High Poly Workflow for Env. Artists
mod
So this is a two parter really.
1. I'm being told by some studios and industry professionals that without high poly, you're useless to any studio doing next gen games. On the other hand, though, I'm being told by other studios and industry professionals that solid textures/height maps to pull your normals from is key, since high poly on most objects is a horrible waste of time. It's left me utterly confused as to where I stand, trying to land a job as an environment artist in the industry.
2. Despite my confusion, I've decided to devote myself entirely to building a solid high poly workflow. The issue I'm having right now is in how to prepare a low poly/base mesh for high poly environment subD sculpting.
For example, taking something like this:
into mudbox is pretty much fail. Even when preserving my hard edges when subDing it, there's not an even distribution of polygons. This makes it near impossible to sculpt detail into the mesh.
I've come to the conclusion that when preparing the mesh for subD sculpting, I need to have:
a) All quads (obviously)
b) Evenly distributed/near perfect square poly's
c) No floating geometry
After that's done, import the mesh into mudbox/zb for subD sculpting, and rebuild my base/low poly around that detailed mesh.
I've also heard that working on separate entities of the object is a good idea as well. i.e. anything that is floating, export out to subD separately.
So, my questions are:
How do you prepare your base meshes for subD sculpting in [insert sculpting app. here]?
What's your point of view or experience with needing or not needing high poly work in order to get a job as an environment artist with a company producing next gen games?
Where should I expect to be standing as far as "industry ready" is concerned?
Feel free to check out my other work at my site, if that helps. Thanks. :]
[edit] I have read through most of the other high poly/low poly and environment artist threads, but I'm still left in the dark on a few issues. [/edit]
1. I'm being told by some studios and industry professionals that without high poly, you're useless to any studio doing next gen games. On the other hand, though, I'm being told by other studios and industry professionals that solid textures/height maps to pull your normals from is key, since high poly on most objects is a horrible waste of time. It's left me utterly confused as to where I stand, trying to land a job as an environment artist in the industry.
2. Despite my confusion, I've decided to devote myself entirely to building a solid high poly workflow. The issue I'm having right now is in how to prepare a low poly/base mesh for high poly environment subD sculpting.
For example, taking something like this:
into mudbox is pretty much fail. Even when preserving my hard edges when subDing it, there's not an even distribution of polygons. This makes it near impossible to sculpt detail into the mesh.
I've come to the conclusion that when preparing the mesh for subD sculpting, I need to have:
a) All quads (obviously)
b) Evenly distributed/near perfect square poly's
c) No floating geometry
After that's done, import the mesh into mudbox/zb for subD sculpting, and rebuild my base/low poly around that detailed mesh.
I've also heard that working on separate entities of the object is a good idea as well. i.e. anything that is floating, export out to subD separately.
So, my questions are:
How do you prepare your base meshes for subD sculpting in [insert sculpting app. here]?
What's your point of view or experience with needing or not needing high poly work in order to get a job as an environment artist with a company producing next gen games?
Where should I expect to be standing as far as "industry ready" is concerned?
Feel free to check out my other work at my site, if that helps. Thanks. :]
[edit] I have read through most of the other high poly/low poly and environment artist threads, but I'm still left in the dark on a few issues. [/edit]
Replies
In terms of what stuff is best thrown into Zbrush and sculpted, think of it more like modular walls and panels, or standalone objects. The house might have some component part that was best suited for sculpting, but making an entire house in the same way that you would treat a character? Generally no.
Of course you need sculpting skill for next gen environment work. Check out this thread: http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=242205&an=0&page=3#Post242205
How would you attempt any of that neat stuff without sculpting skill?
But If you were actually on a project trying to ship a game, the heightmap>Crazybump route would perfectly suffice for your house.
I'll take the modular walls and panels into consideration, since it's something I was planning on doing to get my feet wet in the program.
Thanks for the link to that rock thread, hadn't seen that one. I'll give that a read through.
Though you can't see it in that crappy render, I did the height map>crazybump with that piece. That house is so old now, I really need to actually light it and re-render.
I appreciate the input Daz. :]
I have plans on revisiting that house, and getting rid of the shingles is on the top of my list. :]
Thanks again Daz
all in all I'd say it also depends on the scale of your objects, its purpose and how many variations you want, what i usually do is that i build the most complex wall panel I'll have in the set, then (still in highpoly derive it into all the variaitons I need (corners, etc, if they are quite different, of course) then I extract the common parts of those and create the simple wall panel/base and decide how I'm going to build all the pieces and variation and how much freedom I get with those solution, of course you want to go with the solution that gives you as much freedom as possible but also will not "look" modular, so you probably have to think of a few unique pieces that will come and complete your set.
also try to think what kind of game you're working on as per stated, for an FPS, although you always want to go as low as possible, you may also want to put WAY more detail at human eye height than further away, since that's where the player will be looking all the time, you'll want to spread your pixel density accordingly aswell, of course.
There's no reason to prepare you low poly mesh to be highpoly, if you try to turn it into the high poly mesh you'll just end up doing way more work and it wont look as good as compared to building each element separately.
The best way to go about doing a piece like this is just build it in chunks. Make a few really good thick boards that you can use for the frame of the house, model some thick grain in there, some knots and even zbrush in some cuts and finer grain on them. The same goes for your door, build a nice handle give attention to detail like bolts, joints, nails etc.
The end result of your highpoly is going to end up being a ton of objects rather than one large mesh taken into mudbox.
as far as what you're being told from studios...
they're both right. It benefits you to know how to model and to use height maps. For example the stucco walls on your building...Those you could model some large macro detail in max/mudbox but in the end you'd still probably want to use a heightmap to bring out some extra finer detail on the wall.
another upcoming tool worth mentioning is Tactile Ink from Darksim. its a texturing app geared especially for environmental assets. a little bit of info here -
http://www.darksim.com/html/tactile_ink.html
http://www.darksim.com/dswiki_new/index.php/Tactile_Ink
its in beta so the only thing i can point out is its ability to paint on all (or some or just one) channels (color, specular, normals, etc) at the same time and the intelligent way the paints interact with the surface/canvas. i always feel blind working in photoshop creating different texture channels until i could assign it on the model and see the different channels interact. with Tactile Ink you're seeing it all in realtime as you paint/texture your model. there's also no need to prep your model for high-subd sculpting. i'll post some images when i get an official nod from the developer.
cheers,
Rom
snowblindstudios.com
I think the studios suggesting highpoly is a waste of time are only buying themselves cheap time to produce assets faster but the end result will never look as good as the competition doing it all highpoly. Seeing massive amounts of shape correction generated from your highpoly down to lowpoly scattered through your game environment really adds up.
When you skip doing highpoly and rake your asset through a texture -> normal map filter alone for bump information you lose any aspect of it being an actual normal map and it's merely a bump map at that point. The whole advantage of a normal map is the shape correction generated from highpoly in addition to bump detail which is what makes the asset shine. You are also able to render an ambient occlusion which is such an advantage to starting out your diffuse map. If the surface is flat, with no round edges/surfaces then this becomes less of a factor and doing your normal map through crazybump can be a better choice for time. Even then though I have done walls in highpoly for the sake of generating ambient occlusion maps. If the highpoly model is really detailed, Mental ray can render an AO map that almost does all the diffuse for you.
http://www.darksim.com/html/tactile_ink.html
http://www.darksim.com/dswiki_new/index.php/Tactile_Ink
its in beta so the only thing i can point out is its ability to paint on all (or some or just one) channels (color, specular, normals, etc) at the same time and the intelligent way the paints interact with the surface/canvas. i always feel blind working in photoshop creating different texture channels until i could assign it on the model and see the different channels interact. with Tactile Ink you're seeing it all in realtime as you paint/texture your model. there's also no need to prep your model for high-subd sculpting. i'll post some images when i get an official nod from the developer.
cheers,
Rom
snowblindstudios.com
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Can you even download the program? Judging by the website it doesn't sound like anyone can get their hands on it until it's released..