 came out in 1998, and today we're 2011. in just 13 years we've evolved from a super-optimized extremely low poly evironment that mainly consists of textures boxes and 90% tileable textures (this is no reflection on the quality of the game: it's still one of the best games ever made), to a different texture for practilly every single prop (though I know texture atlasses are still heavily used) and an engine that doesn't really care if you've used about 1000 triangles too much. (Epic's latest cinematic certainly proved that), all that topped with the use of real-time deferred lighting, something that's still sci-fi to most people.
the point i'm trying to make is that perhaps the reason it's so difficult to find good environment artists, is because the industry is moving faster than most people can keep up with?
on a resource-related note: NGHS (the forum i'm the administrator from, you might have seen it featured in the polycount news a couple of times) recently opened up a new sub forum specifically focused on texturing. it still needs a lot of flesh though, so if you guys want to have some texture-related discussions or just post your textures there (there's a special texture-feedback topic), just come over and have a look
This thread is a endless supply of information, as a environment Artist I tend to just use all kinds of workflows cause not every asset can be treated or done the same way. I like the open feeling you get with this kind of art.
Considering the massive waves of layoffs that have happened over the years mixed with one of the worst economic down turns in US history, all during the time this thread has laid dormant... I don't think the industry is hurting for artists on any level, its definitely a buyers market.
I think the main thrust of this thread was for a long time if you said you made art for games people would say "what characters did you work on?" or if you said "I'm in school to study game art" you where being taught how to create T-Pose characters (Colin's bear).
Schools have improved a bit and the fans, hobbyist and parts of the industry are starting to realize the skill and shear man power, it takes to create the other 90% of the game. I think its still skewed toward characters but it shows signs of balancing out.
There's a lack of character artists now. Environment artists are having to step in and make characters, but they're ending up looking like barrels with a crate on top.
There's a lack of character artists now. Environment artists are having to step in and make characters, but they're ending up looking like barrels with a crate on top.
really find it seems pretty balanced out between character and environment artists right now, but there seems to be a need for vfx and technical artists.
there is always a "lack" of talented people at all levels. And even if there wasn't. If you are talented/qualified enough they'll probably make you a spot pretty much anywhere.
Replies
Not that I have any professional experience to speak from, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's the easiest way into the industry. There is a higher demand for environment artists than character artists, but at least from what I've noticed, there are also more aspiring environment/prop artists than character artists. So it seems like the open positions to potential employees would stay relatively the same between environment and character artists.
This can be a very dangerous trap in my opinion.
Say you do get a job as an environment artist (and like others said, it'll probably be props), then that's time you're spending doing non-character stuff. Which means if you weren't hireable as a character artist before, then you won't be hireable after a year of doing just environment art.
To beat this, you really have to do environment art at work, then go home and do character art in your spare time.
But really, would you? Working at least 8 hours a day doing this stuff, up to 12+ hours a day during crunch, will you really go home and do ANOTHER few hours doing characters at that point?
Lots of people don't. And then they get into a "fuck it" situation where they're just doing something they don't really love and can even get bitter on that.
And really, for me at least, I love doing characters, studying anatomy, shape&form of the human body, etc, so therefore I became a character artist. It's not the other way around, of wanting to be an artist in the industry, so I arbitrarily picked a field and chose to study it.
And I really do believe that anatomy is a life-long study. It never ends.
This it partially what has happened to me. I've worked on Vehicles at an art house for the last 3 years. I got so burned out I just hated every day at work.
Going in to it I assumed I would come out with that "year of experience" and I would still do characters in my free time.
I've had to realize that the last three years were basically spent stagnating on my figurative skills like anatomy and sculpting. and Additionally no one cares that I have a year of experience modelling Vehicles when I show them a character art portfolio.
so yeah I guess its really about doing what you love and doing it every chance you get until your become a "rockstar"
But I'm sure as hell no rockstar artist. And I'm working as a character artist, and am gaining experience, and in the future who knows.
Don't care for characters, weapons, or vehicles, though weapons and vehicles can be fun. I am a Rockstar fan, fan of GTA, as far as I'm concerned generic peds and an assortment of cars could last a whole generation and only changing the map really matters to me :P
My biggest problem is actually MAKING stuff because I may be fast and efficient with modeling things (textures take my time though), but NOT conceptualizing. :P
Well that doesn't seem weird to me. I mean people say environment art is repeditive but not characters? Constantly making the same special forces guy every game? Making 20 human heads for the background characters? That gets old too...
Plenty of character artists dislike working on those examples. But couldn't someone hyperbolize env art and say they are tired of making wooden crates and barrels? or the same football goal every year just with rounder sides?
There are repetitive boring tasks in either position.
Understanding and recreating anything that is man made (from a crate, to a as-of-yet uninvented mech or something of that nature) is a matter of observing inter-related rigid structures and shapes.
Understanding the interconnected relationship of individual muscles and how they interact (the way a ligament running across a muscle can alter its shape wether that muscle is flexed or relaxed) is a matter of both obervation and a fundamental level of TECHNICAL knowlege on anatomy.
The aspect of Env art that involves things like vis portals, skyboxes, and triggers are something I can't really find a analogue for in character art.
so I guess I can't say, nor would I want to, that Modeling/texturing/rigging a character requires more knowledge going into it than building an entire level on your own.
but eh, who knows. I know I could never get tired of modeling human heads, as every single one is different.
theres only so many varyiations on a crate you can do.
Well that was my point Poop. But do people outside the industry realise that environments can be just as exciting? or that characters can be just as boring?
To answer your question from my exp so far, absolutely without question easier to get in the door as a prop artist. Mainly because again from my exp the environment / prop team are much larger than the character teams. Then again ive only ever worked in the action adventure, fps and now mmorpg genre's so in others it may be differently balanced (Would make for some interesting metrics methinks)
I dont want to downplay any of the specialties, I think each of them have difficulties and technical restraints to overcome - though one note that I thought I would throw down here though, great level designers / world builders and environment artists typically flex their composition / lighting / mood muscles much more than character artists do.
I can only speak from what I do (env art), but there is SO much more to it than trying to create something beautiful.
The biggest challenges (again my opinion on this) are to build environment functional from a gameplay perspective (I don't know how this works on all companies of course, but where I've worked I've always been very involved with the gameplay aspect as well), something that is optimized AND a very important thing: come up with workflows that speeds up the process, try to get all the tools necessary, come up with standards for your assets (measures, pixel density etc.).
I'm not saying these things doesn't affect character artists as well, but they affect them in a totally different way, and they have to deal with a lot different problems (connected to rigging and setting up all that smoothly I assume is quite a big part).
From my experience you want to work very, very closely with level designers as an env artist, as well as with concept artists and AD for the visual part. That is what I still love so much about environment art, the variation, freedom and being involved with so many parts of creating a game. I've personally never even felt the slightest urge to try and move over to character art (perhaps a bit because I'm an absolutely horrible character artist... probably
I can't see myself wanting to move away from env art anytime soon. I'd rather work towards expanding my knowledge in further areas (especially animation).
Well... just my thoughts. Interesting thread for sure
+1
Hey I dont think what i wrote means that there are no exeptions... Also there where much more universally trained people in arts and science back then.
fucking awesome character portfolio BTW
Im jelly of ur skills
Yea man, rigging up characters can become really monotonous. When we're paving our worlds and worried about one set of disciplines, those character guys handle a lot of other disciplines and tool sets for weighting vertices to the right bones, making them move right without messing up the mesh and all. That can probably become tedious, especially in AAA situations with a high target on the characters and a high count of them to create. But they love doin that shit. lol.
Just like environment artists, we love making worlds and props and stuff, but there are really monotonous things about that as well.
What I do not love is being so DRY. I have had a hard time making things on my own for a long time. Need a site like conceptart.org but for worlds instead of characters. Anyone got one? Or to buddy up with some matte painters who want to make some levels and give me precious target sheets and mood boards. I don't do that stuff, I want to see your drawings, images, and all that, then I make them in realtime 3d. It's been hard to find the people with the drawings and palettes, and as much as I love making things, it's been hard to come up with my own ideas [for open worlds] for a while too.
Not to sound a sour-puss, but how can anyone be surprised with the lack environmental artists when all we gets are blogs, threads and you occasional 'old' book for this part of thing? I literally learned everything about Envo. Art thanks to threads on PC and by hopping to one blog to another.
A friend of mine wants to be a environment artist because it's the easiest way to get in (that's what he said and still says), although at this point I really doubt he can because he keeps on using Booleans and Decimation master for everything.
The problem is he went to a CGI school and all the full fledged diploma and stuff, but not even the teachers there know much about environments and stuff like that for the game side of things. One teacher is a Arch-Design guy who keeps everything in NGons (for renders it's fine I guess, but not for games) and keeps on telling everyone how making holes in everything is fine (not in games).
The game-related teacher doesn't know much in this area either, and even the animation teacher just keeps on saying "lets the physics and particles do all the work".
Good old art and hidden gems such as how they animated the hearts on Doom, Quake and Prey games with bones and Half-Life-esque methods of spawning props and other assets without the needs to stress and let all the engine do the work unfortunately aren't available, and the closest thing I can imagine would be Eat3D's tutorials on Pillar, that's it.
We have everyday, about hundreds of tutorials showing us how to draw, sculpt, paint, texture, bone and have babies with character models, yet the best I can get about Envo. models is how not to paint more then required texture size to not lose my detail.
Yeah, I'm surprised that people are surprised.
check out the polycount wiki, Eat 3D & 3D motive, to name a few resources.
Those aren't enough. A game character tutorials and even a general one will almost always be outdated somehow within a couple of years, but still stand the test of time for it's basics.
A game environment however will change more, and aren't as easy to nail down from generation to generation.
What I was referring to is the general lack of coherent tutorials from A-Z. I don't see why we can't have a 7.5 hour tutorials on how to create an environment, with inside looks as to texture organization, modular vs. condensed, material cost vs. texture vs. polygon cost, alphas and other nick nacks, yet are able to cram 7.5 hour tutorials for you space marine #4674646.
Let me put it this way: You can learn maths all you want, you can even make it your job, it still won't help if you won't be able to apply it in real-world applications.
My joy is environment art. I'm buying an intuos4 whenever paypal transfers money to my bank, then it'll be only a matter of time before I start cranking out some rad stuff. When that happens, I'll be absolutely sure to post it on these forums.
Seriously though, I don't really understand. I have always like environments more than characters. When people said that character jobs are harder to land I thought that was only because most games don't need that many characters.
I tried to create a couple of kind of generic environment art tutorials focusing on modular assets. But I noticed it was very hard not to go out too much into different things and workflows... So you still end up with sort of a narrow tutorial sadly... environment art is just so spread out, it's hard to say "this is how you do it" because it depends so much on so many different factors.
Still, I agree it would be nice to see some more tutorials in general on the various aspects of env art. I will try and pick up doing a couple of more ones when I buy a computer (hopefully kind of soon
heey thank you. Its very work in progress right now. more to come hey.
I swear by Hourence's site. I've been following it for years now and have learned a lot.
I don't want to make characters. I want to build levels. Wait.. There's irony in there somewhere. Oh yes; environments are characters.
in the days of half life (to give a very good example), one more square pixel of texture size immedeatly had a massive impact on the performance, along with some extra triangles, and whatever else greatly influences a game's performance. today, game environments are getting more and more realistic, detailed... a very good example is the upcoming game battlefield 3: if you've seen the new trailer, and you know a bit about the upgraded version of the frostbite 2.0 engine they're using for the game, you know that AO is no longer used, and deferred lighting is now calculated in real-time, eliminating the need for manual placement of bounce lights.
half-life 1 came out in 1998, and today we're 2011. in just 13 years we've evolved from a super-optimized extremely low poly evironment that mainly consists of textures boxes and 90% tileable textures (this is no reflection on the quality of the game: it's still one of the best games ever made), to a different texture for practilly every single prop (though I know texture atlasses are still heavily used) and an engine that doesn't really care if you've used about 1000 triangles too much. (Epic's latest cinematic certainly proved that), all that topped with the use of real-time deferred lighting, something that's still sci-fi to most people.
the point i'm trying to make is that perhaps the reason it's so difficult to find good environment artists, is because the industry is moving faster than most people can keep up with?
on a resource-related note: NGHS (the forum i'm the administrator from, you might have seen it featured in the polycount news a couple of times) recently opened up a new sub forum specifically focused on texturing. it still needs a lot of flesh though, so if you guys want to have some texture-related discussions or just post your textures there (there's a special texture-feedback topic), just come over and have a look
I think the main thrust of this thread was for a long time if you said you made art for games people would say "what characters did you work on?" or if you said "I'm in school to study game art" you where being taught how to create T-Pose characters (Colin's bear).
Schools have improved a bit and the fans, hobbyist and parts of the industry are starting to realize the skill and shear man power, it takes to create the other 90% of the game. I think its still skewed toward characters but it shows signs of balancing out.
j/k
Are you sure?
I mean, what is your assumption based on?
Just to know.